Eric & Fernanda, 1219-1220 CE

by The Modern Typewriter

Eric de Clermont has spent the last fifty years overcoming the losses of his human life and coming into his own as the young son of Hugh de Clermont. Back in the 21st century, Addison has spent the last six months trying to make sense of her mind and the world around her. Finally getting back on her feet, the last thing she wants or needs is a trip to 13th century Spain.

11. Spring, the de Clermont

Chapter Eleven: Spring, the de Clermont

Godfrey de Clermont had a problem. What that problem was, or the extent of its severity had yet to be determined. But there was a problem in this village, of that he had no doubt.

His brother wrote him in the fall.

His estranged brother wrote him in the fall.

His exiled brother.

The brother he was closest to in the world had written to him of an oddity. An oddity in the form of a time spinning human girl. A girl who had potentially bewitched his nephew. A girl who, Hugh was concerned, had bewitched himself. And yet, his brother had pled his silence. Pled his discretion.

With silence and haste, he came now to La Ithuriana. Their father was none the wiser. Their brothers had no clue. With any luck, their sisters would never learn of this predicament.

And Godfrey had a problem. He had a problem and, as he entered the courtyard of the old manor house, he noted with wariness and dismay that there was no sign of Hugh.

Observing the human servants of the courtyard who skittered around like nervous mice, Godfrey dismounted and shot Bertrand a grim look. One that the other knight returned, as he made to follow Godfrey's lead. Their boots did not sound when they met the cobblestone ground, and Godfrey turned his eyes to Miriam, Bertrand's mate.

She still wore her veil over her face from days of travel, and all but her eyes were obscured. But he could see the way her gaze flickered over the servants, the trees and the house itself, cataloguing every oddity. Every abnormality. This was not the typical welcome bestowed from one de Clermont to another. There were no vampires. There was a complete lack of decorum.

She arched a skeptical eyebrow and met his gaze before holding out a hand to Bertrand. A silent request for her mate to help her from her steed.

Godfrey frowned and ran his hand over his horse's neck as though to calm the beast though it was not his steed that needed calming.

Where was Hugh?

Where was Fernando?

Where was his nephew?

Godfrey turned and caught the nervous eyes of a young stablehand, who watched them with suspicion from the entrance to one of the stalls. Something had gone wrong here this winter. And Hugh had begged him to be discreet. But the stableboy had puffy eyes and a discomfited expression, and he avoided stepping fully into the courtyard to greet them as was the proper way.

He held the boy's gaze and arched an unimpressed eyebrow when he did not make haste to tend their steeds. The child paled and braved a step from the shadows. He watched them skittishly and Godfrey had to bite back an aggravated retort.

Something bad had befallen the people of La Ithuriana. Now, he just needed to ascertain what that something was.

But there was no sign of his brother – something he just could not seem to wrap his mind around.

The boy finally reached him, and Godfrey automatically detected the sweat on his palms, the stutter in his heart and the fear in his blood.

The de Clermont sighed and snapped the reins into the boy's hands sharply, quickly losing patience with their exchange.

The boy was afraid. It was not his fault, his more rational mind supplied. But the other more pressing part of him begged the question once again. Where in the nine circles of hell was his brother? Where was his brother?

"Boy," Godfrey snapped at the stablehand. "Fetch Alaric."

The boy startled at the sound of Godfrey's irritated voice and nearly dropped the reins of the horse he was holding.

"I cannot fetch him, sir."

Godfrey, taken aback at this impertinence, opened his mouth to form the most scathing rebuke when Bertrand wisely cut in.

"Why not? Where is he?" The other knight inquired.

The boy shook his head, looking altogether lost and uncertain before he replied.

"Dead, sir," he said. "He was—"

The boy cut himself off and stared down at his hands. Godfrey shook his head in disbelief. Alaric was dead? It could not be. The man had been with them for centuries. He had been a worthy fighter, a loyal man. He was—

"He was what?" Godfrey asked.

The boy looked up from his hands. Looked up at Godfrey with haunted eyes.

"Beheaded, milord."

Miriam let out a small sound of surprise and Godfrey could feel Bertrand's keen eyes on the back of his head. The picture being painted here was the worst possible outcome he could have conceived of when he received Hugh's letter in the fall.

"For what reason? On order of the king?"

The boy shook his head, twisting the reins in his hands and aggravating Godfrey's steed. But for all the snorting and stamping of the agitated beast, the boy seemed lost to the world when he answered.

"No, sir. He was murdered... by a man they say was in a terrible rage. A man like you, sir. Like you and Lord Hugh."

If Godfrey had been concerned before, he was now confused and concerned. He had come to investigate a witch. But a rage filled vampire had killed Alaric. Beheaded him and—and—

He shared an uneasy look with Bertrand who had brought a hand up to scratch contemplatively at his thick black beard. Miriam had drawn closer to her mate, hand falling instinctively to the small blade at her hip, eyes scanning the courtyard once again as though it had been cast in new light – new shadow.

Matthew had not been here. This, Godfrey knew with certitude. But could there really be another blood raged manjasang on the loose? Was this a matter of bewitching or a matter of blood rage? And where on earth was his blasted brother?

He gritted his teeth. And strode from his party. Strode from the courtyard and the stuttering stablehand. Godfrey made his way to the great staircase that led to La Ithuriana's impenetrable doors. He took the steps two at a time and came face to face with two familiar footmen who exchanged a neutral glance and seemed to agree on a silent question. In what he was sure was a disregard for Hugh's express command – judging by the bob of an Adam's apple and the tightening of a grip on the doorhandle as the men caved before him – the footmen decided to allow the youngest de Clermont brother in.

His eyes flashed and his gait quickened. They made the right decision.

He stalked the length of the manor, watching the maids scurry and the servant boys scatter. They knew what he was. Many knew who he was. But those he did not know – those who were new and uneducated in the faces of Hugh de Clermont's kin watched him as though he were a harbinger of death. One girl saw him and sobbed before another ushered her away with a curtsy and apology to the de Clermont who passed them.

Three empty studies. Two empty chambers. An empty great hall. And an absence of manjasangs.

Godfrey's boots echoed on the stairs as he descended into the servants' quarters, desperate for answers, unwilling to suffer any fools.

A maid heard him coming.

One maid who was a member of his kind.

The crying girl from before gave a shriek at the sight of him now and Godfrey gritted his teeth at the abrasive noise. But the sound, for all its hysterics, had the desired effect. It summoned a manjasang.

Godfrey set his eyes on the blonde. She regarded him steadily as he made his way to her. She ducked into a practiced curtsy. Bowed her head. Murmured a quiet "my lord," and Godfrey felt something deflate in his chest. For Christ's sake at least someone here had remembered their manners.

"What's your name?" he snapped.

"Jacqueline, my lord."

"Where is Lord Hugh?"

Her eyes snapped up to his and she rose from her curtsy, finally deciding his temper had been duly appeased. She seemed reticent as she regarded him now. As though she knew she was bound to deliver him unpleasant news.

"Much has happened here this winter, my lord. I am afraid I cannot say where Lord Hugh is, but I assure you he will return by nightfall."

"You cannot say? Or you will not?"

The maid, Jacqueline, frowned at him and shook her head.

"I do not know where he has gone, my lord. I couldn't possibly presume."

"And what is your station here?" He asked.

"I am the maid to Lady Fernanda Gonçalves, daughter of Don Fernando."

Godfrey stared at her for a beat. Lady Fernanda Gonçalves? Fernando's... daughter?

Fernando's daughter?

If the thought were not so absurd – if the situation not so dire – he would have given way to laughter. Fernando did not have a daughter. Fernando Gonçalves was much more suitable to care for a rock than to sire a child.

"Come again?"

"I am lady's maid to Don Fernando's daughter, Lady Fernanda Gonçalves."

She said it with a face of neutrality. With a calmness that eluded him now.

"That cannot be," he said. "That simply cannot be. When did he sire her?"

Jacqueline paled and pressed her lips together, as though he had caught her in some deception. She stuttered and shook her head.

"My lord, I really think it would be best if Lord Hugh were to explain—"

"No," Godfrey said. "You will explain it to me now."

She wrung her hands and glanced around the servants' hall, to the cook who quietly witnessed their exchange and Bertrand and Miriam who had followed him downstairs not long after he'd encountered her. Jacqueline – a decidedly unfoolish girl – determined to do as he commanded.

"She is human, sir. He adopted her in the fall."

Godfrey stared down at the nervous looking maid. Recalled the strange letter from his brother and the ghostlike household, the empty courtyard.

Hugh was gone, as were Fernando and Eric. Every manjasang but this girl in front of him had gone too. And the little time spinning human had disappeared with them. The little time spinning human who was assumed to not be a witch. The little time spinning human who had quite possibly bewitched Hugh and sunk her greedy nails into Fernando and his wealth of resources.

No.

Godfrey's jaw ticked.

This simply would not do.

The air broke around the sound of a vampire moving at speed. Godfrey turned at the noise, hand on his blade. Bertrand too had drawn his sword. The flash of a familiar face and then there was Guillaume. Stood serene as always, dagger in hand, this time with his body between the de Clermont and Jacqueline. His hand had come back to hold her behind him, even as he considered the members of his kind across from him now.

Reconciling the presence of the de Clermont and a trusted fellow knight, as well as that knight's lady, the serene Guillaume flipped his dagger and tucked it away. Regarding them with knowing eyes and a surety that always commanded respect, he nodded at his brethren, bowed to Miriam and gestured to the stairs.

"Apologies, my lord. You'll forgive me my haste. I knew not that you were here, and Jacqueline and I are recently mated."

"Indeed," Godfrey arched an eyebrow at the pair.

Jacqueline regarded him apologetically. Guillaume did not appear concerned with whether he had caused offense. This was a quality Godfrey had always respected about Guillaume. He nodded and lowered his hand from his blade. Bertrand sheathed his sword. Miriam finally lowered her veil, to reveal a contemplative scowl and impassive eyes.

"I seek my brother—" Godfrey began again.

"Perhaps we should discuss this in the drawing room," Guillaume supplied, considering the wary servants, and wailing maid who was being frantically shushed by her peers.

Godfrey sighed. "Yes, perhaps that would be for the best."

Guillaume pressed a kiss to his mate's hand and released her. Leaving her to her flustered human peers while he followed the de Clermont and company back to the main floor of the house.

---

"Jacqueline and I were away," Guillaume said as he closed the drawing room door and turned to face them. He gestured for Bertrand and Miriam to sit. Godfrey had already made himself at home rifling through his brother's belongings, trying to find any whisper of information on what had occurred here of late. "Her father was the stable master—"

"Alaric," Miriam supplied quietly. "He was a good man."

"He was," Guillaume agreed, nodding to her in acknowledgement. "His death is very recent. Don Fernando gave her leave from her labors for a time; I went with her. We only just arrived here before you."

"To find everyone gone," Godfrey supplied, filling in the unspoken truth. "So, you know not where they have disappeared to."

"No, sir," Guillaume said. "I do not."

"Then should we not search for them?" Bertrand supplied, thick black eyebrows furrowing over brown eyes and a prominent nose.

"I do not believe so," Guillaume shook his head. Godfrey stopped his rifling, hands buried in a pile of discarded parchment, to stare at Guillaume in disbelief.

"Pardon?"

Guillaume turned to face the irate de Clermont.

"I do not believe it prudent to search for them at the moment—"

"They are missing—"

"No, my lord, they are hunting."

Godfrey stared at his fellow knight, mind spinning with half the information it needed. He pressed his lips together and nodded tersely more to himself than to anyone else in the room. Pulling himself to height and leaving Hugh's secrets to themselves, he forced his eyes away from a map that laid on the table across the room, he circled around to the sofa where Miriam and Bertrand sat and claimed the space across from them. Watching Guillaume the entire time, he waved his hand impatiently at the other man who did not seem to take offense at his rudeness.

"Tell me what I do not know, then. And be quick about it."

Guillaume nodded and took a seat next to them, clasping his hands together and tapping his index fingers to his lips in contemplation.

"Benjamin is here. He sired a blood rage colony on the mountain. We have systematically pushed them back to the outer territories, but they are still more prominent than we can allow. There is no sign of Benjamin, though he hunts the young Fernanda—"

"The young Fernanda?" Godfrey scoffed, incredulous, all the while turning the thought of Benjamin around in his mind.

Benjamin made sense. Benjamin was the part of the matter that Godfrey could comprehend with startling clarity. It was high time the coward showed his face. He had been bound to do so for the better part of a century, and Godfrey had awaited his appearance with equal parts anticipation and dread.

Benjamin was a problem. A problem that desperately needed containment. But he was a problem Godfrey could make sense of. He was not the mystery, no matter how elusive he was. Benjamin was plain.

"Yes, my lord. The lady Fernanda, he has hunted her since the fall."

"Tell me of her."

Guillaume for the first time this day finally seemed taken aback. "Tell you of... Lady Fernanda?"

He had just informed the de Clermont that there was a blood rage colony loose on the mountain, and he wanted to know about... Fernanda?

"Yes," Godfrey arched an eyebrow and Guillaume studied him curiously.

"There is little to say my lord," he said. "She is a girl of nineteen. Fernando adopted her in the fall, on Lord Hugh's recommendation. She is a bit odd in demeanor, but altogether harmless."

Guillaume did not say that she was Eric's mate. It was neither a secret, nor was it his story to tell. And his instinct told him this knowledge would very much displease the youngest de Clermont brother.

"And what of her other qualities?" Godfrey asked as though he knew more than he let on.

"Other qualities, my lord?"

"Yes," Godfrey said. "Anything else I should know of?"

"I can't imagine what you mean."

"I've heard tell of time spinning."

Guillaume sat back in shock.

He knew of her time spinning.

Eric had told him the little human's odd tale the night he and Balder arrived with Bourgine de Prudhomme. But he was astounded that it had been months since such a thing crossed his mind. Sure, the girl wore her foreign status like a badge of honor. And of course, she looked and smelled of a nature that was not wholly belonging to any place or people he'd ever known, but he had entirely set aside such a significant truth. Had not thought of it since the beginning of winter.

He stared back at Lord Godfrey whose face only grew grimmer in response to Guillaume's silence.

"Yes," the once serene knight finally supplied. "I had completely forgotten, my lord. Forgive me. She is a time spinner in a way—"

"A witch," Godfrey hissed, but Guillaume was already shaking his head.

"No."

"So, she has cast her spell on you as well?"

"There has been no spell—"

"Do not deny it—"

"Godfrey," Bertrand cut in, voice terse and eyes concerned for the men who escalated in tension before him. "Peace, I beg you. We are among friends."

Godfrey deflated a bit and shook himself of his anger. He nodded at Bertrand and shot Guillaume a humbled look.

"I apologize, brother Guillaume. My mind seems to have gotten the better of me. There is something very wrong in the air here."

"Yes," Bertrand agreed. "There is."

Guillaume nodded as well, having recovered his serenity in the face of Godfrey's deflation.

"I agree, my lord. But I beg you speak with Lord Hugh when he returns. The girl... she may not be of this time. But she is no witch—"

He was cut off by a great thud coming from somewhere in the forest.

A felled tree.

Godfrey looked to the window. Guillaume followed his gaze.

The sky was clear.

There was no wind.

Guillaume stood and made his way to the door, pulling it open just in time for the de Clermont to stride through. Guillaume followed. Bertrand and Miriam hot on their heels.

Then came a cry so feral, so sick with rage that there could be no question as to whom it belonged. It cut across the mountain. Sent the birds scattering from the trees.

They hurried then. Still reticent. Still watching the windows. The human servants had fallen still. Still and silent they remained, as the world broke around the mystery voice's heart wrenching cries. And the world broke for his rage.

The screams continued. The cry that turned into a name. A name that he screamed over and over again somewhere on the mountain. Somewhere in the trees.

The vampires moved. And humanity stopped. And the mountain silence remained broken around the cry of one rageful name.

Cordelia.

They made it to the entrance hall just in time to detect the frantic heartbeat of a panicked human, the stench of blood, and the thick scent of a young de Clermont.

Boots thudded fast and loud. Heavy tread on the steps outside. The footmen scrambled. Godfrey surged forward. Surged to meet them, whoever was coming. But Bertrand pulled him back at the last second. The doors splintered open. Light flooded the hall. And Eric carried a bleeding Fernanda through the broken doors of his home.

It was clear for anyone to see that Eric had been fighting, but Fernanda was by far the worst for wear. She gushed blood from her arms, her cheek, the palm of her hand, and the place just beneath her collar bone.

Her face was pale, and her hands were shaking, and though she looked about the room Guillaume knew that her eyes could not see.

Godfrey stood frozen, taking in the odd scene before him of his nephew and the young human he had yet to meet. The young human he was convinced was a witch.

Her eyes drifted to his, and Godfrey stepped closer. Brow furrowed. Confused by what he was witnessing.

This could not be.

"Eric," he started but the younger man shook his head and hissed for a clean cloth through gritted teeth. He was holding Fernanda's wounds with his bare hands.

"Nephew—" Godfrey began again, trying to break the air of the household which had frozen in shock.

Trying to gain his nephew's attention. Searching for answers. Searching for a way to explain the truth that met him now before his very eyes. A young human girl, who smelled wrong. Not of this time. Not of this place. And her blood, it covered her. It covered his nephew, and it stained the settee. Her blood that did not sing.

She was not a witch.

This could not be.

"Cloth," Eric gritted out in response.

When Godfrey didn't move to help him, it was Miriam who sprang into action.

"Honestly," she snarled and ripped a clean linen from the hands of the nearest gawking maid.

The maid jumped and scurried back away from the angry lady, but Miriam paid her little mind. She stalked past the frozen Godfrey, and her wary mate Bertrand and slapped the material into Eric's desperate hands.

He didn't look up. Didn't thank her. His eyes were on the girl who was so obviously his mate. His focus entirely on her. The only thing that could shake him now was Benjamin if he dared to pursue them. The only thing that would pull him away from her now was Benjamin in a vengeful rage. But the man was still crouched over the fallen maid in the forest, screaming the name he had given her, bargaining – Eric was sure – with a God who could no longer hear him.

"Benjamin—" he said to the gathered men.

Fernanda's face had gone pale, and her body began to shake from the shock of her ordeal. He murmured quiet reassurances to her, begging her to look at him. To focus on him. He rubbed her hands with one of his own as the other scrambled to staunch the flow of her blood.

Jacqueline appeared beside him and Miriam. The women began to fire questions at him and answers to each other over his bowed head.

When he did look away from the trembling human, it was to Guillaume. Not to Godfrey – not to his uncle – but to the knight who had been with him on this journey from its harrowing beginning.

"In the woods, on the path that leads to the pass—" he began and then glanced over to his uncle who he had ignored up until now. "If you hurry, he will still be there with the fallen maid."

Godfrey stared at his nephew, mind spinning with unanswered questions. Spinning for more information he would not soon gain. Eric appeared before him now almost desperate for him to obey, to comply. Just this once to subvert the order of things and hear him. Eric's eyes had turned to Godfrey only to plead with him, to beg him silently for his aid. Implored his uncle to do what Eric himself had not done – to pursue Benjamin and end it once and for all. But then the human began to murmur under her breath and his nephew's eyes once again fixed their gaze on her.

