The air was taut with discomfort over dinner. Lord Francis and the lady Julia were sitting at one end of the table, long and carved out of wood so firm it could have been stone. They ate in silence, meat and bread and goblets of wine, and they looked at each other when they were not looking at the end of the table opposite them. Kirsty did wish one of them would say something, ask the questions that were wrapped tight around their necks and growing ever-tighter. She took a bit of her potatoes, not looking up at either of them, and waited.

It was Julia who spoke first, and Kirsty let herself breathe as her stepmother cleared her throat.

"You have no idea where he came from, then?"

"None at all," Kirsty said, looking up. Her uncle was holding Julia's hand; her stomach twisted a bit at the sight, remembering how her father used to do the same. But it was not proper of a Lady to be to call attention to such improprieties, certainly not from the Lord of the house. "No letters, no messengers, no warning he was coming at all."

"And you cannot send him away?" Kirsty shook her head, and saw a thin frown on her uncle's face at the answer.

"I tried, my Lady, to tell him I did not behold him to my service. He would not hear of it; he said it was his divine purpose to keep me safe from danger."

"There is nothing divine about such a horrid-" Frank was cut off by the sound of footsteps on stone; Kirsty and Julia froze at the noise, quiet and deliberate and growing ever closer.

"One of the guards?" Julia asked, hopeful, but Kirsty and Frank both looked at her with a discouraging stare. The sound of chains dragging on the floor betrayed who it was; Kirsty turned to the door, waiting to see if he would appear.

And he did; a towering shadow at the door's frame, the light of candles flickering against rusted metal. No helmet did he wear, but Kirsty had taken to thinking of him as a knight all the same; for he wore leather armor from his neck to the floor, and at his waist it wrapped around a layer of chainmail longer than Kirsty's own gowns. It tattered at the edges and was lined with small hooks and broken links. There were wounds in his chest, exposed by cuts in the leather with seams that appeared stitched into the skin by unskilled hands. His hands were uncovered but for his thumbs and small fingers, and they were white as ghosts, as was his face.

And oh, his face... stern, composed, yet marred with scars of a deliberate precision, cutting his face into neat little squares. His skin was white to the point of being almost blue, but the scars were a dark blackish red, and looked almost freshly cut. And at the apex of each intersection was a nail, like one might use in a tannery or a forge, hammered into his skull.

Julia had screamed when he had first appeared at their manor door; Kirsty couldn't blame her, though now the family looked at this strange knight in silence, and he looked back at them, and at her in particular.

"I trust," he finally said, and his voice seemed to fill the room and arrest her ears and mind, "that all is well, my lady?" Kirsty nodded, for she knew he meant her and not Julia; he almost seemed to not see her, as with every encounter he all but failed to acknowledge her presence or even Frank's.

"Yes," she said, "all is well. Thank you." He nodded, and turned before walking away, a many blades clanking at his waist and the hooks scraping on stone beneath him. All looked at the door until they could not hear the sound of chains, and then Kirsty turned to face her uncle and stepmother.

"And there's truly nothing you can do? He's dreadful."

"He's worse than dreadful, he's demonic," Frank said, still glowering at the door. Unlike Julia, the knight seemed aware of Frank, and would stare at him with that cold, unfeeling gaze when he was not addressing Kirsty or leaving scratch-marks on the stone floors. "We should send for a priest, have an exorcism done. He could threaten our guests."

What guests, Kirsty wanted to ask, as all of her family friends seemed to have disappeared with her father's death. What had been a hall bustling with guests each night was now just the three of them; even the servants seemed less likely to congregate, lest they catch Lord Frank's attention. She knew they all held Lord Frank in disgust; she had only heard whispers of scandals that followed him before he came home, and truthfully had rather feared his temper and hungers unchecked. She said none of this, and instead shook her head.

"He's shown no interest in such things as possessing another; in what little I can get from him it seems he's interested in no master but me." Kirsty looked down at her plate, avoiding her uncle's glower. "I will... try to talk to him, and understand where he came from. Perhaps if it is a curse, there is some way to break it."

"I should hope so. This is my estate, and I shall not be host to demons and servants of the Devil wandering the grounds." Hypocrite, Kirsty thought as her uncle spoke, but said nothing. She simply nodded, and kept eating.

Kirsty finished her meal last; Frank and Julia had dismissed themselves, and the halls were silent as she stood and handed her plate off to a maid. She reached the door and peered into the long, dark hall; once she had felt safe walking these halls in the dark, but since her father's death they had felt strange, hostile, as if somebody was waiting for her in the shadows.

She hesitated, before clearing her throat. "Sir knight?" She felt his approach more than heard it, a cold rush of air over her shoulder. She looked up to the knight staring down at her, expression unreadable as ever.

"How may I serve you, my lady?" he asked, and Kirsty noticed not for the first time that his eyes seemed as dark as the halls themselves, catching only the light of a dying candle.

"I... thought I heard something in the dark." He looked up, but as to whether or not he believed her or was searching himself, she could not tell. "Would you walk me to my room?"

"Of course, my lady," he said, and disappeared into the dark as she blinked. The air still held the heaviness he carried, though, and so she knew he was still present. And so Kirsty began walking to her room, occasionally glimpsing a shadow alongside her own in the reflections of glass and candlesticks.