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T he flame guttered , the wax dripped, the empty hours passed. His was a life spent in waiting. Waiting to learn when he would stop being a hostage, waiting until it was safe to come out of hiding, waiting for Baudry or one of his men to kill him. Waiting to go home.

Another day had passed. Three full days, when the journey to Edward and back should not be more than two. No message had come, no word of reassurance. Nothing.

It could only bode ill. Lord Robert was insistently optimistic, citing any number of harmless reasons for the delay – poor roads, an injured horse, the court moving to somewhere a little farther away for better hunting.

He was sure it was nothing more than that.

But Lady Eluned’s face was carefully neutral, and her noncommittal responses filled him with foreboding.

She knew Will as he did, and they both knew Will would send word if the news was good.

He would also send warning if it was bad – if he could. If it was safe to do so.

Gryff stared at the candle by his bedside.

Those first years in Lancaster’s household, when he was too young yet to fill the hours with welcoming women, he had spent his nights in this same way.

He would watch the candle flame for hours, trying to burn the memory of home out of his eyes.

Then at the abbey, he had spent every night for five years in the dark, wishing he could remember more.

Somewhere in the night he became aware of her.

Outside the glow of candlelight, just inside the door of this fine bedchamber with its thick tapestries and carved oak furniture, she had slipped silently in.

She brought her own peaceful variety of silence with her, somehow smoothing the jagged edges of the quiet that surrounded him.

He did not look toward her. All day he had paced the grounds of the manor, sure that at any moment a message would arrive.

By late afternoon he had given into the sinking sense of doom.

He could not eat, but could not resist going to the hall to look at her from afar, sure now that it was the last he would ever see of her.

Blue silk, blue eyes, golden hair, and a mouth made for sin.

No flame would ever burn the memory of it out of him, but he had let his eyes drink their fill.

“Do you come here to torment me with your silence?”

He asked it to the candle, his eyes following the dripping wax. He almost asked why she did not leave him alone, but stopped himself in time. She would take it as a command from a prince, damn her, and he would be left without even her wordlessness to keep him company.

Her step came closer, a soft footfall on the rushes behind him, but he did not turn from his place on the bed. There was a gathering glow, and he understood she must be holding a lamp. The light of it joined the light of his candle as she came closer behind him.

“Nay, not that.” she said. “Far from that.”

He held his breath through the rush of relief that flooded him. Her voice. It left him lightheaded, staring at his shadow on the wall while he prayed he would not say the wrong thing.

“Then why?"

Her slow steps carried her around the corner of the bed, just at the edge of his vision.

He felt it again – that thin ribbon of her deepest self escaping its careful containment, flowing out toward him.

He knew she was waiting for him to look at her.

He thought he should fear whatever she had come to say.

But he did not care, as long as he could look at her. As long as she spoke to him.

He turned his head to where she stood in the glow of her lamp. She was back in her coarse brown dress, her weapons glinting in the dim light. All her beauty was still there, and all her lethal strength, no matter the outer trappings.

“Robin has not come.”

“Nay,” he answered. “Haps he will never come, and I will bide here forever, waiting.” The sight of the little lamp in her hand pierced his heart.

It had burned beside them in their nights together, those nights he had dared to believe would never end.

“Would you bide with me, Nan, through days and nights without number?”

There were signs of sleeplessness around her eyes. “What will happen?” she whispered. “What will the king do to you?”

“I cannot know.” It seemed not to matter at all right now. Nothing mattered but her. “Would you bide with me?” he asked again.

She blinked, casting her eyes down to the floor.

“You are a prince,” she said, as though that were an answer.

“You say the word means naught. You think it’s naught to do with who you truly are.

” She looked up at him again. “But I see it in you, all the things that make you a prince. It’s in your blood that you curse, and in your bones, and in everything that makes you.

You were born to be Gruffydd ab Iorwerth, not a common Welshman.

Just as I was born to be plain Nan and cannot be worthy of a lord, except as servant. ”

There was such sureness in her words that he almost missed the hint of uncertainty in her face. It was not to do with him. I know my place even do you not know your own, she had said to Robin.

But she wore silk and embraced a great lady like she was her own mother.

“You are more than what you were born to. Far more.”

The shake of her head was faint but distinct, a rueful gesture that said she thought he did not understand. “You know little of me.”

“Then tell me,” he urged. “If you will scorn words, I am forced to know little of you.”

She looked at him with a gentle furrow to her brow, blinking.

He watched her search for words, as though he had asked an impossible question that pained her.

Almost did he repent of it, fearing the impulse that had spurred her to come to him and speak at last, would fade.

But he bit his tongue and waited, because he did not want to spend this night in thinking of his own fate.

He wanted whatever she would give him of herself.

She took another step to reach the low table next to the bed, where his candle burned. She set her little lamp next to it. Her hand went to the eating knife at her belt and removed it.

“I had a baby brother who died starving in my arms, because there was no food nor pity to be had.”

The words were like hailstones falling on him.

The tension at the corner of her lips, the stiffness of her posture said what she did not put into words – that no matter his misfortunes, such things did not happen to princes.

And if ever they did, all agreed that it was a horror, something that should never happen. Not to a prince.

But she blinked the bitterness away easily, it seemed, and looked down at the simple eating knife she held. She tilted it so that the handle caught the light and revealed a pattern of lines scratched deeply into it, and spoke into the hush.

“My mother died having him, and we were all starving, so my father looked to sell me into service. I would have gone to a man who was like that tanner, wanting little girls in his bed, but for Aunt Mary.” Her finger traced over the lines and he saw suddenly that it was meant to be the letter M.

“She shouted that she would not let it happen, and found me a better place. That were the first time I was saved from an ugly fate.”

She put the knife on the table, kissed her fingertips and touched them to the M on the handle, a strange and sweet little ritual.

She turned to face him but did not look up.

Instead she reached down and quickly pulled her skirt to her knee, revealing her garter.

The little silver knife was kept hidden there, and she pulled it out. It fit perfectly in her hand.

“So I went to work for a weaver’s wife, cleaning and cooking until the weaver died.

” She kept her eyes on the knife. “I was more grown then, and the widow married herself to a man who took a fancy to me. Most women would beat me and throw me in the street, and say I tried to seduce him away. But Ida, she looked out for me. She found me work in a kitchen in Chester, and told the cook I was a good girl and should be treated well.”

The silver knife was set next to the other, and he saw the I scratched into it. He had seen it countless times, but never thought it was meant to be a letter. Ida.

She bent again and brought the dagger out of her boot. It was tall and elegant, rarely used, and now he saw the letter I engraved in the quillon as she ran her fingers over it.

“Isabella,” she said, almost with an air of shy apology.

“She stood between me and that lord who killed Oliver. She were a lady and a stranger to me. Her disgust is what moved her, not any love for me. One night she came into the room and saw me there, and what he done to me. She put herself in front of me and would not budge until he left me in peace.” She lined the dagger up on the table next to the other blades. “And so I was saved again.”

Finally she looked at him, a shot of clear blue meeting his eyes through the lamplight.

She reached behind her to the dagger that hid in her belt, the one she had first put to him when he had touched her hair uninvited.

He did not look down at it. He did not need to.

He remembered the twisting symbol and now understood what it was.

“Gwenllian,” she whispered, like it was a word full of magic.

“My teacher. It’s how I know to speak Welsh, because a Welshwoman taught me this defense.

” Her eyes dropped to the dagger, resting on the G that was on the grip.

“I didn’t have no kind of strength or skill that could protect me until she gave it to me. She made it so I could save myself.”