"I don't understand," she whispered and shook her head back and forth.

"I don't understand," she said again, and her hands came up to dig her nails into the skin of her arms.

Godfrey watched as she dragged her nails down her body, leaving angry red marks in some places, and clearing others of dried blood. She was a patchwork of gore and disbelief, and Godfrey watched his nephew grab for her hands, pulling them away from their continued violence and pressing kisses to her bloody fingers.

"I know, mo chridhe," he murmured. "I know."

And again, she shook her head. "I don't understand."

"That's okay, mo chridhe. That's okay."

And he kissed her hands again. Without lifting his face from her body, he spoke to the men at his back. His brothers in arms. His kin. His friends.

"The woods, they'll be a handful of paces off the path. Northeast. Not far from a felled oak tree. His scent will be overwhelming. You can't miss him."

Guillaume, ever the faithful comrade, nodded and made for the door. He eyed his mate who watched his movements with barely concealed grief and rage. Envy. Jacqueline pressed her lips together and looked back to her lady, but it was Miriam who released her from her duty.

Godfrey collected himself. Finally recovering his footing on a ground that had been constantly shifting since he arrived in his brother's courtyard. Having recovered his senses, the de Clermont overtook Guillaume and led the men out the door. Bertrand drew his sword and followed Godfrey out into the courtyard. Guillaume hesitated as he regarded the conflicted Jacqueline.

"Go," Miriam told the blonde. "Go with them. Eric and I will care for the warmblood."

Jacqueline's eyes welled with blood red tears, and she nodded her silent thanks to the lady who held a cloth to her mistress's cheek.

"Go," Miriam urged again.

And Jacqueline backed away, following Guillaume out the door. They hurried to catch up with the de Clermont and Bertrand who had covered some distance to reach Benjamin before he once again disappeared.

When they hit the trees, Guillaume cast her one final look before he too drew his blade. "Do not engage him."

"I won't," she said.

---

It was done.

They hadn't found Benjamin, but his children were gone. Roncesvalles was safe. Fernando took comfort in that. The people had been compensated, comforted, and allowed the time they needed to grieve. They were given all that the Gonçalves de Clermont scion was able to give. It would not be enough, but still they hoped it would ease their people's pain in some way.

A contingent of knights rode up the path to La Ithuriana from the village down the way. At the front were Hugh and Fernando, trailed very closely by Idir.

They had just caught sight of the gatehouse, and the mouth of the courtyard, when their ears were assaulted by the sound of a man's terrible screams. Hugh called out a warning to the men at his back and kicked his horse into a gallop. Fernando quickly followed his lead.

The group thundered into the courtyard as three black clad figures exited La Ithuriana and made their way into the trees. Their blades were drawn. Bare metal glinted sharply in the high afternoon sun.

The three figures were trailed at a distance by the young Fernanda's maid, Jacqueline.

And the men knew.

They knew with absolute certainty what such a vision would mean.

They dismounted as one. An army of shadows descended on the trees. Guided by the white clad angel of death, la belle Jacqueline. As one, determined to find Benjamin and put an end to the insanity. Put an end to the shame and the murder and the chaos – the cruelty.

Fernando and his mate wished to be done with this saga once and for all.

The warriors at their back wholeheartedly agreed.

But then Fernando caught a scent on the wind. Keen eyes detecting a patch of blood on the path that led to the house from the trees. Like an anvil had been dropped on his chest, Fernando stopped.

He froze.

Amidst a sea of black clad warriors who moved around him as though he were a stone caught in the current, Fernando stared down the path that led into the trees. Tracked the progress of his mate and his knights as they moved to end Benjamin once and for all, and he could not move with them.

From the moment he had taken her on, Fernando's own promised eternity had been withheld from him. From the moment Hugh had foisted a daughter on him, one that he'd never wanted, Fernando's ties to this plane had rearranged themselves. He was no longer the clinical, duty-bound warrior, Fernando Gonçalves. He was no longer the Gonçalves – first and only of his name. He was a father to a human daughter. His own life was bound eternally to hers, and there was blood on the ground. And Fernando knew, as he had known for months, that her eternity was fragile, bound to an inevitable end.

And he could not move with the men into the trees. He could not follow the shadows of death that fell upon the clearing in the distance where Benjamin last lay. He could not do as he had done for countless centuries because the blood on the ground was not any blood.

This blood was significant.

It sent him reeling, his mind racing. And he found himself turning away. Turning to face his fortress-like home instead.

La Ithuriana had always been a place that existed in between. She was the last pillar of civilization before one entered the wilds. She was the meeting point between mortal and immortal. She was the silence before and after death, and she consumed those who were caught somewhere in between.

Idir had frozen with him.

He too, had caught the scent. And even more so, he was ever the faithful friend. Fernando froze, so Idir froze with him. Two men caught up in the ravages of time. Two men strung up in the moment between uncertainty and knowledge. Two men who feared what knowledge would bring.

Idir was not among the tides of men who had flooded the mountain to do de Clermont bidding. He was here because Fernando had asked him to be. He was here, because this moment had always been the one Fernando had feared.

Fernando tracked the splotches of blood from the trees to the steps of his home with his eyes. He was unwilling to believe his nose, but unable to ignore it.

The Gonçalves moved back the way they came. Back toward his home that had been violated by the violent world outside of it. Violated by de Clermont mistakes and the passage of time. He climbed the steps, unsure if he wanted to go further, unable to stop himself if he tried. Fernando followed the blood through the busted doors that once stood guard there. The doors that were now splintered open – useless now in keeping the rest of the world at bay.

In his entrance hall, Fernando beheld a most dreaded scene. His daughter was frozen on a settee, pupils blown wide in shock. She was bleeding. Eric knelt before her, desperately trying to staunch the flow pouring out of her arms, and her cheek. If she was injured anywhere else, he could not see it. And he didn't know if he could bear seeing it, if she were. The anvil pressed harder now on his sternum, and Fernando wondered for the first time in a very long time if this was what it felt like to die.

Miriam Shepherd stood over the pair as he approached. She was flabbergasted, trying in vain to understand whatever on earth it was that she was witnessing here. Trying to understand who on earth Fernanda was. What had happened here. And how Eric knew about Benjamin.

But Eric did not answer. And neither would Fernando right now. He moved quickly and she moved out of the way, just in time for him to take her place and reach for his daughter who had finally met his gaze.

---

It's funny how pieces of our lives trickle back to us over time. Addison had only ever had the same memory of her mother. Of dancing in towels and robes to old country music, twirling around the living room after bath time. Memories of her face pressed into her mother's shoulder, the feel of her wet hair against her cheek. The smell of shampoo flooding her senses and settling something inside of her.

It's funny how things come back to us. Return to us. Become a part of us, even if we can't remember them at first. Just as suddenly as a crack of a skull on a rock in the woods; just as suddenly as the cry of Cordelia's name; just as suddenly as life and death and the speed with which Gallowglass took her from the clearing in the woods to the safety of La Ithuriana, forgotten things were bound to return.

Just that quickly, we learn something new about ourselves that had always been there. Something that had been there, but for some reason we kept hidden.

Movement flickered in the entryway behind Eric, and Addison looked up in shock at the motion.

She half anticipated Benjamin had followed them – followed them to finish the deed.

But dark eyes met hers over Eric's bowed head, and Addison felt something in her blow open and expand and begin quite viciously to consume her. And she could no longer take in any air.

Fernando was there.

He was there and his eyes were fixed intently on her. And Addison suddenly didn't know whether to cry or to scream or to curl up in a ball on the floor and stay there.

His face was grim, but his eyes were...well...

Once when Addison was very small, she had made a fort of couch cushions while one of her baby videos played in the background. Her mother had been sitting with her at first. Cuddled up together on the couch, Addison saw a version of herself that did not yet know how to speak. On the screen, she saw her grandmother wiping her food-stained cheeks with a damp cloth, while she sat in a highchair. Watched her grandmother try to get her to say her name.

"Can you say abuelita?"

"Lalalala"

"Abuelita?"

"Lalala."

"Very good, mija, abuelita."

"Lala."

The video played low in the background, flickering on an old tv screen. Addison had built a fort out of the couch cushions and now hid from view, lying in wait for her mother who had moved over to the kitchen table, and was now speaking in hushed tones on the phone.

Addison peeked out of a crack in the cushions, to watch her mother as she waited for her to come back and play. She saw the fall of black hair come down to shield her mother's face when her momma bowed forward as though she were in pain. Watched her mother bring a hand up to hold at her own forehead like she did sometimes to check Addison for a fever when she was sick.

Her momma's voice rose as she spoke. Frantic whispers turned frustrated; her voice pitched higher with each passing word. Addison watched as she stood abruptly from her chair. With a word Addison wasn't allowed to say, her momma kicked the chair back and slammed the phone down on the surface of the table. Picked it up and slammed it again. And repeated the bad word.

Addison jolted back. She knocked the back cushion out of her pillow fort, leaving herself exposed to a sneak attack from behind. But she didn't turn to build back her wall. Addison's eyes stayed glued on her momma. Glued to her momma who had begun to pace the length of the kitchen, black hair tumbling down her back and swaying as she walked. Addison would duck out of view whenever her mother turned back to look at her – to watch her with worried eyes.

Someone knocked on the front door.

It cut the tense air of the household like a freshly sharpened blade.

Her mother nearly flew out of her skin. And then, just as quickly as the knock sounded, the top of Addison's fort came off. Her mother threw the cushion haphazardly to the floor and stared down at her. She had lines on her forehead, deep and concerned. Her young face had aged in minutes. And her lips had twisted into a frown.

The video still played in the background. It had skipped and begun to repeat itself.

"Can you say abuelita?"

"Lalalala."

"Abuelita?"

Her momma reached down and plucked her up off the floor, holding her tight in her arms and ignoring the person at the door who had begun to pound at it with an angry fist.

"Lalala."

"Addison—" Her mother said, out of breath, like she had just been running. Her momma looked down at her with wide, owl-like eyes and Addison reached up to cradle her face with chubby little hands.

"Momma—"

Her mom hushed her and took her into Lala's room, opening the closet door and pressing her lips together, a few tears leaked out the corners of her eyes and Addison watched them fall. Her mom sniffed and set her down on the floor of Lala's closet, behind the shoes, underneath rows and rows of shirts and dresses.

Soft cotton caressed her face and itchy wool scratched at the top of her head. Her mom sat her there and Addison had a bad feeling in her belly. Something inside of her began to unwind. Her lip wobbled and her mother kneeled before her. Hands shaking, she pressed down Addison's unruly hair and tried in vain to smooth it.

The man at the door was yelling now and her momma shook her head. And Addison didn't know what was wrong.

"Baby," her mom tried again. "I need you to stay in here, okay. We're going to play a little game."

"Okay, momma," Addison said, she would have said anything to make her momma stop crying.

"And we're going to be very quiet. Okay? Be very quiet, my love. And stay here. Whoever stays in here the longest will get ice cream when Lala comes home, hmm?"

The man at the door fell silent and her mom's head snapped up in alarm, eyes swiveling first to the hallway and then to the windows. She turned back to Addison and pressed a finger to her lips before quietly clicking the closet doors closed.

Addison stayed very quiet.

Her momma wasn't very good at this game.

She was being loud. Too loud for ice cream. And Addison's belly felt very wrong. She pressed her hand to the place on her belly where something had begun to spin, faster and faster inside of her. Like the barbie in her room that could talk, Addison felt as though she was attached to a string. A string that someone was pulling. And she didn't like it. She didn't like it at all.

She sucked in a breath and looked up at the crack in the closet door. She wanted her momma.

There was a man. He was upset. Her momma was upset too.

And then a door slammed shut – the front door – and there was silence. The whole house was quiet, but for the video that played in the living room. Caught in a loop that would never end.

"Can you say abuelita?"

There was no light coming through the crack in the closet door when Lala came home. Addison sat there amongst the dresses and sweaters and shoes and waited quietly to win her game, but she didn't want to wait to be found anymore.

She could hear Lala stop in the kitchen. She could hear her stop and stand there in the middle of her empty house. Taking in the darkness, the flickering television, and the fallen fortress. Couch cushions scattered all over the floor.

"Mija?" Lala called out. "Mija, I'm home! ¿Estás aquí?"

Addison pushed the door open, tumbled out of the closet onto her hands and knees. The door gave a loud creak and Addison couldn't help the sniffle that escaped her. A hiccoughing cry, and a hole in her belly that had not been there hours before.

She held her belly tightly as she lingered halfway out of the closet. Addison wondered if Lala would ever find her. Wondered if Lala would know where to look. Her face scrunched up tight and her belly hurt. Addison didn't feel very good at all.

"Mija?" Lala called out and Addison heard the click of her shoes on the linoleum as they made their way from the kitchen into the hall.

A noise escaped Addison that she didn't want to make, and Lala's steps got faster, louder as her grandmother hurried down the hall to the source of the noise.

The flip of a switch and little Addison flinched from the bright light that shone down over Lala's bed. And then her grandmother was there.

Lala's hair was done up in a neat bun. She always wore her hair up on her head, and Addison would recall much later that she spent that evening running a nervous hand over the smooth expanse of Lala's hair, over and over again as her grandmother cooed and rocked her and watched the clock with haunted eyes.

But for now, Lala dropped her purse and rushed for Addison. Her eyes were piercing and knowing, and Addison had never felt so seen. She hadn't thought Lala would find her, but she did. And she saw Addison. And the relief and terror and that horrible spinning feeling in her belly all bubbled up inside of Addison's little body and poured out in great gasping sobs, hiccoughs and mumbled words about momma and ice cream and the bad man at the door.

Lala had rocked her and asked her what on earth she had been doing in that deep dark place. What on earth was she doing here all alone? Where on earth was her mother?

And Addison cried while Lala called the police.

And she held tightly to Lala when those men banged at the door too. And sat, catatonic, while they took Lala's report.

And sat quiet and still, thinking about her momma and ice cream, with her face pressed into Lala's chest. She breathed with Lala and held tightly to Lala and much, much later, would sleep fitfully next to Lala in her bed. All the while running her hand over and over again through her grandmother's smooth hair.

Addison hadn't remembered that moment until now, as she sat in the entry of La Ithuriana with a strange woman hovering over her and Gallowglass kissing her bloody hands.

She hadn't remembered that moment until a shadowy figure passed through La Ithuriana's busted doorway. Hadn't remembered until that shadow came into focus, brushed the woman out of the way and knelt over her with the same urgency, the same concern, the same warm comforting eyes full of a knowing that Addison had so desperately craved.

Fernando reached for her, and Addison reached back. She clung to him like a child, but this time she didn't cry.

---

Addison stared at her reflection in the tiny mirror she always kept on her person. Stared but did not see herself. Or, at the very least, could not seem to focus her mind on whatever it was her eyes could see.

She pressed her lips together. Watching the girl in the mirror reflect the action back at her, a lethargic mimicry of the real thing.

She snapped the mirror shut. Stared off into space. Sniffed her nose and tried to work her mind around the odd feeling in her chest.

Yesterday was a blur.

Addison couldn't feel her face.

She flipped the mirror open again. As though to confirm that the face that once belonged to her was still there.

It was.

It was exactly the same.

Addison didn't frown, but she felt in some small way that she wanted to. She didn't frown because she was very tired, and frowning seemed a monumental endeavor.

Nothing had changed.

Her eyes were still the same dull brown they'd always been. Her lips were the same too. Her eyebrows had grown out substantially during her time in the Middle Ages and her cheeks were no longer sallow though they did seem impossibly pale.

She was still sat there, staring blankly at herself in the mirror, when the door to her chambers pushed open in a soft, barely-there whisper.

She snapped the mirror closed and turned to the door and the person who entered.

Jacqueline.

Addison startled a bit at the sight of her.

She didn't think she'd seen the blonde in nearly a week. Not since they'd paid their respects to her father. She looked exactly the same too, Addison noted. She wondered if her friend was too tired to frown like she was.

Jacqueline wore her hair gathered back and covered by a modest white linen scarf. She wore a white dress too, unlike her usual grey. And though Addison had been told it was a sign of a person in mourning, she couldn't help but think the other girl looked lovely either way.

Addison regarded her. Jacqueline regarded her as well. Both girls silent. Both girls, to all the world, exactly the same as they had been the week before. Their greeting was silent. Their tired eyes did most of the work.

It was Addison who caved first, of course.

"I never got the chance to tell you how sorry I was."

Jacqueline held up a polite hand of dismissal, waving her words away. "Do not apologize for the actions of that man, my lady."

Her voice was huskier than it had been. Like her vocal cords had long been out of use. Addison nodded her understanding and stood.

Fidgeting with the fabric of her dressing gown, eyes flickering from Jacqueline to the walls to the floor to the windows and then back to Jacqueline.

"How do you fare, my lady?" the maid asked.

Addison frowned and turned the mirror over in her hand. One. Two. Three times. She ran her thumb over the smooth surface – over the swallow and the set of golden scales.

Still Addison couldn't seem to frown. She couldn't smile. She didn't want to, but it was the oddest thing in the world to be robbed of the ability. Unwilling to smile, unable to frown.

She stared at Jacqueline, unsure how to answer. She stared at her for a long while, and Jacqueline who was older and wiser and more accustomed to grief than she, waited patiently for Addison to respond.

How do you fare, my lady?

She couldn't even tell you how many people had asked her that. She couldn't even begin to count how many times that question had been posed. How many times she had stared at the person asking, fingers deftly turning her little mirror over and over, unable to find an answer that would suit a stranger's ears.

Unable to find an answer that would suit anyone's ears.

Only those who knew her most had known not to ask her such a thing.

And then there was Jacqueline.

Jacqueline was more than a stranger. She was more than a father who was struggling to let her grieve. She was more than the man she loved who had not known what to say in the face of her terror.

Jacqueline was Addison's closest friend.

That meant something.

She clicked the mirror open once again and closed it without looking down to catch her own reflection in the eye.

"I am alive," she said.

Jacqueline studied her with shrewd eyes before offering her a sharp nod of understanding.

"Yes," she said. "So, we both seem to be."

"Yes," Addison agreed.

"Shall we ready you for your day, my lady?" Jacqueline asked, before stepping more firmly into the room, shedding herself of some inner demon. No longer allowing her grief to cloak her as she set about her own blessed routine.

Addison couldn't fault her for that. If only she had someone she could dress. If only she had a room to clean.

"Yes," Addison supplied. "Thank you..." And then, "I suppose you heard about..."

"Yes," Jacqueline said when Addison could not say Cordelia's name. "Poor girl."

Though Jacqueline's voice held very little sympathy for the girl in question, Addison still felt herself flinch. She turned the mirror in her hand. Flipped it open. Flipped it closed.

"I just wanted to help her. I just wanted—"

A gentle hand came to rest over Addison's, resolutely stilling the mirror mid-turn, keeping it firmly closed. Jacqueline's eyes were calm. They were steady. They were impossibly kind.

"You are alive."

Addison hesitated.

"Yes," she said.

But her voice was hoarse now too. Husky like it had been ages since it had last been used.

