Once and Future Hearts Box One by Cooper-Posey Tracy

Author:Cooper-Posey, Tracy [Cooper-Posey, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Cask & Sabre Publishing Consultancy
Published: 2020-04-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Ilsa scraped her hands to shreds on the door. She shredded her fingernails and the flesh of her fingertips scrabbling at the screens over the high windows. The screens, which kept marauders out, also worked to keep her in.

The walls of the now tiny room were mortared stone covered with daub…not even a spoon would dig through them, if she had one. Her food arrived without implements and her knives and bow and arrows were removed.

The same day Arawn had told her she was a prisoner until she delivered a child, all four of the women she considered her companions and two armed guards came into the room and stripped it of everything which might aide her escape or present even the mildest danger to her. They even removed the table with its sharp corners and the stools with their iron legs.

The cupboard was also taken. A chest without a lid replaced it and her garments placed in it. All that remained in the room were the wall hangings, which were deemed safe enough, her bed, the chest and the two chairs she had purloined from the great hall.

Not even a lamp was left for her. Each sunset, Arawn would arrive to light the big lamp hanging from the chain in the ceiling, which was well out of her reach.

The first night he had stepped into the room to do that service, Ilsa was still curled up in a tight ball in the corner made by the bed and the wall. She looked up, a small hope flaring and watched Arawn reach up with the taper to light the wicks, then blow the taper out.

As the warm yellow light filled the room, Arawn moved over to a chair. “Will you sit with me?” he asked.

Ilsa laughed. The sound was strained. “You treat me this way, then expect me to converse civilly with you?”

“You mistake my intentions.” His voice was low. “Everything we have done this day is only to protect you.”

“You do it to protect the child. I have no other value in this than the vessel which delivers the child. I see that now.”

Arawn’s fingers curled over the arm of the chair and dug in. “What I feel, how I feel about you doesn’t matter. It cannot matter. Do you not see that? My sympathy for…the others…it was my undoing.” He leaned forward, his arms on his knees, as if he wanted to emphasize what he was saying and make her understand. “I let them have their freedom, to live normally. Fate found them, every single one of them. Thrown from a horse. Murdered by thieves right here in the market square. Taken by the plague which took so many…oh, they were unexpected tragedies, all of them. Put together, though, they point to an absolute truth—that harm comes from unseen places. I will not risk your exposure to one of those hidden places, Ilsa.”

Ilsa shivered. “They were not all the victims of unhappy accident, though. Your first wife, the princess.

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