"That is good," Jacqueline said, and her voice was steel.

Addison envied her that surety. Addison envied her that strength. She eventually gave the maid a reluctant nod.

"That is good," Jacqueline said again. "You are alive and that is good."

Addison felt something in her shake. Something in her tighten and burn, and her skin began to crawl. It crawled with the urge to turn that little mirror over in her hands. To turn it over and over again. To open it and check that her face was still hers.

She couldn't feel it anymore. She couldn't feel it, but she knew what she would find. A face that hadn't changed. Two eyes that were exactly the same. A mouth that could not frown.

Nothing had changed.

She turned away from Jacqueline, even as her friend released her. She turned from the maid to the mirror that hung over her vanity. Turned to stare at the woman who was reflected back at her.

You are alive and that is good, and she didn't know if it was her reflection or the voice in the back of her mind who spoke the words. She supposed it didn't matter in the end, because Addison couldn't truly say that she believed them either way.

All she had wanted was to survive. That's it. Addison had wanted to survive and help Cordelia survive. That's it. She clenched her teeth hard as she stared at that stupid vanity mirror, fist wrapped tight around another mirror she couldn't bring herself to open right now. She wouldn't take her actions back and yet... the other girl had died.

Cordelia had died.

Addison killed her.

That's it. That's all that matters in the end. What she wanted no longer mattered. All Addison had left was the thing that she did.

You are alive. That is good.

She turned from the vanity. Turned from her maid.

She turned the mirror over in her hands. Flipped it open. Refused to look. Flipped it closed. She ran her thumb over the swallow perched on a set of perfectly balanced scales and then she allowed Jacqueline to dress her. And then went on with her day as though nothing had changed.

---

"You asked me once what I would choose," Eric said.

Hugh looked up from the fire to study his son. Eric met his eyes.

"Between saving Fernanda and ending Benjamin's—"

"Yes, I remember," his father said.

"I chose her."

"Yes, you did."

"I will always choose her."

"I know."

"I will never regret that."

"You would not be my son if you did."

Hugh fixed him with a grim smile. A smile that spoke of true understanding. Eric regarded his father first in disbelief and then with an air of exasperation.

Eric had chosen his mate over his duty to the de Clermont. He had chosen his love. He had deliberately let his family's collective shame run free. All for her.

They had not caught Benjamin. Eric had squandered the best chance he had. And yet—

Eric shook his head, regarding his father in a bleak kind of wonder, a pessimistic sort of awe. He had chosen his mate.

He let out a disbelieving laugh as it all clicked into place. He was his father's son, and Hugh... well, Hugh was too. For fuck's sake. This wasn't Eric's fault. This wasn't Hugh's. It wasn't even Matthew's. He laughed and Hugh regarded him with a dark look and an equally dark chuckle.

Philippe had chosen Ysabeau too. Because Philippe had chosen Ysabeau and she had sired Matthew. Matthew had made a vile mistake that he would never fully own and would never be forced to... because like Eric had chosen his mate, and Hugh had chosen his, Philippe had done the exact same thing.

And if that didn't just—

Eric bared his teeth at the fire across the room. Felt a brief, hot flash of rage in his chest. Resentment for his grandfather. And maybe a little bit for his father too. It built and built inside of him as he thought of the damage done for the sake of other men's desires. And then, he let it go. Because he understood those desires. He understood the lure and temptation of love. He understood what it was to find someone who meant more than honor. Who meant more than vengeance or the killing of one's own demons. He was complicit just the same as them.

Benjamin was free. And he'd chosen to save his mate over killing him. And he would never regret it. None of them would ever regret it.

And so, they were complicit in this collective shame.

They were interrupted from their conversation by Godfrey, who entered as though he had never been absent. He perched himself on his brother's desk and studied his nephew with eyes that reflected both light and shadow. There was a glimmer of perception there in his uncle that would have been unsettling if Eric himself did not possess that same quality when acting in the capacity of the de Clermont.

Eric understood.

Hugh eyed his brother with a dark look of his own, before sighing and moving away from the hearth. He reclaimed the seat behind his desk, kicked his feet up and stared at Godfrey contemplatively.

"Thank you for coming, brother," Hugh said.

Godfrey glanced back at Hugh, chin tucked into his shoulder as though he was guarding his throat, though his back had lost some of the rigidity it carried when he first arrived.

"How could I refuse?" Godfrey asked.

Hugh nodded, neither hurt nor touched by the comment, and looked away, accepting the sentiment for the thing that it was. There had been no way for his brother to refuse. Hugh knew this when he wrote to him, and though his words had humbly expressed doubt, everyone in the room knew that Godfrey had no choice but to tip into his brother's hand.

"The girl—"

"Fernanda," Eric said, his voice terse.

Godfrey's eyes darted to him, and his uncle watched him with piercing awareness.

"Yes," he said. "Fernanda... Tell me of her."

Eric's spine straightened of its own accord, skin itching with displeasure at his uncle's tone, the look in his eye and his sudden appearance on the mountain. He turned to his father who stared at his desk and refused to meet his gaze. Willed Hugh to look up at him and tell him why on earth Godfrey had arrived here on the mountain, but Hugh did not look up and Eric didn't need him to. He already knew.

Hugh had called on Godfrey. Hugh had told Godfrey of Eric's mate. Hugh who had once presented his newborn son to Philippe, knowing full well that he could have been ordered to kill him, had called on the de Clermont to investigate Eric's mate.

Eric's lip curled and he turned from his father, chest hot, fingers curling around the back of the nearest chair. None were surprised when the ornate wood cracked and splintered in his grip. He turned back to Godfrey who watched him impassively.

"There is nothing to tell—" Eric started, but Godfrey was quick to cut in.

"Nothing?" His uncle asked.

"Nothing—" Eric said again, but he had known from the start that the conversation was not his to control. He had been taken at a disadvantage, and the de Clermont held the board. Godfrey held the board.

"She's a time spinner is she not?"

"She's no witch—"

"How can you be sure?"

"Two seconds in her presence is to know the truth—"

"She could have deceived you—"

"Don't be absurd!"

Eric fought the urge to pick up the chair and throw it, fought the urge to stalk the edges of the room like a beast in a cage. Had they not been through enough? Had she not been through enough? He turned instead back to his father, unwilling to believe Hugh had been false with the girl all through winter. Had he always suspected her of witchcraft? Of magic? Surely, he could not have been so false. Surely, he would have killed her if he suspected her of lies. Surely, he would have—

Eric shook his head.

"Father, tell me you do not suspect her of treachery."

Hugh finally looked up at his son's stricken expression, the betrayal in his eyes, and the panic. He sighed, pressed his fingers to his temples and shook his head.

"No," he said. "I do not."

"Then why?" Eric asked.

Godfrey cleared his throat and drew attention back to him. He reached into a hidden pocket and produced a folded letter. He unfolded it now. Glancing over the words there, before looking up at his brother and arching an eyebrow.

"May I?"

Eric's eyes darted back and forth between the two, on guard and desperate to not be caught between their sharp minds. Eager to be keen enough to evade deception.

Hugh nodded a sharp, quick nod and turned to stare not at his son, but at the flame that flickered in the hearth across the room.

Godfrey cleared his throat, glanced over the parchment at his nephew, who watched him like a lion eyed its prey. He grinned at the sight of the boy now.

Good, he thought.

He liked to see a de Clermont with a little fight left in them.

"Alright let's see... Brother...yes, I suppose it's best to just read from the beginning then, shall we?"

Godfrey looked up at the two, glancing eagerly between father and son. Eric narrowed his eyes. Hugh rolled his and waved a dismissive hand for the other man to continue.

"On with it, Godfrey," Came the eldest de Clermont's long-suffering reply.

Godfrey grinned.

"Right then," he said. "In your father's own hand, it reads—"

---

Eric turned Hugh's letter over in his hands. Godfrey watched him do it with keen eyes. Hugh had a goblet of wine in hand, as he regarded middle distance like a long-lost friend.

Eric's eyes flickered down again to the parchment. To his father's handwriting. To the reason behind his uncle's presence here this spring.

In absence of all reason, I am confronted with a situation beyond the realm of my own capable belief and understanding.

Fernanda's situation was beyond belief and understanding. This Eric knew, but that did not make her a witch. It did not make her dangerous.

A figure from Eric's past — a young woman thought long deceased — has appeared to us once again. Though I sense the undeniable signature of magic at work in the air around my home, she is undoubtedly a non-magical being.

"Right then, shall we meet her now or...?" Godfrey asked in a flippant manner that did nothing to assuage the dread that had opened up in Eric's chest.

He felt that old familiar tether give an anxious tug, and he was reminded of another time in another place when he had been too late. When he had not taken her away from danger in time to save her. They could have lived out their lives happily and died together of old age.

Or, the voice in the back of his mind supplied, you would have died in ignorance of the truth of her, and she would have died lost in a world that she'd never been intended to live in.

Eric shook himself and resisted the urge to crumple the letter in his fist. Godfrey, seeing this, casually plucked the parchment from his hand and carefully folded it once again. Returning it to his pocket without fanfare.

Eric did not need to see the letter though to know the words by memory. This was not a betrayal, not really. His father had been concerned. For their family. For Eric, himself. For the sanctity of the invisible hand. Hugh had acted with reason, and fairness. He had been reserved and collected and circumspect. He had gone to Godfrey, by far the fairest minded and most rational of all of Hugh's siblings. He had begged subtlety.

This was not a betrayal, Eric told himself again. It was not a betrayal, but it felt like one all the same.

In my hour of need, there is no other I could think to call on to assess the soundness of my mind and senses. I do not believe there to be darker forces at work here, but that alone gives me pause. It begs the question.

Surely questions could have waited. Surely there was little else to establish. She was the horrible victim of time, as they all were in their own way.

That was all.

Fernanda was no danger to the de Clermont. Fernanda was surely no more dangerous to the de Clermont than many de Clermonts were themselves. For Christ's sake, they had just fought a war against Benjamin this very winter. Matthew's shame had descended on the mountain and nearly ruined them all. They had taken down a blood rage colony with a direct link to Matthew's tainted bloodline. A bloodline Matthew himself had failed to end. That Philippe himself could count among his own greatest failures. That was by far the more dangerous thing to the de Clermont than the woman Eric loved.

Eric snarled at the thought. At the injustice. At the oversight and hypocrisy.

Two sets of eyes snapped to his, and Eric gave way to his agitation.

He paced the length of the room while his father and uncle watched him keenly for signs of rebellion. Eric could practically feel his father's teeth sinking into his neck like they had when he was young and untried. Like they had when he was defensive and two paces away from self-annihilation at every turn.

They watched him. And Eric let them watch, as he stalked the length of the room and urged the beast inside of him back into its cage.

Fernanda had been through enough.

His mate, Fernanda... Malvina... his Malvina had been through far too much.

He could take her away. He could take her away from here.

I fear that my son — your nephew — may suffer a tragedy beyond the likes of which he could ever recover.

His father had confirmed it himself.

In his own words. In his own pen. And Godfrey reaffirmed it when he spoke those words aloud. Godfrey had reaffirmed it as he regarded Eric with that same wary resoluteness that he had watched him with when he was young and untried. The same dark resignation he'd had when he had witnessed the boy bowed before Philippe and his dark cloaked kin, unknowingly awaiting a fate that had not yet been decided.

Eric had faced this judgement before. This de Clermont measure of make and matter. The final judgement before the end of your life as you knew it. Whether you lived or died, your life ended just the same.

To be prince or exile. To be welcomed or cast out forever. To be embraced or assassinated.

Godfrey had the same look in his eyes now as he waited to meet Fernanda. Eric's mate. His love. His Malvina. She was not for Godfrey to judge. And yet—

Eric regarded his uncle.

Godfrey was of the same neutrality, the same coldness, the same resolution.

And there was nothing Eric could do. He turned his eyes back to his father, and his father watched him with a tender and pained look in his eyes.

His father knew this pain. His father knew intimately how this felt.

Had Hugh once presented Fernando to Philippe under similar circumstances? A complicated love who had been through too much. A love that required faith and mercy. A love that required the suspension of all disbelief. Of all prejudice. Of all—

The girl is significant.

She was more than significant. She was everything. She deserved better than this. Who was Godfrey to determine anything about her? Not when Eric's heart beat for her. Not when the blood in his veins flowed for her. Not when she was everything he wanted in the world. Not when she was the one he swore to keep safe against all who came against her.

Had he not just sworn to level Benjamin for moving against her? And now here was Godfrey, and Eric—Eric did not know what to read in his uncle's eyes. But the part of him that failed his mate once, urged him not to fail her again.

If her character is true, she is most assuredly the victim of the most nefarious malediction. If she is false, and I in all my centuries of knowledge cannot sense her deception for what it is, then the entirety of our bloodline is most certainly in danger.

"She has been through enough—" Eric said finally.

His voice was hoarse, his body buzzed with the desire to move and move quickly. To subdue any threat. To end this interrogation before it started.

Is this how Hugh had felt when he presented Eric to Philippe? If Philippe had ordered Hugh to kill Eric, what would his father have done, truly? Would he have obeyed?

Eric would never know. Hugh would never say.

He would not, surely, have brought Eric to his father if he had not planned to obey with the order to kill him. It would have been suicide to disobey. Or perhaps... had he only brought Eric to his father because he knew Philippe would not issue such a command?

What had compelled his father to present Eric to the de Clermont that day fifty years ago? What had compelled him? What had he been thinking?

What was he thinking now?

The predicament I present you with is a delicate one, and I do not take my request lightly, but I find myself compelled once again to beg. Please, Godfrey, come at once.

Eric stopped pacing and turned once again to face the father who had watched him process this new uncomfortable predicament with steady eyes.

Hugh was unwavering.

He had always been so.

Eric often wondered at the man who had sired him. Often puzzled over who he was. Eric had sworn once that he wished to live up to his father, in every way, but did he really know what it was he was hoping to live up to?

He shook his head and repeated himself, quietly. This time he spoke only to Hugh.

"She's been through enough."

Hugh did not avert his gaze. Godfrey sighed and stood from his perch on his brother's desk.

"That may well be the case, nephew—"

"But?"

Eric turned to Godfrey, unable to hold his father's unshakable gaze for long. He couldn't hide the bitterness that dripped from him now.

"For the sake of the family," Godfrey said, his voice slow and appeasing for once. "I wish only to meet the girl. I wish only to determine if some greater force is at work here."

"A greater force like magic?" Eric spat his question at his uncle's feet.

"Yes," Godfrey said. "Yes. A greater force like magic."

"She is not a witch."

"So, you have said. Many times, now."

"And yet you do not believe—"

"I simply wish to delay any assumption on the matter until I meet her, Eric. That is all. I will not tear at her throat on first sighting—"

Eric snarled and jolted toward his uncle, but Hugh was up and out of his seat before his son could move. A strong hand to his throat, a hard look in his eyes, and a sneer curled his lips.

Eric met his father with a hard glare of his own. Hugh didn't break his gaze and Eric refused to waver. When his father spoke, it was not in rebuke of his son, but of his brother.

"Have some respect for my son, Godfrey," he said. "The girl only just escaped Benjamin's blood rage yesterday. It is too soon for such talk—"

"It will always be too soon for such talk," Eric sneered, and Hugh must have seen some of the darkness leave his eyes for his father nodded and released him.

Backing away, he kept himself carefully situated between his brother and his son as a precaution.

Godfrey had the grace to look mildly chastised. When he met Eric's eyes over Hugh's shoulder, his lips tilted into a regretful frown.

"I did not mean to offend, Eric."

The youngest de Clermont nodded at his uncle. Still tense, but deflating.

"I only meant that it would be prudent to meet her before I determined my opinion. I promise, I pose no threat to anyone who is not a threat to my family—"

"She is no threat to this family—" Eric insisted. Godfrey smiled and let out a soft laugh.

"So, you have said."

Eric rankled at his uncle's refusal to accept his words, but Godfrey held up his hands in a peaceable manner.

"I do not wish to argue, Eric," he said. "I give you my word. I see no immediate reason to cause any harm. What I saw yesterday was a non-magical warm-blooded girl. What I observed in my short time in her company only served to affirm your belief and that of my brother's. But the fact remains, until I meet her and determine for myself, my faith will remain suspended—"

They were interrupted this time by the sound of footsteps on the stairs, the swish of fabric as Fernanda's gown brushed the ground, and the thrum of her breath and blood as it pulsed through her body and under her delicate skin. She was with Fernando, who spoke quietly to her as he guided her to the study where the three de Clermonts had gathered.

He was warning her. Of whom she was to meet. Of the importance of a good impression. Eric grimaced, he wondered how conscious she was of her own lack of privacy. In this life, she was forever bound to be the last to know and the most observed as she was learning.

He eyed Godfrey suspiciously and placed himself near the door, a living wall between his mate and his uncle, and... Eric glanced at Hugh and looked away just as quickly... and his father too if need be.

He would not make the same mistake twice.

The door opened. He could feel the dark look Fernando fixed on his back, and the subtle way Hugh's mate made space for Eric's displeasure.

Fernanda was behind him now, and he turned to look down at her. Wide owl-like eyes regarded him alight with nervous energy, and he offered her the most genuine smile he could muster, all the while keeping his body squarely between hers and his uncle's.

"Gallowglass," she murmured, barely louder than a whisper.

And her shoulders sagged, relieved in his presence, one hand coming up to curl nervously in his sleeve. He looked from her to Fernando who had turned from their exchange to regard Godfrey with the same wariness Eric had seen once before.

Fifty years ago, when the Gonçalves had walked darkly to almost certain death, with a dagger hidden from view and a mistrust for the de Clermont that astounded Eric at the time but had grown on him in clarity. Fernando had been protecting him.

If there was no certainty as to what his own father would have done on Philippe's command, Eric was startled to realize now that he had not the same doubt when it came to Fernando. He'd known from the start.

The Gonçalves would have died for him that day. His father's mate would have bloodied the whole damn world for Eric and Hugh. And Fernando stood now at his daughter's back, regarding Godfrey with that same dark resolution.

And Eric understood now too, the significance of one small decision made by Hugh. His father had taken Fernanda, cared for her, given her a name and a home and food to eat, and then as soon as his mate had walked through the door, he had passed her quickly off to Fernando. He had given her to the one person in all the world who would tell that world to go to hell if it meant saving her. He had given her to the only person in the world who could trump the de Clermont, in Hugh's eyes.

Hugh had defied Philippe for Fernando. No one else. Hugh had chosen his mate over all else in the world. And his mate chose now to protect Fernanda.

And something in Eric unwound at that realization. He felt himself sag into this knowledge. The urge to flee, deflating back into a state of mild displeasure.

Godfrey held Fernando's gaze for a long while before he dared direct his attention down to the young human who clung to Eric and stared at his uncle like he was a harbinger of death.

---

"Fernando," Addison called from her place by the window.

They were in his study. She was watching the comings and goings of the servants and tradesmen in the courtyard. Eyes caught on a stableboy and a young, clumsy looking foal as they traversed the cobblestone paths toward the paddock.

Fernando was at his desk, staring darkly at the surface as he considered how best to proceed. Godfrey was here. Godfrey was here and with him he brought a world Fernando was not yet ready to bring his daughter into. Godfrey was here, and now there was nothing left to do but allow the de Clermont and his daughter their inevitable meeting. He turned a small pen knife over in his hands, caught up in contemplation of his options.

She called his name again and startled him out of his reverie.

"Yes?" He asked, though a bit delayed.

"I don't think I understand your role in all of this," she said.

He looked up at her and tilted his head. "My role?"

She nodded and looked back out the window. The foal had survived its ordeal of the moment and was happily munching on a patch of grass in the safety of its well fenced enclosure.

"I mean... I know you're the steward of the land, here. And I know that, as your daughter, I have these keys—" and she held up the set of keys she kept fastened to her waist day in and day out. "I know that you still make most of the household decisions with Señora de Medina, even though I'm supposed to... but I guess I don't really understand what any of it... means."

She grimaced and toyed with the key to the food stores, pressing the cold metal roughly into the pad of her thumb, before releasing and repeating the gesture.

"Well," Fernando cleared his throat and regarded her contemplatively. "We steward the land and the people—"

"But what does that mean—" she interrupted, turning to look at him in exasperation.

He arched an eyebrow and she flushed and fell silent. Looking, for the moment, at least a little chastised for her interruption.

"It means," he stood and made his way over to her where she was perched over the land below. "That we ensure the ebb and flow of life here. Take that stableboy there—"

He pointed to the boy leaning over the fence post, watching the little foal munch on a patch of wildflowers and weeds.

"That boy was born to a family of eight children who lost their farm to a bad crop, but when the family determined to leave for greener pastures, they chose not to take their daughters or their youngest son. They had not the resources to care for him. Or for his two sisters. And so his father brought him here. As the steward of this land, it is my duty to give the boy a purpose, a role."

"That's horrible," she murmured, but Addison wasn't surprised. Not really. She had suffered the same fate once, at the hands of Ailios, who had left her with the servants of Castle Sween.

"Perhaps," Fernando said. "But life is not for the faint of heart, Fernanda. There are some who would have turned the boy and his sisters away. It is not the belief among all nobles alike that the peasants and common folk are worth even a passing glance, but..."

Fernando glanced down at her and shrugged. "I have lived long enough to know that people are people. They live, and they die, and some live a while longer than others. Some find it harder to die. None are better off for it one way or the other. As the steward of the land, I have the ability to decide. As my daughter, you are afforded that same privilege."

"Decide what?"

"How people will exist in the world," came his solemn reply. "Whether they will suffer or thrive."

"No one should have that kind of power," Fernanda said, her voice cautious as though she was uncertain how he would receive her judgement.

Fernando smiled. "There have been many moments in my life where I would have agreed."

"But you disagree now?"

"No," he said.

"So... you agree?"

"No," he said again.

Addison frowned and studied him.

"I don't understand," she said after a beat.

"We cannot control what people will do, Fernanda," he said. "There was a time I resisted that, but I have long learned to let go of that which I cannot change."

"But what about free will—" she started and stopped at the odd look on his face.

He looked to her, at first sharply and then in deep consideration. "Where do you come from?"

Addison retreated from the question, uncertain as to what to say or how to answer.

"Far from here," she said.

"I know most places in the world. I doubt your answer will surprise me."

"You don't know this place," she said and wrapped her arms around herself. "I don't think I should say."

Fernando was quiet a moment before he nodded and accepted her secrets for what they were. She was entitled to them just the same as he.

"I cannot change the fact that humanity has organized itself in such a way, Fernanda. I cannot change that some men speak for God but have no faith. I cannot change that the faithful sometimes burn for heresy. Or that slaves are won in wars and claimed by the most violent among us. I cannot change that peasants are not noble, or that noblemen are not common. I can't change these things, cariña. No one can. This is simply the way for as long as the world allows. No single living person is capable of such vast reform, such sweeping influence. No one is capable of that, not even the de Clermont. And so I steward the land I am given, and I try to provide a good life for the people who come with it."

He watched her for her understanding, for her confusion, hoping a bit in vain that she would reveal more about the world she came from, though he dared not press. He dared not ask. Somehow, it felt as though to know these things in advance would violate something sacred about the order of the world.

"Our role is to mitigate the damage people will inevitably do," he said. "At least, that's the way I see it. And so does Hugh. We strive to be the mitigators, and sometimes we fall short, but we see ourselves as nothing less and nothing more."

She looked back out the window, to the foal who now grazed alone, the stableboy having returned to his work. A maid stopped at the well and hooked a bucket up to the rope that hung there. Addison's hands ached with the memory of wire handles that cut into her palms and the slosh of water on her slipper clad feet.

"Down the mountain," Fernando continued. "In other lands ruled by other lords and men of wealth – men of power – we have no say about what happens in those places, you and me. I cannot tell another high-born man how his money should be handled, or how the common folk should be treated. I can suggest; I can advise; I can press for what I think is fair, but I have no real power over what happens in those places."

Then he gestured to the ground beneath their feet, meeting her eyes with a sort of surety that Addison envied.

"But here – and in every other territory purchased by myself or gifted to me by kings or popes or other noble peoples – here I have the ability to influence life for the better. As my daughter, that rare privilege – that burden – is extended to you. You are an extension of my hand. Here we maintain wellbeing. As a parent would for a child, a steward does for his people. Like a parent, one can be cruel or kind. One can be fair or tyrannical—"

"But no man should have that kind of power over another. These people aren't your children. They are grown. They know their own minds – their own lives – far better than anyone else possibly can. It's not fair, Fernando."

"Perhaps," Fernando said, once again filing away her odd perspective for later review. "But that is beyond your power, cariña. You can plan for that kind of change. Hope for it. Work toward it. But in the here and now, you can only control how you react to the circumstances presented to you by the world you live in. Here, we determine whether or not the stable hands earn a wage and whether that wage is fair. Here we pay the maids and put a roof over their heads. Here we ensure that the men of the household treat those maids with dignity rather than with violence—"

He stopped at the sharp look in his daughter's eyes. The way they welled with unspoken emotion. Salt filled the air – a sign of tears that wouldn't fall– and she saw him with clearer eyes than she had moments before. She had learned something new about him. Something significant.

"The maids are safe here?" she asked.

Fernando stared. He stared and stared before very carefully stating a long-held truth of the de Clermont. Of the Gonçalves. Of this household and this land.

"We do not hold with rape, Fernanda."

She pressed her lips together and stared back, just as doubtful. Just as grave.

"You're certain?"

With her tone, and the hard look in her eyes, the young woman in front of him had practically aged into a crone. Everything in her shifted regarding the matter of the maids and the horrible violence the men of this world could inflict.

She aged before him now, and Fernando was not surprised. But he did not want to believe what shone so clearly before his eyes.

"I cannot control what people will do, Fernanda. People do horrible things every day that are beyond my power, but it is common knowledge among my people that such violence is not allowed. That such violence will be dealt with swiftly and accordingly the moment it comes to light. You will find this to be true in any household Gonçalves, or de Clermont."

Her nostrils flared as she studied him, grinding her teeth loudly as she worked her jaw. Eventually, she offered him a terse nod before looking away, back out the window to regard the foal. Perhaps dissatisfied that he could not promise more. Perhaps satisfied enough that she was among "the right sort." He did not know. And he did not need to. Perhaps, she'd tell him one day, if time allowed.

Fernando leaned on the wall by the window, watching the world pass them by, feeling for a brief moment that time had frozen for himself and his daughter. That for the first time since Hugh had foisted her upon him against his will, he could finally slow down and experience the world as though he was once again eternal. As though his fate had not been bound to this odd little mortal. As though time had not begun to wrap itself around her fragile lifespan in lieu of his own promised eternity.

"We do what we can, Fernanda," he said. "We all answer to the king of course, but as long as we pay the required tax, and we follow the rule of his law, he turns a blind eye to most other things. You and me, though... we have the power to work those laws to our people's advantage. Life may not be for the faint of heart, cariña, but we can do our best to give the faint hearted a fighting chance."

Addison looked down at her hands, at the keys she held now, and itched to pull out her pocket mirror and check that her face remained unchanged. Check that she was still there. She didn't feel much like she was. But a part of her lightened a bit to know Fernando was there. To know that Fernando saw the people who resided here as people who deserved lives worth living.

She didn't feel much like she was the right person for the job he laid out for her though. How could she be? She had killed a vicious little maid. Cordelia was dead, and Addison did that. She did that to her.

She clenched her fingers around the keys before loosening her grip and holding them out to her adoptive father.

"I don't think I should have these," she said.

Fernando stared down at the keys but didn't take them from her hands. His eyes flickered back up to hers, dark and knowing and somehow forgiving even though she hadn't confessed her crime. Did he know what she did?

If he did know, then he should be more than aware of why she was not up for the task at hand. She had killed the very person she was meant to protect. She tried to save Cordelia, and in doing so she had caused irreparable harm.

"Take them, please," she whispered.

But still Fernando did not take them. He just stared at her. Dark and forgiving, understanding and kind.

She shook them and they rattled, and Fernando sighed. He reached out, captured her hand in his own and folded her fingers more tightly around the keys.

"They are yours," he said.

"I don't want them."

"And still, they are yours to hold onto."

"They can't be."

"But they are."

"Please take them," her voice cracked, and face burned. Her eyes stung with bitter tears. Her tongue was thick with shame.

Still Fernando refused.

"I can help you, cariña. I can show you what to do with them, but those keys are for you. They are for you, and no one else."

"They belonged to you before you gave them to me. I don't want them. Take them," she said and felt her frustration rise when he only shook his head in response. "Fernando, please, I don't want them."

"I can't," he said. "They belong to the lady of the house."

"I'm not a fucking lady then," she said, and her voice rose, heart thudding hard in her chest in panic and displeasure.

The skin on her back crawled with the urge to leave this place. To run back to her room. To crawl under the covers and hide.

Her fingers itched to free themselves from these horrible keys and itched to grab a scrub brush instead. She itched to get down on her scar riddled knees and scrub every inch of this floor. To dust the mantle. To mend damaged upholstery. But she couldn't. She couldn't do any of that while she held these stupid keys.

This was wrong. It was all wrong. They got it wrong. She wasn't a lady. She couldn't be a lady.

"But you are," he said. "You are Lady Fernanda Gonçalves. You are my daughter. And only my daughter can hold the keys to La Ithuriana. There will never be another Lady Gonçalves, Fernanda. There is only you. I'm sorry, cariña."

"But I can't—" she started but he was already nodding his head.

"You can."

"I can't be responsible for these people—" she stood from her place by the window, brushed past him and pressed her hands to the place between her ribs as though to release the tightening pressure there. The keys rattled in her fist and her chest flooded with a deep burning resentment. She wanted to hurl the stupid keys across the room. Wanted them to chip the paint off the walls. Wanted them to shatter a vase or dent the coat of arms that sat in the corner. She wanted to hurl them out the window.

She wanted to – she wanted – Addison gasped around an invisible wound that gaped open inside of her. It was terminal. It had been inside of her for so long now. She was sure it would kill her in the end. If she looked down now, she'd see her insides there protruding out of her. Laid open and bare, for all the world to see, bound someday, inevitably, to fester.

Addison couldn't breathe.

And still she held those stupid fucking keys.

"Cariña—"

"I don't want them—" she said. "I don't want them. I can't do what your asking—"

"You can."

"I can't be that person—"

"You already are, Fernanda."

"No," she said.

Adamant. Fervent in her belief that he was wrong. That what had been decided could easily be undone. But that was not the way of things. That was not the way. One could not simply choose to unwind the clock, to go back and undo what they wish could be undone. There was only forward. There could only ever be the path forward. Fernando knew this. He had lived a very long life. But Fernanda was very young. And her way forward seems to have diverted her somehow into the past.

"Fernanda—" he started but she shook her head and made a small noise.

A wounded noise that reminded him of an animal in the woods. And he had to force himself to stand steady in the face of it. She was not an animal he had wounded on the hunt. She was a child suffering from growing pains.

She had been through much. That was all.

He hadn't done anything to wound her.

He hadn't wounded her.

His fist curled in on itself as she let out another desperate, panicked sound. Her breath came too quickly. Her blood roared with the urge to flee. Fernando watched his daughter war with herself on the matter of her worth and her ability, and there was nothing he could do. There was nothing he could do but wait and watch and hope that one day she would see what he saw so clearly.

"I'm not that person, Fernando," she said and pressed her hands tightly to the space between her ribs as though she was holding something vital in. As though she was staunching the flow to a freshly bleeding wound.

He sighed and nodded though he disagreed. "Okay," he said. "That's okay. Why don't you tell me about the kind of person you are then?"

And then he found a comfortable chair and sat down. He sat and waited and watched her with patient eyes.

Addison felt her skin roll with the urge to go back to her room. Her hands itched with the urge to clean. And her chest twisted still with the overwhelming desire to cry, to hurl the keys at his stupid patient face. But he sat there, and waited, and asked her again to tell him who she was, and Addison felt her hands begin to itch a little less, felt her spine lose some of its rigidity. Her skin ceased its crawling and her mind turned from its desire to shatter a vase and scrub the floor to focus instead on what he asked of her.

Who was she? What kind of person had she been? What kind of person had she become?

How does anyone even begin to answer a question like that?

She shook her head at him. And she remembered the source of all of this. The root of the problem. Addison couldn't feel her face. And when she looked in the mirror, the image hadn't changed.

But nothing was the same.

Everything had changed.

She wasn't the same person anymore. Addison didn't know what kind of person she was.

She sniffed. Tried to clear her throat around the odd sensation that had lodged itself there. She unclenched her fists, released the keys, and let her fingers hang loose by her sides. She watched Fernando. Tired, very tired. Too tired to frown. And Fernando watched the keys hit the floor.

Addison fidgeted. Unsure of herself, she withdrew the little mirror Eric had given her. Ran her thumb over the golden swallow perched on a set of perfectly balanced scales. She turned it over in her hands.

Once, twice, three times.

She flipped it open.

Looked down at the girl trapped there in the glass for a long time, before she forced herself to snap it closed.

Fernando hadn't moved. He hadn't changed. His eyes were just as searching. Just as patient. He seemed entirely comfortable there, sitting in a finely crafted chair, beside a hearth with a fire that never died, frozen forever in space and time.

This was his world. The keys on the floor were the keys to his world. And he had handed them to her.

Addison deflated.

Her shoulders drooped of their own accord. Her face sagged with the weight of exhaustion. And her hands tingled with the memory of heavy buckets of water, metal wires that cut her skin, and the rattle of the keys she had dropped on the floor.

"I don't know what to say," she croaked.

Fernando frowned and nodded. Accepting her words for what they were.

"Okay," he said. "That's okay. Why don't you tell me one thing you do know about yourself then? Anything at all."

Addison wished she could frown. She stared back at him. Blank.

She was blank.

She couldn't remember.

She couldn't think straight.

There was nothing left, but the sound of Benjamin screaming Cordelia's name. She had killed a vicious little maid. She had killed one of the people Fernando now asked her to protect. She had killed a girl who had been the victim of a cruel world and a difficult life. And the role of a Gonçalves in this world was to mitigate those horrors. To mitigate them, not become them. She was meant to mitigate the death. The suffering. This family didn't hold with rape, how on earth could it hold with murder?

Her mind flashed to a pillow fort, and the top coming off. Her mother's worried face. And a dark closet for hiding. Raised voices and the slamming of a door. She turned her face away, trying in vain to put distance between herself and her memory.

"I—" Addison twisted her hands in the fabric of her dress. She clung to the place over her ribs. Clung to the fabric there that concealed an invisible wound.

"I killed her."

Fernando sat up straighter when finally, she spoke. Eyes alight with recognition. They were dark too, somehow, with something more.

Addison looked down at the keys and then back up at Fernando. She shook her head.

She shook her head and clenched her fists in the fabric of her dress and opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn't. She couldn't speak. The words wouldn't come.

What could she say?

Her eyes burned with the tears she couldn't bring herself to cry. And her face—she couldn't feel her face. She couldn't feel – she couldn't feel anything, and it hurt.

It hurt not to feel anything.

She had killed someone.

She had killed another maid.

She was a killer now.

And she couldn't feel anything. It hurt. And she didn't know what to do – she didn't know what to do – she didn't know what to do.

Addison didn't know when she started rambling, but Fernando was no longer sitting in the chair. He was no longer sitting but standing there in front of her with dark eyes that looked down at her and saw everything. Dark eyes that cut straight through her. They cut through her and laid everything bare. And she hated it. She hated it. She hated it. She had nowhere to hide from those eyes. Nowhere to hide from the truth they extracted so easily from her now.

She didn't know what to do.

And she hated it.

And she couldn't feel.

She couldn't feel. She couldn't—

He shushed her now and studied her as though she was more his daughter in this moment than she had ever been before, but Addison didn't understand, and she couldn't breathe.

And then he was holding her.

His arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders. He cradled the back of her head. Cradled her to his chest like she was a baby of nineteen months, not a girl of nineteen years, and she hated him. She hated him. She hated him. She pressed her face into his chest, and she hated him. Hated whatever he saw when he looked at her. Hated that he could see it. Hated that it was there. Her stomach twisted around her tears. And Addison couldn't feel her face, but her eyes stung, and her nose burned, and her lips trembled, and she hated.

She hated.

She didn't know who she was or who she bad been, but she did know that whoever that unchanged person was in the mirror... whoever that girl was... she was wrong. Entirely wrong.

Addison had become wrong.

And her spine once again curled in on itself, desperate for a place to hide. Her hands itched for a scrub brush, a bucket, a floor to clean so she could escape her hateful mind.

Why was he hugging her?

She shoved back to free herself from his embrace. He didn't budge.

Why— she gritted her teeth – why – she shoved – why was he hugging her?

She shoved, and he told her it was okay. She hated, and he squeezed her a little tighter. If she had done this to Ailios, the other woman would have slapped her across the face.

Why was he hugging her?

If she had done this to Ailios – if she had done this – if she had – Ailios was dead.

Ailios was dead. Addison... she had done that too.

Addison had left Ailios for dead.

And she— she didn't know what to do— she didn't want to. She hadn't meant to leave her. She never meant to leave. She didn't want to.

Addison struggled against Fernando, and she hated, and she hated, and she hadn't asked for any of this. Why wouldn't he just take the damn keys? Why couldn't he take the keys?

Cordelia was dead.

"I'm sorry," she whispered against his chest. Her nose was pressed hard into the fabric of his tunic. It was running with thick, disgusting snot but she didn't pull away. She just stayed there with her face pressed against his chest, nose running into the fabric. Tired and so full of hate. Her lips were chapped. They stuck to the fabric that was wet with tears she didn't remember crying, and hateful, disgusting snot.

She tried again to shove away from him, to wipe her eyes, to brush the tears away. To stop. To make it all stop. She tried, but Fernando held fast.

"I'm sorry." She said again, and he didn't say anything. Fernando just held her more tightly and rocked her back and forth like a baby. And Addison felt a fresh surge of tears. She gritted her teeth and her chest filled with hate and she shoved and shoved and shoved him, but Fernando was strong. Much stronger than her. If he felt the violence inside of her, he didn't flinch away.

"I'm sorry," she cried harder now.

Her voice strained under the weight of her hateful tears. Fernando hushed her and told her it was okay. She shook her head and tried again to shove away, but even her arms had turned against her, clinging tightly to him instead.

She clenched the back of his tunic with shaking hands – hands she had curled into angry fists. And she pressed her face into his chest so hard she couldn't breathe, and she released the most horrible, angry sound she'd ever made.

Ears ringing with another sound. One she'd never forget. The sound that came before the silence. The sickening crunch that preceded Benjamin's horrible screams. The light had filtered through the leaves in the trees. The sky had been the most pleasant shade of blue. And then came the cry of Cordelia's name.

She'd never forget the way he cried Cordelia's name.

It had been a terrible sound that followed her home from the clearing. It followed her home and clung to her still. It clung to her skin. And her clothes. It rung in her ears and cloaked her memories. She couldn't feel her face. And then again, she heard the cry of Cordelia's name. Like Benjamin was just behind her. Like, if she turned around now, she would see that heap on the rocks. See the heap laying there in the place where she almost died.

It wouldn't go away. It would never go away.

And now Addison was screaming. Screaming into Fernando's chest like a hateful, rageful baby and he hushed her and held her more tightly and told her it was okay. And then she sobbed and apologized again and again.

"I'm sorry," she said and held him tightly still even while she tried to shove him away. And Fernando told her it was okay. He told her it was okay, but Addison didn't believe him.

She didn't believe him. How could anyone believe him?

"I'm sorry," Addison said again and sobbed, and Fernando squeezed her tighter and pressed a kiss to the top of her head and told her it was okay, but it wasn't okay.

The sound of Cordelia's name. The sound of Cordelia's name, and the slamming of a door as her mother's voice began to fade. Addison shuddered and clung more tightly to Fernando now, giving way to hiccoughs and sniffles when her body became too tired to sob. Too tired to scream.

"I killed her—" she confessed again. "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"I know," he said and rocked her back and forth like the child she no longer was. "I know. It's okay, I know."

---

Fernando wished he could say that the first life you take from this world will leave you with time. That as the years – the centuries – pass, the memory of that first soul-splitting moment is bound to fade. That the memory of that moment that turned you from who you were into someone – something – entirely new would lose its potency, its terror, its significance over time.

But Fernando could not say that because, in his experience, he had not found it to be true.

He did not need to dig very deeply to recall that pivotal turning point in his own personal history. He did not need to search for the memory of the first person he had ever killed. He didn't need to dig or search because it was simply always there. Like the roof over his head, or the bed he shared with his mate, or the presence of his daughter in his life, it was simply always there and always would be. That first life he had ever taken from the world was embedded into the fabric of who he was and how he existed.

He had been human when it happened.

He had been young.

Fernando Gonçalves had always sworn he could not remember the time when he was a boy. Could not remember the time before he had been turned into the thing he is today. But, if asked, he could not deny that he would always remember the first time he had taken a life. He could not deny how that moment changed him.

And now his daughter had killed an orphan, a maid, who had gone and found herself a name. Cordelia.

She had killed the little maid who had run off with Benjamin. The little maid who had stolen her scarves. The little maid who had learned to hate the de Clermont family for the beasts that they sometimes were.

His daughter, who clung to him now and screamed into his chest, had taken a life just the day before. And Fernando was thrown back to another place and time when blood had covered his own hands for the first time. He was thrown by the visceral newness of it all through Fernanda. Thrown by yet another experience he was bound to suffer as he relearned the world through his daughter's eyes.

And his chest tore open when her apologies began to sound. Repeatedly, Fernanda apologized for an act she could not undo. No words of comfort would suffice. No words could heal this wound. It was destined simply to remain.

She would always carry it. If she was lucky, it would scar. If unlucky, it would open and reopen for years and years to come. Prone to bleeding and festering and all the horrible things that came with those things. If she was lucky, it would stitch itself together. Toughen up. Become impervious to pain. If she was lucky, she would learn to ignore it.

Fernanda was not a killer.

Fernando knew this without question.

The young girl who clung to him and apologized and confessed her sins over and over as though somehow the apologies would absolve her. The young girl who in every shove, in every attempt to break his hold, admitted to him and the rest of the world that she could not staunch the flow coming from this wound. The girl who clung to him and tried to push him away, and begged him quietly to liberate her from the rawness, the newness, the pain – this girl was not a killer.

And yet she had killed someone all the same.

If he could, he would spare her this moment. If he could, he would go back and intervene.

But there was only the path forward. The only way out was through.

And so, here they were.

He had fought to spare her. Had kept her in ignorance to keep her safe. He had done everything he could to shelter her from the world, and yet still somehow the world had come knocking. And Fernanda had met that world with force.

He would not say so out loud – not with her tears so fresh and her wounds so new – but his chest had inflated a bit with pride the day before when Eric had told him the horrible news. There had been plenty of grief, horror, fear, but he could not negate the pride he had for her as well, even as he feared the sensation of it all would kill him.

Hugh had once joked that Fernanda was not the meek little girl they thought they found in the fall. She was of a keen mind, and a quiet sort of strength. She was fragile, but not weak. Resilient in the face of adversity.

She did not take pleasure in her violence, the evidence of such a truth clung to him now. It was in every tear she had shed. It was soaked into the fabric of his tunic. It was in every apology she uttered as she begged her universe to absolve her of her sins. It was in the hatred in her voice, and the spiteful way she had dropped the keys to his household there at his feet.

No, she did not take pleasure in her violence, but she had done what she needed to do. And Fernando would never take exception to that.

He would never say it out loud – not to her. At the very least, not now. But he was very proud. Proud to call her his daughter, perhaps even especially now.

The young Fernanda was a survivor. She was a survivor. And Fernando admired this in anyone – admired it in the young and underestimated. He found her admirable, and he was proud of her astonishing will to live. Proud of the defiant way she so naturally fought for her own life. Proud, and yet also full of grief, that her strength and resiliency had been tested by the world in the most irreparable way.

She had done what she needed to do, and in survival she'd no choice but to give away a piece of her soul so that she could continue to live.

They stayed that way for what felt like hours, frozen in his study. Fernanda's sobs had turned to sniffles which then turned into the tired silence that often followed such displays.

And they let themselves be lulled by that tiredness for a while.

Fernando let them be lulled by the sleepy hum of her blood in her veins, and the pulse of her heart beating in her chest.

He had guided them to the sofa at some point during their exchange, and now she drifted through her thoughts and her silences as he held her, and he contemplated the passage of time.

Eric argued now with Godfrey in Hugh's study. This, Fernando could hear from across the house.

The young de Clermont put up a valiant fight, but with Godfrey and Hugh banded together there was little Eric or anyone else could do.

It was an ill-timed meeting, one that none of them could avoid, but Fernando couldn't bring himself to tell the girl who clung to him now. Couldn't bring himself to tell her that she had yet another trial to face. Another horror. Another harbinger of fear to conquer. There would be no way to comfort her in the face of de Clermont suspicion. And there was no way to explain that Godfrey would be just and reasonable, because even Fernando feared such would not be the case.

She had been through enough.

Eric spoke true.

And yet—

"Fernanda," he murmured and ran a comforting hand down the back of her head, trying in vain to smooth her wavy hair.

She sniffed and sat up quickly. Running a self-conscious hand over her tear-stained cheeks and puffy eyes.

She cleared her throat and refused to look at him.

"Sorry," she croaked for the millionth time that day.

He shook his head, reached out for her hand and accepted when she nervously moved away.

"There is no need to apologize."

She didn't appear to believe him. Fernando frowned.

"I'm sorry to say that I must ask one more thing of you, Fernanda."

She looked at him, waited for him to continue. She seemed unhappy about whatever would come next, but Fernando got the distinct impression she had forgotten how to frown. His lips turned down, as another flare of concern flashed through his chest.

She wasn't well.

She had been through enough, and he wanted so desperately now to take her away. There were other houses, other places they could go. She could overcome her experience of La Ithuriana far away from the de Clermont. Far away from all of this. He would take her. And she could remember how to frown again. And all would be better someday. He had that ability. They could disappear.

They could—

He sighed and shook his head.

Godfrey had made a comment in poor taste, Eric had not taken it well. And now as tensions rose and apologies were given between the de Clermonts across the manor, Fernando did not know how to tell her she was bound for more scrutiny.

Did not know how to tell her that she had no choice but to suffer the de Clermont along with the rest of them.

---

"You told me once, very recently, that you would rather have my honesty even if that honesty made you afraid of what was to come," Fernando said and Addison for all her exhaustion and embarrassment looked up at him in surprise.

She hadn't thought that speech would work. She had fully expected a temporary compromise followed by more of the same. More lies, more secrets, more civil disobedience.

But she had just had a full-on meltdown in Fernando's study. She could see the evidence of it still on his tunic – tear stains that had not dried. And the careful way he watched her, the reticence in his eyes, told her this situation was for him unsettling and new. Though she didn't know if his discomfort came from the honesty or her tears. Perhaps both.

Addison's belly gave an uncertain twist, and her mind jumped back to the closet in Lala's bedroom. The slamming of a door and the darkness as the light outside faded and left her alone. She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath, feeling her whole body inflate with air. She held the breath, cherishing that brief feeling of fullness until her lungs began to burn. Her chest throbbed with exertion. Her ribs ached and she let it go.

Heart pounding, she swallowed down her discomfort and looked back at the stricken Fernando.

"I did," she said.

He didn't appear convinced, eyebrows drawn together. Eyes full of skepticism. But he nodded all the same.

"I must be honest," he said. "I would spare you this moment as well as many others. I would not tell you if I had another way—"

She felt her lips purse a bit in displeasure at the admission. Chest puffed up and defensive as though preparing for yet another battle of the wills. But Fernando continued and Addison felt some of the fight leave her again. Her brain was quickly turning into goo, and she would be useless soon from fatigue and overstimulation.

"There is someone here who would like to meet you," he said. "You encountered him, briefly, yesterday if you remember."

Addison frowned and shook her head, twisting her hands together and picking at the skin around her nails. Fernando tracked the motion with his eyes and kept his face carefully blank. Addison thought this was far more telling an expression on her curmudgeonly keeper than if he had frowned. She had begun to see the practiced neutrality of the men around her as the ultimate tell that something was very wrong. But she couldn't stop her hands from the comforting way they picked at her skin, and Fernando didn't say anything, and he didn't frown, so Addison spoke instead.

"I don't— I don't remember much after..."

She trailed off and he nodded. It was a sharp, abrupt kind of nod that reminded her a bit of Jean Luc and Addison thought it quite odd to see that same quality in Fernando now. As though he was acting out of obligation and duty and very little else.

"Well," he said. "Hugh's... brother has arrived."

Addison's brow furrowed. Mind recalling her lessons with Bourgine de Prudhomme.

"Which one?" She asked.

Fernando cleared his throat. She watched his jaw tick. A dark look settled over his eyes.

"His name is Godfrey."

Godfrey. Addison knew this name.

Godfrey de Clermont. The youngest of Philippe de Clermont's blood born children. Of the combined offspring of Philippe and Ysabeau, he was younger than all of his siblings but for Lady Louisa who bore the de Clermont name by marriage.

Godfrey was blonde. He had cropped, curly hair and blue eyes. This was all she really knew about him. This and that she would have to curtsy to him until she was married – if she was married, that is – to Eric. Or so Prudhomme had once told her in passing.

She had studied his likeness in the hall of portraits under the watchful eyes of her terrible tutor. And she tried not to let her experience with Prudhomme color the way she viewed the man who came to meet her now. It wasn't his fault her tutor had been Satan's mistress. It wasn't his fault she'd been saddled with Prudhomme.

"Why?" She asked. "Why does he want to meet me? How does he even know I'm here?"

Fernando studied her with a contemplative frown. She worried her lip between her teeth and did not stop when it began to bleed. Fernando's frown deepened. He reached for a cloth and held it out to her.

"You're bleeding," he said.

She arched an eyebrow. "It's not a big deal."

"I beg to differ," he said and held the cloth out to her more adamantly. "If you would—"

Addison sighed and accepted the cloth, pressing it to her lip and staunching the superficial flow. Feeling her chest tighten a bit with the need to continue gnawing on the delicate skin of her lower lip.

Fernando nodded his approval at her obedience, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes.

"You will find," he began. "That the de Clermont always finds a way to know everything."

"Is this Godfrey specific information or...?"

Fernando huffed out a laugh and regarded her with an amused look. "No, cariña. It is not."

She nodded. No need to say anymore. It was an institutional matter then.

"He is here because well... the world we live in is a complicated one. One with laws that are very strict and very—"

"Laws?" she interrupted, lowering the cloth from her bleeding lip so she could draw it nervously back between her teeth.

Fernando followed the movement but said nothing this time. Instead leaning forward to massage his fingers into his temples and look her in the eye.

"Yes, Fernanda. There are human laws. And creature laws. And they do not always coexist."

"I don't understand."

"You know of our kind—"

"Vampires—"

He arched an eyebrow at her clarification that she met with a glare. He huffed out a tired laugh and nodded.

"Yes, child," he said. "Vampires. And you know of witches as well?"

"A little," she shrugged. "Just that Eric said they exist, and that Beatrix was one."

Fernando nodded.

"Well, there are also daemons—"

"Demons?" she asked, sitting up straighter in her seat. "Like... from hell?"

Fernando laughed and shook his head. "No, not from hell. From... well for the sake of simplicity for now we will say they are from Greece."

Addison cocked her head at this odd explanation and he could see her mind working double time. She opened her mouth to press for more but he spoke before she could start.

"Later, cariña, I promise I will explain them in better detail as best I can, but for now let us simply say that they exist and that they too are creatures. Like witches and manjasangs. Okay?"

"Okay," she said with a shrug.

"Well, one law in particular – it's a bit of a recent law – more strictly upheld in some circles than others... It states that witches and vampires... or witches and daemons... or vampires and daemons are not allowed to have relations."

"I don't understand."

"Well, that is to say that different creatures cannot be... more than acquaintances."

Addison drew back and stared hard at Fernando with a look of consternation on her face.

"That's horrible," she said.

He sighed and regarded her warily before borrowing one of her own turns of phrase.

"It is what it is, cariña."

She arched an eyebrow but let it go.

"So... what does that have to do with Hugh's brother wanting to meet me?"

Fernando pressed his lips together tightly and looked away. Addison stared at him, waiting.

"One thing you must understand, Fernanda, is that the de Clermont is a very powerful, very old institution—"

"Yes," she said and rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know."

And then in almost perfect imitation of Prudhomme's terrible voice she continued. "The de Clermont has long served as a pillar of balance and power for those of us who are members of the civilized world. It is an institution, built to stand the test of time. To be the de Clermont is to be the invisible hand that shapes the world. It is the crown of shadow, revered by all—"

She was interrupted by the bark of Fernando's laughter as he threw his head and closed his eyes in disbelief. Addison couldn't help but feel herself bubble up with laughter as well, so surprising was his own rare display of amusement.

He collected himself rather quickly and regarded her with an impressed look. Like he was seeing her in a newer light. He nodded to himself and fixed her with an almost relieved look before he continued.

"Well, I suppose if you learned anything in those lessons, that was a good one to hold onto."

She puffed her cheeks out awkwardly and fixed him with a wry little smile. "I suppose it was," she said. "Now why does he want to meet me? What does that law have to do with me?"

Fernando frowned and met her eyes.

"You're not from this time," he said.

"I am so aware of that, Fernando."

He let out a startled laugh and just as quickly composed himself again.

"The only people we know of in this world who are capable of such feats, Fernanda, are witches."

"Witches?" she asked, and her brow furrowed in confusion. "But I'm not—you can't be serious. Fernando I'm not a witch. I told Eric. I told you and Hugh. I haven't lied. I swear I'm not lying—"

"I know," he said. "I know you're not a witch. I also know that you're not lying. Vampires... we can smell when people lie."

Addison's eyes widened at that tidbit, and she filed it away for later, choosing instead to stay with the more pressing matter of Godfrey.

"Then why—"

"Because this is a very old and powerful family—"

"I don't understand—"

"They have to be certain—"

"Certain of what?"

"That you're not a witch—"

"But I'm not a witch. You just agreed with me—"

"But the de Clermont needs to be certain—"

"Then ask Hugh! He's the eldest. He's the heir. Shouldn't his opinion matter more than Godfrey's?"

"Not if he has been deceived. Not if he has been bewitched."

"But I didn't—" she cut herself off.

Her throat had constricted around a new terrible fear. Her eyes welled with frustrated tears and Addison didn't know if it was the situation or the exhaustion that caused the edges of her vision to blur but everything felt a little fuzzy. And warm. And the room seemed somehow to be shrinking. And Addison felt too big for her body. Too big for the space she was in.

"Fernando—" she said and stopped, shaking her head. Unable to form the words.

"Hey," he said gently, moving forward and tapping her chin. Tipping her face up to look at him. Catching her eyes with his.

"Hey," he said again. "Look at me. You are not a witch. You have deceived no one. Godfrey only needs to see that for himself."

And then Addison had a horrible realization.

A pit formed in her stomach, in the place where an old spool had always been. The spool of invisible thread that tied her somehow to the past, and to Gallowglass, and to the future too in some inexplicable way... it disappeared.

And she felt as though something in her had been blown open. That she was exposed somehow. That if she looked down, she would see a pit, a hole, gaping and gruesome right where her stomach had once been. Fernando was there, but for the first time in a long time she felt truly alone and confused. And the spool was gone. The spool was gone, and she clung to Fernando as he tried to call her attention back to him.

"But what if I am?" she asked, choking on the words and the foreign feeling in her gut.

Fernando's eyes flickered. He looked, for a moment confused. He shook his head and frowned down at her.

"What if you're what?" he asked.

Her chest had expanded in her panic. Her heart had lodged itself in her throat. And her hands trembled as they clung to him, nails digging into his wrists with the force of her terrified grip.

"What if I am a witch?" she asked him, and her voice did not sound like her own. "What if I'm wrong? What if I just didn't know—"

But Fernando was already shaking his head. He freed himself from her grip and took her hands in his own, smiling at her in a way that she did not wholly appreciate.

"You are letting your mind cloud your judgement, cariña," he said. "You know that you are not a witch. I know that you are not a witch. We must not panic. You know yourself."

"But I don't—" she insisted. "I don't know anything about—"

He cut her off before she could finish.

"You know more than you think," he said. "You have been through much these past few months. You have been through much in the last two days. Fernanda, you are human. You were human when you arrived here. You were human yesterday when you suffered a terrible event. You are human now as you sit before me. And you will be human later, long after you meet Godfrey. This, I promise you."

Her eyes welled with tears.

"But what if I'm not?" she asked and hated the way the words bubbled out of her, laced with all the emotions she was too tired to conceal.

"But what if you are?" he asked her with a small sad smile.

And Addison leaned over and pressed her face into her palms, and for the second time that day, allowed herself to cry.

---

"I'll be with you the entire time," he reminded her as they exited his study.

He kept his hand on her back, guiding her down the corridor toward the place where she was meant to officially introduce herself to the de Clermont. Addison worked her teeth together in an anxious grind and tried in vain to swallow back her fear. She sucked in a breath through her nose and held it too long. A gentle nudge from Fernando told her that she needed to exhale.

"Remember," he said. "You will enter. Eric and Hugh will be there as well. You will curtsy and then you will simply answer Godfrey's questions."

She sucked in another breath and nodded. Held the breath and exhaled when the edges of her vision got a little blurry. Her hands trembled and she buried them in her skirts, twisting the fabric in anxious fists. Addison willed her heart to stop beating so erratically.

"Peace, Fernanda," her father said. "You are safe. You are among family. I will be there the entire time."

It was like Hugh's door had gotten taller in her walk from Fernando's study to his.

Fernando had led her across the house, past loitering knights, bustling servants and everyone in between who parted for them as they made their way to Hugh's study.

They didn't knock. No one called for them on the other end.

Fernando opened the door as though he belonged there. And Addison wondered, not for the first time, what that kind of surety felt like. That kind of belonging – that self-possession – was so foreign to her.

She entered first.

She didn't want to, but she was given little choice. Two sets of eyes were already watching the door when it opened. Two sets of eyes were already fixed on the place where she stood, ready to meet her.

Godfrey and Hugh were facing the door. They'd been expecting her.

Fernando was at her back. A comforting presence, but a body blocking her only exit if she chose to flee. She didn't know if that by his design, but she doubted it. It probably hadn't occurred to him that a woman – or at least a... Fernanda – would think of it in such terms. He had been determined to view her as untried from the start, untested, innocent to the horrors of the world.

But Addison was not innocent, not naïve about these things. And she felt the barred doorway like she had felt another closed door once before. Almost a year ago – or fifty if you believed that kind of thing – she had entered a great hall, trailing Ailios into a future that was entirely a mystery. She had curtsied then too before Lord Suibnhe as she curtsied now before the de Clermont.

Last time, Addison had been given away. Just like that, she had been snapped up by the castle staff and locked in a room. And from that moment on, her life had irrevocably changed. Nothing would ever be the same.

Back then, she was clumsy. It was obvious that she had not spent much time lowering herself before important men. Now, she did it far more gracefully. Even if she took the liberty of clinging tightly to Eric's sleeve as she did.

That was another thing. Before, she had not known Sorley. Not really. Now, he was a wall between her and the inevitable. Now, he stood before her, and he only graced her with one passing glance before his gaze returned to the man across the room.

Addison peeked around Eric's shoulder, and begrudgingly he let her. The man in front of Hugh's desk was tall, but not as tall as Gallowglass or Hugh. He had blue eyes that were far bluer in person than they had been in the painting she had once seen of him.

And his hair was still cropped and curly and blonde.

All in all, he didn't seem so scary. But that was when he was looking at Fernando. She had to physically refrain from staggering back when he finally looked down at her.

Addison had never understood how power could take on a force of its own. She understood the concept of power, of course. She understood inequality. She understood abuses of power, to be sure. But she had never in her life been confronted with the presence of it. It, being the thing that power was – the almost physical entity.

The sheer immensity of power that radiated from Godfrey was astounding. It was like running face first into an iceberg. It was like being buried in an avalanche. Like her spine was being pressed by a boulder.

Addison faltered beneath Godfrey's piercing gaze, and Godfrey noticed.

One look at him was to know that he saw everything.

He saw it all in the way, she thought, that perhaps Hugh did too. And Addison realized that this was the youngest of Philippe's children. Godfrey was the youngest and, according to Fernando, the most reasonable. She decided then and there that the rest of them... she just... didn't want to meet.

Like stepping from a path of mud onto a road paved by stone, Addison was overcome by the same feeling of overwhelm. The same sense of change. The same shift of her life onto a bridge she had not wanted to cross, but that she had crossed anyway. She looked up at Godfrey and her mind supplied the looming shadow of a great monolithic castle, the ghost-like image of Ailios's back, and the great doors of Castle Sween that opened only once, only to keep her in.

Back then, she had stepped into a world that she wasn't able to leave. Malvina had been beholden to Ailios, to the little village at the edge of the woods and to Castle Sween itself.

Now, as she regarded the de Clermont, Addison wondered if this was not the very same thing. Wondered if this too would be an irrevocable path she had somehow stepped onto. Wondered if this too would change everything.

Godfrey stepped forward.

He was near chest to chest with Gallowglass who refused to move aside. And Addison felt the pressure of Fernando's hand at her back.

Eric wouldn't move. His choice had been made. Fernando had explained to her the importance of her impression on Godfrey. Regardless of anyone else, this moment was about her and the de Clermont.

No one could influence that, but her.

Her life – her change – was her own to shape as she wished.

And so, Godfrey had stepped forward, and Eric grounded himself before his uncle, determined to protect Addison from her fate. And Addison was content with that. She was more than willing to hide behind the hulking gall óglaigh. God knows, he preferred it that way. Who was she to rock the boat? Truly?

But even as she resigned herself to hiding forever behind Eric. Even as she contented herself to forever let him fight her battles for her as she had wanted once when she was Malvina, and perhaps as she wanted even yesterday before—before Cordelia... Addison felt something return to her. Something she thought she had lost just moments before in Fernando's study.

In the face of this new challenge – this new threat to the stable ground she never could quite seem to keep beneath her feet – a piece of herself that she thought she'd lost forever simply returned. A little spool of invisible thread, low in her belly, that anchored her to this world. To the twenty-first century. To Gallowglass. To herself. That little spool returned from the void she had lost it too. Returned just enough to spin. Addison pressed her hand to the place where it resided and felt suddenly clear headed, suddenly able to breathe.

It spun and spun and spun and Addison didn't know what overcame her, but she decided to do as she had done always before. She followed the thread.

Addison stepped around Eric.

Came to stand resolutely by his side.

She jutted her chin and held out her hand. She looked Godfrey directly in the eye. She refused to be cowed by his presence, and then she waited. She waited for his judgement. His move. Most importantly, she waited for him to remember his damn manners.

He was in her home. She was the lady of this house. And he would show her the respect she deserved; suspicions be damned.

In her periphery she saw Hugh's eyebrows lift into his hairline, and his head shift almost imperceptibly to the side, as he considered her from a new angle. This was fine.

Eric had frozen at first, frustrated that she had thwarted his efforts to shield her, before he too noticed her outstretched hand and turned to gawk at her in disbelief.

She paid him little mind. Eyes intent on Godfrey. Focus fixed on the de Clermont whose face had stretched wide into a sharp grin. His eyes were amused.

He didn't glance back at his nephew as he stepped closer and took her hand in his own. He offered her a swift, formal bow and pressed his lips to her knuckles in a whisper of a kiss. Then he drew himself again to his full height and stared down at her. He deliberately stretched the exchange to an uncomfortable length that spoke too of his power, and Addison's mind whispered to her that this was all part of the same game she was still learning how to play. Addison tried very hard not to flinch away from his imperious gaze.

"So, this is the young Fernanda," he said.

Addison arched an eyebrow and glanced back at Fernando who watched Godfrey like a hawk. She turned back to Hugh's brother, sucked in a deep breath that everyone in the room no doubt heard, and twisted her lips into a contemplative frown.

"I believe it's the young Lady Fernanda to you, sir."

Hugh barked out a laugh across the room and stood, making his way finally over to the group, patting his brother on the back and then taking Addison by the arm.

"Let us not crowd the entry, brother," he said and then to Addison. "Come sit with me by the fire."

---

Eric felt her step around him. Felt her draw herself up resolutely by his side. Sparing her a very quick glance of disbelief, he was struck suddenly by the vision of her. The sight she presented to him and to the rest of the world. Fifty years disappeared from his life in an instant and Eric felt he was no longer in Roncesvalles. He was no longer in his new familial home.

He was once again a young man, nearly thirty. A knight in a castle he was bound to serve. Tethered to the land and to the people in a way he had never been able to explain.

Instead of his father's study, Eric saw in his mind's eye a corridor, lit by flickering candlelight. A door that he used to call his own. And a little dark-haired lass who did not speak, but who had eyes of melted metal and a mind that could cut him down in every way if only he could figure out what on earth she was trying to say.

Fernanda held her hand out to Godfrey, a silent power play. Eric bit back a surprised laugh. Godfrey had forgotten his place. Fernanda was the lady of the household, this not even the de Clermont could take away.

Her eyes did not stray from his uncle's, but still Eric was captured in her thrall. Struck by the unassuming strength in her gaze.

Malvina, the fury.

And she did not even know it.

He shook his head and turned back to his uncle. Watching carefully for signs of treachery, but Godfrey made his way to Fernanda with an impressed grin and an intimidating gaze.

She had come to stand beside him.

Not behind him. Not before him. She had stopped herself by Eric's side and chose her fate. Met the de Clermont with an outstretched hand.

She was the same in so many ways as she had been once before. Fernanda and Malvina were, after all, one and the same. Fierce and suspicious. Bronze eyes sharp as a blade and her lips twisted almost imperceptibly into a calculated frown. Eric watched her mind turning around her new predicament and fell a little more in love.

"So this is the young Fernanda," Godfrey said as he rose from an exaggerated bow.

Her lips twisted a little further in thought, and Eric recalled a night long ago when he had startled her outside of his chambers. When she had jumped high in the air and turned to face him, to stare him down with her hackles raised.

He recalled in almost blistering detail her downcast eyes in the candlelight of the corridor, and the shadows that floated behind her like a dark halo cast straight from the underworld. His heart kicked painfully in his chest, and Eric wondered very briefly if he was not suffering in hell itself for his want to know her in more ways than he feared were possible.

He loved her. In this moment more than any moment before, as she twisted her lips and reminded Godfrey exactly who she was. Reminded his uncle exactly who she would be, perhaps without even knowing the extent of it herself. Eric felt something in him burst in wonder and elation when she said, finally.

"I believe it's the young Lady Fernanda to you, sir."

And Eric would have kissed her then and there if his father had not intervened.

Hugh guided her to the sofa by the hearth with a warm laugh and a call for the rest of their company to join him.

Eric flexed his hand by his side and resisted the urge to snarl at his father, to provoke his uncle and to steal Fernanda away. His father's mate passed him with a knowing pat on his shoulder that jarred him out of his thoughts of the past, and of his desire. He followed them to their seats, and hovered over them, content to stand until liquid metal eyes found his from across the room and she calmly patted the empty space next to her.

He couldn't say no. He'd never want to.

Eric went to her and lowered himself down close enough that his arm brushed hers. And he watched her now as she carefully considered Godfrey from her place between him and Hugh. Godfrey had perched himself lazily across from them, shrewd eyes taking in the foreign scene. Fernando had taken up a chair in between the two parties, a mediator's chair though Eric knew what side Fernando would choose.

"Tell me of yourself, my lady," came Godfrey's almost bored drawl.

Fernanda narrowed her eyes at his tone. She looked down at her lap and smoothed her skirts.

"I am not sure what to tell," she said.

Godfrey considered her before sitting up a little straighter and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"Anything at all," he said. "I will not judge."

This was a lie. Everyone knew it. Godfrey's sole purpose here on the mountain, in this moment, in this room, was to judge.

Fernanda glanced at her father and then back to Godfrey. Eric watched as she scratched her nails up her arm in a nervous display. He frowned and glanced over her head to his father who had also noticed the move.

"Well," she shrugged and looked Godfrey directly in the eye. "If I'm being honest... and since honestly, I don't know what to say about myself... then I guess I will say that I don't think I would care to meet any more members of your family. You don't make a great first impression, and it's only fair that I tell you that now since you say you're not here to judge."

Silence. Shocked silence. Eric stared down at his mate in absolute wonder. And horror. For such a little thing, she had quite the pair on her. He shook his head in disbelief and let out a laugh. His father's shoulders shook as well with barely concealed humor, and one glance at Fernando saw that he had buried his face in his hands in dismay.

Godfrey's lips twitched imperceptibly but he was still acting in an official capacity, so he did not laugh. He recovered himself before anyone but a de Clermont could see the tiny crack in his façade.

"Right then," he said. "Best course of action for you then, is to skip the runaround, and get straight to the point. You don't have to meet any more of my family, if you tell me where you are from."

Fernanda froze. She looked from Godfrey to Fernando, to Eric and Hugh and then back to Godfrey. With a wince she answered him as she had answered them many times before.

"I don't think I should say," she said.

"Well, I would disagree, young lady," came Godfrey's stern reply.

"I can't," she insisted.

"You must."

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Heart thudding in her chest, Eric watched her hands twist in the fabric of her skirts and reached down to catch them up in his own. Running his thumb over the fresh bandage that had been wrapped around her still healing wound. She turned to him, and he gave her fingers a gentle squeeze that had her shoulders relaxing ever so slightly.

"I understand that you think it's important," she said to Godfrey. "But I cannot say."

"Why?"

"Because you don't know it."

Godfrey scoffed and shot a look at his fellow manjasangs. "Is she aware of—"

"She is aware of our kind, brother," came Hugh's reply.

"So, she knows—" Godfrey started, and Fernando cut him off.

"Yes," he said. "She knows the extent of our resources, the extent of our long lives. She knows we have lived many lives and seen many things. That most places in this world have long lost their mystery for the likes of us—"

Godfrey quirked an eyebrow and turned back to Fernanda. "Then I fail to see the issue here," he told her.

"Yes," she said. "You would. Because you are not accustomed to being left out of the loop."

Godfrey tilted his head at her in curiosity and opened his mouth to reply, certainly in a condescending manner, but she cut him off before he could.

"Being kept in deliberate ignorance can be uncomfortable," she told him gently though her eyes remained fierce. "I understand how this must feel for you – trust me, I do – but the fact remains, I cannot say and you will not know and the discomfort you feel will fade with time."

If she were not so earnest, even Eric would have laughed. But the group was silent, unaccustomed to such insolence. And Eric considered her words very carefully. When was the last time any of them had been refused – truly refused – that which they thought they were owed? Eric could hardly recall.

She glanced up at him, clinging still to his hands, as though to gauge in him whether she had overstepped her mark with his uncle. He brought her hand up to his lips and pressed a kiss to her injured palm. He could feel Godfrey's eyes tracking the movement. He could feel the weight of Fernando's disapproving glare, and the mild consideration of his father.

Godfrey sighed and massaged his temples. "Right then," he said. "If you won't say where then we should jump to when. When were you born, child?"

After a beat she replied.

"I'm nineteen."

If Godfrey was surprised by her age it didn't show. He simply arched an eyebrow and cast an unamused glance over to Eric's father who had smiled indulgently down at Eric's mate.

"What year, my lady?" Godfrey pressed.

She winced and tried once again to evade the question. Eric knew it was in vain, but he admired her approach, nonetheless.

"I think you'll be hard pressed to find a person who can tell you the year they were born around here, my lord," came her steady reply.

Eric smiled, even as panic twisted knots into his chest. This was a dangerous game she was playing, and he was not sure if she even knew herself to be playing it. He turned to Godfrey, awaiting his response.

"Try me," came his uncle's challenge.

"Fine," said Fernanda. "Should we start with you?"

"Me?" Godfrey asked, taken aback though Eric couldn't imagine why. He'd seen the defensive attack coming from a mile away.

"Yes," she said, and her grin was all teeth even as her voice shook, and her hands squeezed the life out of his own. "Pray tell, Milord de Clermont... what year were you born?"

And while Godfrey fixed her with his most displeased glare, she shifted over to Fernando and asked him for the millionth time.

"When were you born Fernando? How old are you exactly?"

Fernando's smile was wan as he considered his daughter. His eyes shifted constantly over to Godfrey as he did. His demeanor spoke of experience with this question – which he had in spades; Eric knew. One could not count with ease the many times Fernanda had asked this question of Hugh's mate. One could not count how many times the other man had evaded. They were used to these questions. To her games of resistance to their customs. And she was accustomed to the answer she knew he would give.

"I was born a very long time ago, cariña," Fernando said.

To which she replied, "How long?"

"A great deal longer than you can imagine."

She pressed her lips together into a bored little line and turned to Hugh.

"Should I even ask?"

"No," he said evenly though his eyes glittered with amusement. "It will get you nowhere."

"Indeed," she said in almost perfect mimicry of his father before fixing her eyes back on Godfrey.

His fingers had shifted from his temples, to dig forcefully into his brow. Pressing it higher and higher on his face. Blue eyes flashed down at her, unamused but clearly temporarily beaten. His uncle sighed.

"I'll need you to answer my question."

"I was born nineteen years ago," she said with a shrug and a glare. "I guess you'll have to do the math."

"Yes," he hissed and shot forward. Eric had to grip the arm of the sofa to stop himself from intervening, carefully watching his uncle's every move. "Yes, I would do the math, but let us not pretend you were born in the past. Let us consider the truth of your circumstances for the moment, young lady, and speak very plain. You have spun time and landed yourself directly into my brother's courtyard. Which I know cannot be a matter of happenstance because other witches have told me so over the centuries. It is common knowledge one cannot spin time without a destination in mind. One cannot spin time without a plan. So, tell me, and answer me the most forgiving questions you will face this evening. When were you born? Where were you born? And what do you want with my family?"

Fernanda's body had gone rigid at the force of Godfrey's approach. At the way he loomed over her now and the bite in his tone. She had pressed herself back as far as she could into the back of the sofa as Eric's uncle berated her for her naiveté.

Her display had been commendable, but that was not how the de Clermont worked. There was no give and take, no reasoning, not when the invisible hand was at stake. A dark cloud had gathered over the room and Eric's uncle no longer had any patience to give. His blue eyes had gone cross, the hard edges of his face were cast in light and shadow from the fire that roared in the hearth and the sun outside had disappeared below the horizon casting the room in a shadowy blue.

Eric shifted in his seat; chest constricted with the urge to step in. She had meant no harm. At what point had he allowed this farce to go on too far? And at what point was he meant to simply say enough and take her away from this?

She did not need to suffer Godfrey's questioning. But one look of warning from his father over her head told him otherwise. One dark look from Fernando begrudgingly told him the same thing.

Eric's face contorted into something decidedly less than human, he felt his chest expand with a very old instinct to level the threat, to raze his uncle to the ground. But he couldn't. The beast inside of him gnashed with the desire to be unleashed. She had suffered enough. His mate had endured enough. She did not need this from his family. She did not need this in her home where she was meant to be safe.

At what point did Eric simply put an end to the charade? She was his mate. She had been his wife at one point in time. She was the love of his life. And she deserved the world without all its terror. She deserved the world, and his uncle threatened now to rip that world away.

Eric shook his head, felt the creak of the arm of the sofa beneath his grip and forced himself to release it before he ruined another of his father's belongings. He bit back the beast inside of him and focused instead on the sound of Fernanda's nervous breathing. Letting the rhythm of her life lull him back into some semblance of peace. She was alive, and for now that would have to be enough.

Godfrey could yell. He could question and intimidate all he wanted, but he wouldn't touch a hair on her head. Eric cast his eyes downward to his mate's trembling hands. And thought, not for the firs time, that such fear simply would not do.

Her eyes were fixed on his uncle. His uncles' eyes were fixed on her. And Eric decided that now was the point where he had finally had enough.

He stood. Hugh and Fernando looked to him with grim expressions, and the pair in the middle ignored him. Still caught up in the threat of each other's gazes. For the first time since his uncle had arrived, he turned his back on Godfrey. Crouched down in front of the sofa and looked only at Fernanda. He stared up at her from where he kneeled on the ground and took her trembling hands in his own once again.

He felt her fingers give his a nervous squeeze but still she stared back at the frightening figure his uncle had become.

Eric made a noise and reached up to caress her cheek.

"Don't look at him, mo chridhe," he said. "Look at me."

Fernanda seemed to snap out of the trance Godfrey held her in. She swallowed a few times around her nerves and Eric was flooded with the scent of her fear. His lip curled but quickly smoothed down into a soft smile when she finally looked his way.

There, he thought. That's better.

Beautiful bronze eyes stared down at him, and Eric felt his chest expand at the world he saw hidden there. Malvina, the muse. They were both so much more now than he'd ever imagined they would be when he was Sorley and she was Malvina. They were so much more. And yet, still, a part of him wanted quite desperately to scoop her up and take her back to the Hebrides.

They could go. And they could live a long life there and be content together with only simple things.

But he could feel the weight of the de Clermont at his back. Could feel the weight of his duties and he knew that he could no longer be contained by those simple things. No matter how pleasant a fiction they were. He had bent the knee before Philippe. He had obligations and duties to his men and his many peoples. He would eventually balance the scales of eternity. He did not have the liberty of hiding away anymore. And if she so chose, someday neither would she.

"Perhaps I could suggest a compromise," he said and waited for her reluctant nod. He gave her hands another reassuring squeeze. "Could you tell me, mo chridhe, where you're from? When you were born?"

Fernanda frowned. Her gaze flickered doubtfully back up to Godfrey and she flinched at whatever she saw there. Eric squeezed her hands a little more tightly and called her back to him. "Eyes on me, lass."

She returned to him. Liquid metal eyes bore into his own. Searching, though he did not know what she was looking to find. Fernanda frowned and let out a reluctant sigh.

"I was born in February," she said finally after careful consideration. "I was born in February by the ocean."

It's odd when a moment of elation is broken by someone else's rage.

She was born in February. A beautiful winter-born lass. Eric felt himself burst at this knowledge. Something else to lock away in the memory chest in his study. Beneath a lock of hair and their marriage cords he would keep another simple written truth. A fact that he would never allow himself to forget. She was born in February by the ocean. And he wondered if she too loved the sea. If she too had taken to the water from a young age same as he had. Eric couldn't fight the grin that spread across his face. Couldn't fight the laughter that bubbled out.

He felt as though his whole world had been reduced into a single droplet of water, and that water was the last most precious thing in the world. He felt wholly young and small and insignificant in the face of this small revelation. A world of possibilities existed in that drop of water. Fernanda had reduced him in the simplest way, and now he was only matter.

There was a growl of displeasure at his back, but Eric paid it little mind.

His mind instead had turned to a million other things, questions for which he had no answers. Small, unimportant things that suddenly mattered more than anything else in the world. Things like whether or not she was able to swim. Were her people fishermen? Were they the people who went out on boats or did they stay peacefully on the shore? Was she born in a place of grey and gloom? Did it rain there or was it warm and full of sunlight? Was the ocean a deep blue sea or was it a bright green bay? What was her mother's name? And what did she do with her days? Who was the one who taught her to play that simple little tune on the harpsichord in his study?

Eric shook his head and stared up at her and tried to find the question he wanted to ask first, but he was cut off by Godfrey's scoff. Beautiful bronze eyes left his and that simply would not do.

"I tire of these games," Godfrey said, and stood abruptly from his chair. "Perhaps it would be best to just take her blood and be done with it."

The thud of her frantic pulse in his ears, her warm hands turned clammy, and from her throat escaped a noise of abject terror.

Eric's face twisted. His mind, spinning with memories of her discovery in the fall, of the way she fled from him in terror of the thing he had become, of what he was capable of. These memories flooded him now and he raged against Godfrey for bringing them back.

His mind turned to the many nights he had spent with his back to the wall, telling her stories of his life and how he had loved her while she agonized over her fate on an ice-cold floor. His mind flooded with the memory of her blood-stained dress when she finally opened her door.

And then, of course, just the day before, he reeled against Benjamin's horrible blood rage and the way his sick cousin had lunged for Fernanda. And the ice that had flooded his veins when he considered for a moment how close he had come to losing his mate. And Eric decided that enough was enough.

He turned on his uncle as Godfrey stepped toward Fernanda.

He grabbed his uncle's throat and shoved him back out of his mate's personal space. His father's hands came down on his shoulders from behind, but Eric refused to be swayed. Godfrey's eyes sparked up at him from the challenge, a strong hand came up to crush Eric's wrist and he felt his bones grind together in a wholly unpleasant way. Even then, he shoved Godfrey back until he was splayed over Hugh's desk and Eric shoved him further down even still. His father growled out a warning at him that he could no longer hear.

Fernanda had let out a horrible noise of alarm that only served to enrage him even further.

"She's been through enough," he snarled down at his uncle.

Godfrey snarled back beginning to thrash against his nephew's superior grip. Hugh's voice was pitched low and commanding. His father's grip was unforgiving as he ordered him to let Godfrey go.

"Her blood is not for you," he hissed, and Godfrey grappled for an upper hand.

Hugh pried Eric off of his uncle finally and dragged him back. Godfrey laid there panting and sputtering, trying to recover from his nephew's onslaught. Hugh pulled Eric back, his teeth hovering threateningly over his son's neck. A warning of what his defiance would bring. Godfrey stood, eyes flashing with rage at his nephew's refusal to submit.

"Gallowglass," game the quiet call of his name and Eric deflated. Ashamed that she had witnessed such a display.

He turned his face to catch sight of her where she was pressed against the door across the room. Fernando stood before her, facing him with a look of wariness that sent him reeling.

He'd lost control, he thought to himself. Even as the voice in the back of his head whispered that this had been necessary.

Godfrey had been out of line. Everyone knew it.

But now Fernanda was cornered across the room. She was frightened and it had been Eric who had done that too. Godfrey's words be damned. Eric had put her fear into action. He had— he flinched from the sound of her thundering heart and the way the blood roared in her veins and urged her, no doubt, to run – he had scared her.

He had dedicated so much of his time to making sure he never carried himself to height with her. Dedicated so much of his time with her to scaling himself down. To making himself smaller for her sake alone. He had never wanted her fear. And now here he was. There was nowhere to hide the sheer immensity of who he was capable of being. She saw him now in clear view. And he could not bear to see what she thought of such things. Could not bear to see what she thought of him.

Godfrey hissed and stepped forward trying to shake himself of their display. Eric deflated.

Hugh, after a moment of consideration finally let him go.

"I told you to take care how you speak around my son, Godfrey," his father's voice was mild though his rebuke was clear. "Have some respect for the girl."

He turned his back on his brother and his son. He had no more to say on the matter. Both were wholly capable of understanding what they'd done wrong. Hugh made his way back to the sofa as though this were any other day, as though Eric had not just leveled his uncle on a bespoke walnut dusk from the age of Charlemagne, as though his brother had not just threatened to drink the blood of his mate's daughter. As though that daughter was not cowering in fear across the room behind the glowering figure of his mate. Hugh simply sat down, reached for his glass of wine and considered the ragtag group he called family.

"Shall we proceed?"

Godfrey stared at his brother in annoyance.

Eric felt about two feet tall under the weight of Fernando's glower, overwhelmed by the stench of his mate's fear.

Out of everyone in the room, no one – least of all Eric – expected Fernanda to be the one to make the first move.

She shifted.

Fernando shifted as well, covering her even as she silently asked him not to. Her hand came up to her father's arm, fingers curling around his bicep and giving the most imperceptible of shoves. Fernando resisted but finally he allowed her to move him. Addison peeked out from behind her father's arm, before stepping around him and making her way back into the center of the room.

Her eyes were glassy with the remnants of her fear. Her hands trembled and her breathing was a little too fast to be natural. But she picked her way past the mess they had left in their wake and primly perched herself back on the sofa beside Hugh.

His father considered her for a moment though his face did not reveal his thoughts on the matter of her courage. She turned to consider the scattered men. Eyes sweeping quickly over the threat of Godfrey before settling resolutely back on him.

"Gallowglass," she said again. "Please."

And she patted the space he had vacated only moments before. Eric could not refuse. He'd never want to.

Not long after Eric had reclaimed his seat, tense and on edge next to his brave little mate, Godfrey followed their lead.

Fernando was the last to join them from where he lingered on the periphery of the room. Once all were reseated and settled, he crossed the length of the study, stopped briefly before Godfrey with his back to Eric, Fernanda and Hugh, and looked down on the de Clermont until Godfrey had the sense to look away. Then he reclaimed his seat in between the two parties.

Fernanda cleared her throat awkwardly and made to continue, but she was interrupted by her father who glowered at Godfrey like the old Gonçalves bastard Eric remembered from his early years. Godfrey refused to be cowed by Fernando's gaze – where one showed a crack, after all, the world would see a chasm – but Eric did see his uncle twitch almost imperceptibly. Fernando was arguably one of the most fearsome warriors the world had ever known. Godfrey was not quick to forget such a truth. Fernando noticed the twitch as well in the de Clermont and relaxed a bit into his seat.

"Twenty," Fernando said.

Eric cocked his head curiously in his stepfather's direction as the Gonçalves flickered his eyes to Fernanda.

"Huh?" came her eloquent reply.

Eric had returned to watching his uncle in Fernando's stead. Godfrey's eyes flitted over the faces of the family members gathered there, studying them all with an odd look in his eye.

"You were born in February," Fernando said. "You're twenty."

Fernanda shook her head, for some reason unable to process her father's words. Eric watched her face scrunch up and her brow furrow in her confusion and he had to resist the urge to reach out and smooth his thumb over her delicate skin.

"I don't understand," Fernanda said.

"You were nineteen when you arrived," her father began slowly and Eric watched as the wheels of her mind once again began to turn, watched as her brain overcame its shock to catch up with her creature company. Fernando looked her in the eye and explained it like she was five. "And your birthday is in February. You are now twenty years old."

Eric watched his mate draw back as though she had been physically struck by Fernando's words. Her eyes shuttered and Eric caught the barest glimpse of something there as they did. Something raw. Something she did not want to give any air to, a pain that she refused to let breathe. She turned her wide eyes back to him and Eric did his best to smile down at her but even now it felt forced.

What was happening in that mind of hers? What was going on behind those eyes?

"I—" she started and stared up at Eric as though she was seeing him through new eyes though he had not spoken and nothing really had changed, not in his mind at least. "I don't know what to say."

She stuttered around her words and looked around the room before once again settling on Fernando. And Eric felt that old tether right at the very heart of him give a sad little tug, nothing had changed. But if it hadn't, then why on earth did the lass sitting next to him seem so lost?

She shook her head and looked down at her hands. "I don't know... could someone tell me the date please?"

At this even Godfrey shifted in his seat and sat up a little straighter. His eyes alight with some dawning truth he had, up until now, been unwilling to see. Hugh and Fernando traded looks darkly, but it was Eric who felt as though the world had been swept out from beneath his feet.

She was lost in this world. Here against her will. And she did not know the day, the month, or the week. Near a month had passed since she'd turned twenty years old and she had still been judging the passage of time by the color of the bloody leaves.

How could he have been so daft? So shortsighted? So neglectful? He was off searching for Benjamin all the while Fernanda was back here trying to determine winter from spring. He could have shown her. He could have taught her. For Christ's sake they had a calendar in each study.

His heart had lodged itself in his throat and Eric had to work around it to finally speak.

"It's almost April, mo chridhe."

She swiveled around to face him. Pulling her feet up onto the sofa, hidden under her skirts. She drew up her knees and hugged them tightly to her chest. Fernanda regarded him with wide, owl-like eyes, and there was no word for what Eric was feeling but grief. It lodged itself in his chest, and his throat. It clouded his mind with disbelief.

Twenty winters. And he had left her alone to neurotically watch the leaves for the coming of spring. Twenty winters, and when he'd known her, Malvina had only been eighteen.

An awkward silence fell over the group, as the manjasangs considered Fernanda's predicament.

The lass in question quickly began to fade. Eric watched his mate as her eyes drooped and her shoulders sagged, but she shook herself and sat up straight. She still had a mark on her cheek where the scullery maid had nicked her with her blade. And a bruise on the other side where she had been struck by the little maid's fist when Eric had thrown Benjamin away from the girls. Eric could see just the barest hint of a bandage peeking out over the collar of her gown where a far more serious wound had been issued below her collar bone. And Eric knew there were more hidden from view. His eyes drifted down to her covered arms and her bandaged hand.

Fernanda watched him with eyes that hid her world from view. She watched him and she fought her exhaustion and behind her, he caught a glance from Hugh.

Eric studied his father who studied him, and his mate, before turning away. He didn't agree with the decision Hugh had made. He did not agree with Godfrey's presence on the mountain, nor did he agree with the pointless interrogation she was being forced to face.

His lips turned down in displeasure when he noticed his uncle's nonchalant expression. The way he studied them and referred to Hugh's letter as though he were the King of Navarre himself.

Finally, as though remembering herself, or as though she had finally restored enough energy, Fernanda sucked in a tired breath and turned back to face Godfrey. She put her feet back on the ground. Smoothed her skirts around her and fixed him with her most earnest expression.

"I'm sorry I lied about my age," she said. "I didn't realize."

Godfrey, who had been rereading Hugh's letter in a bored fashion, dropped the paper to his lap. He arched an eyebrow and considered the girl with mild surprise.

"I'm not sure that qualifies as a lie, child."

Fernanda shrugged.

"Well," she said. "Either way. I know you think I'm a witch. I know you suspect I have done something horrible to Eric and Hugh, and honestly for the life of me I cannot imagine what that is. But I'm not a liar. I'm not a witch. I can't answer your questions because I don't know how to answer them. I met Sorley almost a year ago... or..." she glanced back at Eric. "Fifty years ago, depending on who you ask. And I cared for him. The rest was honestly pretty terrible. I was a serf... I think... and I'm pretty sure I was worth less than a goat—"

Godfrey barked out a surprised laugh and Hugh joined him. Fernando stared at his daughter in wonder, shaking his head.

"I mean honestly," she said. "I was like a foreign goat to you people back then. I didn't know how to sew. And you do not want me anywhere near an animal carcass, because I do not know how to skin it and I don't want to know. Bunnies are meant to be cute little woodland friends, not dinner—"

And Eric couldn't help it. He chuckled in disbelief, heart filled by the sound of her nervous rambling, She said so little and yet revealed so much and he—well he—he well and truly loved her. Eric reached out and pulled her to him. Fernanda released a startled yelp but quickly recovered when she realized it was him. He wrapped her up tightly in his arms and held her there and decided that he would never let her go. And Fernanda rested her chin on his chest and looked up at him with sweet, sleepy eyes and he wanted very desperately to kiss her.

A warning note from Fernando had him restraining himself in present company. She was his mate, he reminded himself. But they were yet unmated. And he hated very much how the voice in his mind sounded so like his father.

But Fernanda didn't hear her father's warning. Didn't pay any mind to custom or decorum. She seemed to have all but disregarded the company of the de Clermont, of her father and his. She pressed up a little higher and caught the corner of his lips in a lazy kiss before nestling back down and resting her head on his shoulder, eyes focused not on the group behind her but on the door across the room.

"Why did you want to drink my blood?" she asked Godfrey after a beat.

More awkward silence.

She shifted and Eric let her, waiting for her to settle with her back to his chest so that she could face the other people in the room.

Curious eyes turned to Godfrey, and Eric smirked. For once, his uncle seemed uncertain about what to say or do. Fernando watched the de Clermont closely for his response before sighing and cutting in.

"When vampires drink blood, cariña," his father's mate said. "They are able to see the memories of the people whose blood they consume."

Fernanda blinked before whispering low in a language that was entirely her own. Eric watched Godfrey's eyes flicker at the sound of it before he too pitched forward to study it more closely. Whatever she said must have been concise for she fell silent rather quickly and stared at them, wide eyed and shaking her head.

"What did you say?" Godfrey asked.

Fernanda froze and turned to look back at him. His eyes bore into her own and she cringed.

She muttered her response too low even for their ears to decipher.

"Come again?" Godfrey asked with an arched eyebrow.

"I said," she enunciated clearly, her attitude less than amenable. "That's fucking wild."

Godfrey jolted at her crude language. Fernando looked pained and once again returned his palm to his face where Eric thought it should probably remain for the duration of this exchange.

Hugh smiled widely down at Eric's mate and nodded. "Wild, indeed, little one. Could not have said it better myself."

She laughed softly before settling a little more snugly in Eric's arms.

"So..." she started. "When you... drink blood..."

Fernando's head snapped back up to stare at her in exasperation. Eric too could not decide if he was amused or appalled. It felt rather crass to be speaking of this with her. This conversation was definitely taboo.

Godfrey had taken on a distinctly uncomfortable expression that was so unlike him, and he appeared but moments away from asking to be excused. But Hugh studied Eric's bronze eyed lass in fascination and waited with his same magnetic eccentricity for her questions to continue.

Her hesitation lasted only until she looked to Hugh. Eric's father nodded encouragingly, and Eric had to bury his face in her hair to hide his grin, and his discomfort.

She was a spitfire, his mate. And she would probably be the death of him too.

"Do you— I mean – do you always drink all of it?"

"How do you mean?" Hugh asked, leaning closer in his seat.

"Well... like... is it possible for the person to... live?"

Hugh's eyes lit up and he let out a delighted laugh. "Oh yes, Fernanda. That is the most common way of things. It can actually be quite pleasant for some."

Fernando let out a sound and threw out a hand toward Hugh like he wanted to strike his mate on the arm for his candor. This was highly irregular. Even Eric had to admit.

"So, you can take just a little bit and the person will be fine."

"Yes," Hugh confirmed.

"And it..." she hesitated. "Does it hurt?"

"Yes," Fernando cut in, just as Eric's father said that sometimes pain can also be pleasant.

Fernanda frowned at the pair and Eric for the first time in all the time he'd known her did not like seeing her mind at work. He dreaded what she would say when she next opened her mouth, and true to form, his Fernanda did not disappoint.

"Well, if that's the case," she shrugged and pushed up her sleeve. She turned to Godfrey. "You should just take some and see for yourself that I'm not a threat to anybody."

---

So apparently Addison had said something wrong.

Fernando had shot up out of his seat, right as Godfrey had turned to look at him in alarm. Hugh was already shaking his head and Eric's arms had wrapped themselves more securely around her person.

"Are you out of your mind?" Fernando snapped, just as Godfrey uttered to Hugh, "have you taught her nothing?"

Eric leaned closer to her ear as the other three exclaimed their exasperation, bickering amongst themselves.

"I'd personally prefer it, mo chridhe, if you did not offer your blood to anyone ever again... if you'd be so kind as to oblige."

Addison turned back to glance at him, her nose brushing his chin.

"Oh," she said. She hadn't thought she was going to offend anyone. It just seemed they were all making a big deal out of an easily solvable problem. "It's not like I want—"

"I know," he said, his voice calm in the face of Godfrey's shock, Hugh's dismay, and Fernando's aggravation. The voices of the trio in front her had raised even higher in disbelief as they spoke, and Addison felt that telltale twist in her belly that always seemed to follow something significant.

"If I'm being honest," she whispered to Eric "I'm a bit relieved. I thought for sure he was going to bite me. I didn't know you all would be so strongly against it."

"This surprises you?"

Addison shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "I guess I just... I'm not very comfortable with the idea of someone doing... that to me."

"Then why offer?" He asked.

"I just... thought that's what I was supposed to do."

Eric shifted, gently pulled away from her and asked her to face him. She did as he asked and reached for his hands, tangling his fingers with her own.

"In the future," he said. "Perhaps we can worry a little less about what we think we should do and worry a bit more about whether or not it makes us feel uncomfortable."

Addison drew her lip between her teeth and worried it until it bled. Eric tracked the movement with his eyes, a frown fixed seemingly permanently on his face, he reached up and gently tugged her lip free with the pad of his thumb, swiping the small pearl of blood from her self-inflicted wound and wiping it on the leg of his breeches.

"None of that, please, mo chridhe."

She twisted her lips down into a thoughtful frown but nodded her reluctant acquiescence.

"Thank you," came Eric's quiet reply.

Addison tuned back into the war of the fathers just long enough to see them retreat to their corners. An awkward silence fell over the group again and Addison didn't quite know what they were supposed to do next.

She had come here expecting some sort of formal inquiry, what she got instead was an awkward family reunion, and she didn't quite know what to make of that.

Godfrey was... still terrifying. But he also seemed more the annoyed sibling now than the black cloaked representative of a shadow institution that had been quietly shaping the course of history for centuries. Now, he really did just seem like Hugh's exasperated brother, Godfrey, or Eric's overbearing uncle rather than the firing squad she had been expecting him to be.

Minus the small snafu where he asked to drink her blood and Eric nearly killed him. Minus that small detail... this was all weirdly normal.

Even the awkwardness.

Addison cringed and squirmed in her seat, Fernando's eyes flickered over to her and Eric with a disapproving glare. She had offered her blood. She was cuddling with Eric on the sofa in front of her adoptive medieval father, Eric's medieval father, and his angry medieval uncle. And she had offered them her blood. Addison felt her face heat at the memory, and her heart leapt straight into her throat.

What the fuck had she been thinking?

No wonder Fernando lost his shit.

What was wrong with her?

Addison looked over at Hugh and jumped a bit to see that he was watching her with a contemplative frown. Then he seemed to shift. His entire face transforming from the circumspect eldest child of a man who wore an invisible crown, to the flighty, scatterbrained man she had met and come to care about in the fall.

Addison startled at the shift and wondered, not for the first time, if she truly knew anything about Hugh de Clermont. But was pulled from her thoughts by the grandiose clap of his hands and the grin that stretched wide across his face.

"Well," he said. "There's hardly any reason for all of this gloom. Surely, this is a cause for celebration."

Godfrey's eyes snapped up to regard his brother. Eric's arms tightened around her for a moment before he released her again.

Eric was watching Godfrey carefully. Godfrey whose expression was altogether unreadable before he once again began to speak.

"Once the matter at hand has been settled."

Hugh sighed and fixed Godfrey with a look.

"Then perhaps you should make up your mind on the matter so we may retire for the evening meal."

"She has not answered a single question—"

Addison opened her mouth to tell him that wasn't strictly true, but Fernando swiped his hand through the air at her in a swift motion and Addison knew well enough by now to know when her father was telling her to be quiet.

She kept her mouth closed.

"Listen to her blood, uncle," Eric cut in, his voice close enough behind her that she could feel it vibrate up her spine. "It does not sing as magical blood does."

"That doesn't mean she's not a witch," Godfrey argued. "She is a time spinner—"

"I don't know what that means." Fernanda cut in despite her father's quiet warnings.

Godfrey turned to her, mouth agape.

"It means you have traveled through time. It means that you have manipulated time with your power."

"Oh," Addison said. "Well... I was born centuries from now. And I am stuck in the past. That's true. But I don't think I necessarily did anything to cause it..."

"You just admitted that you did," Godfrey's voice rose higher in his exasperation and Addison thought that he sounded a bit like a little kid that wasn't getting his way at the supermarket.

"No," she said and shook her head. "No. There's a... well something happens to me. I don't know how to explain it. I don't want it to happen. It's... loud."

"It's loud?" Godfrey asked, not bothering to veil his disbelief. Hugh and Fernando had both leaned forward at her words, curious to learn something new about the mystery of her situation.

"Yes," she said.

Addison looked back down at her hands. She picked at a loose thread on Eric's sleeve. He let her. She would mend it for him later if Godfrey let her live through the night. Addison fought the urge to reach into her pocket and pull out her little mirror. She couldn't feel her face. She couldn't feel much of anything right now. She was very tired.

"Yes, it's loud," she said again. "The first time it happened... I don't know... it buzzed. Like a bee, but it got louder and louder until it became a roar. I was in public. There were people but no one could hear it. Only me. And then the ground began to shake and I—"

She cut herself off, hugging her arms around her middle. "I—"

"Yes?" Godfrey asked.

Fernanda let out a long, shuddering sigh. Her shoulders drooped and her face became a little laxer in her exhaustion.

"I don't think I want to talk about this right now," she said, and she hated how her eyes had begun to sting. Between all the crying and the twists and turns of the last few days, her eyes were bright red, and bone dry from overexertion.

"You—" Godfrey started and looked form her to Hugh and Fernando. Confused. "You don't want to talk about it? You don't have a choice, but to talk about it. Why on earth do you think we are here? We need to establish what happened. This is information that you do not get to withhold, young lady."

But Addison was already shaking her head. She avoided Godfrey's gaze, not liking how it felt to have the weight of it pressing down on her spine, but she was adamant. If he wanted anymore, he'd have to wait. She was done.

"I don't have to talk about it right now. I do have a choice. I've answered your questions. I've made a very questionable first impression, same as you. And now I am tired, and I don't want to talk any more. I'm tired. I just—" Addison sucked in a sharp breath and dug her nails into the skin of her hands. "I'm just really fucking tired," she said.

---

Godfrey took in the sight of the young Lady Fernanda as she very rapidly flagged against his nephew's chest, struggling even to keep her eyes open and intent on the very serious threat he posed to her person. She was entirely unexpected, and Godfrey had to admit, a little disappointing.

He knew what he came here to find, and he was underwhelmed to realize that he would not find it. He knew in the entryway the day before when Eric came hurtling out of the woods with an injured, warmblood in his arms that the girl in front of him was entirely human. And still, as per his duty, he had suspended all hint of a decision until he and the young Gonçalves child could meet.

She was insolent. She was aggravating. She was fragile and entirely a mystery. A mystery that he could solve with just a few drops of her blood, he was sure. But it was clear that she was not a witch, that she was his nephew's mate, and that she had been through a harrowing few days... or months... or year... if her tale was to be believed.

She leaned back, to fit snug against his nephew's chest and Godfrey didn't know what to think when her eyes finally gave in to her fatigue and closed. He arched an eyebrow at Hugh who stared down at the little human like she was one of those pet bunnies she apparently wanted to leave to their own devices in the woods. His brother was entirely fascinated by this odd girl, and Godfrey couldn't say he saw the appeal, but he had to give it to them. He had no reason to question her. She was perplexing and argumentative, but she was not false. The few answers she had given were, in fact, true.

Godfrey resisted the urge to rub at his throat where Eric had grabbed him, hackles still raised at the fact that the youngling had gotten the better of him. He quietly resigned himself to make it up to the boy in the coming days, in the sparring ring.

Eric caught his look over his mate's sleepy head and Godfrey laughed when he saw the challenge still burning there in the younger man's eyes. He shook his head and spread his hands out peaceably before him.

"Peace, nephew," he said. "She is as you say. Let us retire to our meal, I believe you still have a household of guests that await your leave to eat... do you not? Hugh?"

He turned to look at the man in question. His brother studied him with an unreadable expression before allowing his gratitude to show. Hugh nodded and stood, clapping his hands, accidentally – or deliberately, Godfrey decided – jarring the young Fernanda awake. She shot up in her seat and brought a hand to her face as though to wipe the sleep away. Then she let out a massive yawn that proved her efforts entirely unsuccessful.

Fernando stood, far more calmly, from his seat and fixed his mate with a longsuffering look, passing Godfrey a brief nod of acknowledgement. He was, perhaps not thanking him for his conclusion, but in the very least, acknowledging that his daughter had been spared a far more complicated fate at the hands of Philippe.

"Come," Hugh said with his typical imperious air. Godfrey too had that same quality about him at times, and he knew it for the weapon that it was. "Let us dine with our comrades and friends while the night is still young."

Fernanda blinked up at the eldest de Clermont brother, eyes bleary, brain lagging from the events of the day. Godfrey felt a twinge of pity for the girl. Her trials of the evening were not over yet.

Fernando stepped around Hugh with a good natured, if slightly annoyed, glare before reaching down to Fernanda and extending a hand. She blinked at his hand, at Godfrey and then back at Eric who seemed for all the world content to lounge there on the sofa with her forever.

"What did I miss?" she croaked, and his nephew's eyes softened. Godfrey let out a laugh and quickly tried to rein it in when her wide eyes swung around to meet his.

"It is time for dinner, child."

"Dinner?" she asked, staring at him in confusion.

"Yes," he said. "Dinner with your guests."

"Dinner with my guests?"

Godfrey sighed and turned to his brother. "Does she do this often?"

Hugh smiled back at him, eternally indulgent. Godfrey rolled his eyes. He quickly tired of the girl's lagging mind and her insolent questions. Did she not know how simply to obey? Surely, they had acquired her a proper tutor. She was utterly—

"The evening is not quite over yet, cariña," Fernando supplied, shooting Godfrey an irritated look.

"Oh," she said and accepted her father's hand finally.

Christ, but she was slow. She let Fernando pull her up and startled a bit at the speed with which Eric followed her. One moment seated, the next standing close behind her. He brought a hand down to settle on the small of her back, and Godfrey smirked at the glower Fernando shot his nephew. The liberties the boy had taken this evening with the girl had been astounding. No doubt there would be a line by the sparring ring later to cut the youngling down to size.

"But I thought we had to—" she awkwardly gestured to the couches then to Godfrey and herself as though she could not find the words to describe the last few hours of questioning with the de Clermont.

Fernando shook his head and Godfrey arched an eyebrow down at the child. "It has been resolved."

"Resolved?" she asked the blonde de Clermont and he fixed her with an impatient glare.

"Yes," he said. "Resolved."

"When?" she asked him, either not noticing or deliberately ignoring his frustration.

"While you were sleeping, young lady."

"While I was sleeping?"

Godfrey felt his spine curl at her incessant curiosity, and the absolute slowness with which she processed this news. Honestly, this was getting nowhere. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

"Must you insist on questioning everything I say?"

"I just don't understand what happened."

"You are human. No magic. It has been decided. Therefore, the situation has been resolved and now we retire to the great hall."

"But how?"

"By Christ!" Godfrey swung around to stare at his brother who was laughing quietly to himself at the exchange between his brother and the little Gonçalves. "Does it ever end?!"

"No," Hugh chuckled and fixed Fernanda with a look that was both scolding and appeasing all at once.

"Perhaps we should cease with the questions for the moment and go eat," Godfrey's brother finally said.

"But I don't understand—" she started, her voice pitched higher in disbelief and annoyance with the lot of them, Godfrey was sure. The pitch of her voice grated at his ears. Godfrey cringed.

Fernando's calm voice cut the exchange and drew his daughter's attention back to him.

"What is it that you don't understand, cariña?"

"What do you mean, what don't I understand? How could anyone be confused about my confusion right now?"

If Godfrey could toss the little human out the window, in that moment, he would have. But instead, he kept his expression deliberately neutral as the girl tested every ounce of patience he had – the patience he once considered to be quite infinite.

"Fernanda," Fernando said, his voice was both patient and laced with a thin warning. "What do you not understand? Speak plainly so that Godfrey can make sense of your confusion, and we can move along with the evening."

"So, you're all telling me that one minute that man—" she jerked her thumb in Godfrey's direction. "Wants to drain me of all of my blood to make sure I'm not a witch and seriously considers having me killed, and the next we're all good? I barely answer any of his questions – because I genuinely don't know how – and aggravate the hell out of him for an hour, and then fall asleep, and suddenly you're all content to say it's been resolved. Are you telling me that I could have walked in and taken a nap on the sofa through all of it, and he would have just quietly determined that I'm actually human anyway? No involvement from me was necessary at all? Is that what you're saying?"

Fernando bowed his head briefly in dismay before giving his daughter a genuinely sympathetic look.

"While I don't think leading with the nap would have been the most effective from the start," the Gonçalves said to his daughter. "I do believe you have captured the essence of what has happened here this evening."

Godfrey stared at Fernando, mildly offended, but Fernando kept his eyes patiently on his daughter.

"That's such utter—"

"Language, Fernanda."

"—bullshit, Fernando. That's such—"

He hissed and slashed his hand through the air. Her nostrils flared but she kept her lips pressed deliberately closed.

"I know, cariña," he said. "I know."

Eric let out a small chuckle and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, despite the way Fernando bared his teeth at him in warning.

"Welcome to the family, mo chridhe."

---

They filtered out of Hugh's study as a group.

With Hugh and Godfrey in the lead, Fernando guided her out with a steady hand at her back, and she couldn't resist the urge to check that Eric was following though she already knew.

He offered her a small smile and nodded for her to go with her father. She turned back to the corridor, following them down the long stretch before stopping at the top of the grand staircase where Jacqueline waited for them. The maid curtsied for the group before hurrying toward Addison with a wimple and veil.

Addison felt her chest tighten in disbelief. She gaped and looked between Fernando and Jacqueline, affronted, and confused.

"No," she said. "You gave me your word."

"There were concessions, Fernanda."

"Yes, but those didn't include dinner."

"They did include how you would dress when in public."

"We're going to the great hall. We're not even leaving the house. It's one floor down."

"We have guests, cariña."

"Godfrey just threatened to drink my blood, I hardly think I need to wear that contraption for his sake."

Jacqueline gasped and pulled her hand away, staring wide eyed at her mistress for a moment before remembering her company and fixing her face with the most neutral expression she could muster. Scandalized, though she no longer showed it, the maid returned to her task.

Fernando arched an eyebrow at his daughter for her lack of decorum and gritted his teeth. "I am not speaking of Godfrey."

"Then who?" she shook her head, still utterly lost.

Fernando suddenly looked taken aback, and guilty. He seemed very, very guilty. His eyes flitted over her face, searching for some sign that she wasn't serious. But Addison was serious. Serious and confused. She narrowed her eyes at her father, shaking off Jacqueline as the blonde tried once again to fix her hair and constrict her precious airways.

"Who, Fernando?"

He shook his head down at her, stricken by something though she could hardly imagine what. It was Eric who cut in, his tone placating and just as guilty as her father.

"I apologize, mo chridhe," he said. "This day has been full of so many—"

"Who?" she snapped and turned to look back at him. Gallowglass sighed and looked down at her, resigned.

"Everyone."

"Everyone?"

"Everyone," Fernando said finally. Eric's face was grim as he nodded his confirmation.

"I don't understand."

"For Christ's sake, let us not start with this again," Godfrey cried out and addressed her for her father and Gallowglass. "Please tell me you've been educated."

Addison hesitated at the odd question but shrugged and nodded, "Yes."

Of course, she'd been educated. She hadn't expected them to know that though, and she hadn't ventured into tales of public education any time that she could remember. Let alone tried to explain college, not that she could really count that given the gap year she took to medieval Scotland.

Godfrey looked relieved. Fernando; however, did not seem convinced.

"Good," the blonde de Clermont said before turning toward the stairs and beginning to descend. "Then allow your maid to prepare you, and remember your lessons, young lady."

Hugh followed his brother down the stairs. Eric, looking down at her with a regretful expression, snuck past her before he too followed his father and uncle down the stairs.

Addison's eye twitched. She watched the group as they walked away and felt deep in her gut that she was missing something vital. She turned back to Fernando who studied her with a contemplative frown.

"Are you sure you remember your lessons, Fernanda?"

"I—" she hesitated. "I don't know... which lessons?"

"Etiquette, mainly," he supplied. "Your sessions with Prudhomme were—"

Addison nodded and waved away the rest of his commentary, she knew better than anyone else what her lessons with Prudhomme were like. But she had a sinking feeling in her gut that she had just signed up for something way more than she was prepared for. She wracked her brain in a desperate attempt to remember what Prudhomme had taught her in her sessions, but her mind was blank. Aside from being tied to the back of her chair to correct her horrible posture, Addison's mind couldn't recall a thing.

She stared up at Fernando whose face was grim, and she shook her head and pressed a shaky hand to her chest. Honestly, when was this day going to end? Jacqueline, behind her, sighed in relief at her stillness, and successfully tied the final knot in the wimple – fillet tucked firmly beneath her chin.

"What did you mean by everyone?" she asked him, resisting the urge to tug at the offending garment.

Fernando sighed.

He offered her is arm and she took it though her body urged her quite promptly to run. To run back to her chambers and hide forever.

"What did you mean, Fernando?" But her father's face was smooth, unreadable, and he did not answer when she asked him again.

They reached the bottom of the staircase where the rest of their party was patiently waiting. Or impatiently, in Godfrey's case.

"Do you remember anything, Fernanda?" Fernando finally asked her as they made their way to the doors of the great hall.

"A little bit," she said, uncertain as she wracked her brain for details wondering what on earth Fernando could possibly want her to recall. Wondering what on earth she was about to walk into.

He opened his mouth to say something, and Addison was convinced it was something important, but whatever he said was swallowed by the sound that came from the great hall. The footmen pulled open the doors and Addison turned in shock at the sheer volume that rushed out to meet her. It was like running into a wall of noise. The doors opened and a burst of energy and hot air, music and chatter, laughter and bellows rushed out to assault her very person. She staggered back a step before Fernando caught her and purposefully held her upright once more. The cacophony flooded the space around the Addison and consumed her whole.

Fernando faced forward now. Though she caught him glancing at her from the corner of his eye. The closest thing to an apology he could offer her now for not properly preparing her for this fate. And Addison stared up at him, afraid to look fully inside the room she was now expected to enter. Fernando pressed his hand resolutely to her back. She thought, maybe, he'd meant to be reassuring, but then the de Clermonts ahead of them began to move. As one, they stepped into the hall and every single person rose from their seats. Every single person turned to face them. And then Addison understood with startling clarity that the hand at her back was not there to reassure her.

It was there to make sure she didn't run.

Now, she understood what they meant when they said everyone.

In the great dining hall with a bespoke wooden table built to seat fifty, every seat at the table was full... save for five. And none of those five seats were anywhere near each other. The table was full of knights she did not know. Faces she had seen only briefly in passing, with names she had never learned. And they were all looking at her.