"Can we have a moment? I promise, her virtue is not in danger."

Both women visibly tensed, Korette turning an icy stare onto Truvien as he blanched, realizing his poor choice of wording too late.

"That's not what I- I didn't mean—"

"I will wait nearby," she replied primly, bobbing respectfully to Iscah before slowing her steps to give them space.

For a few moments neither spoke, the young knight risking a glance over his shoulder to check Korette was back far enough to afford them some privacy.

"Gods, that woman makes me more nervous than even your Father," he finally confessed, breaking the silence with an awkward laugh and rubbing at his neck with his unbroken hand. "I'll bet you'll be glad to be rid of her."

Iscah didn't bother replying, not trusting herself to say anything acerbic.

"I owe you an apology," he finally began, grimacing as he recalled events that had unfolded under the same reasoning.

"Gods, I really am making a mess of this," he muttered, glaring at the compacted gravel they traversed.

"The night of the ball I was not me. I mean it was me but I was— well I mean when your father reached out to mine— I mean it was you and I'm me and…" he tapered off, blowing his hair out of his face before shoving it back as he tried to gathered his scattered thoughts.

"I was out of my depth, still feel so honestly. I let my 'friends' talk me into thinking what you'd desire is some rakish knight that you could tame. Looking back on it, I think they were intentionally setting me up for failure to humiliate me for their own amusement."

He kicked at a minute pebble. "Our lands are so far away from the capital I had no notion that the court machinations had corrupted my childhood friends to such a degree. Both my parents hate the games the aristocracy like to play with one another, I dare say perhaps their decision left me at quite the disadvantage."

"On that, we can relate," Iscah agreed, catching his flinch in her peripheral at the barb. "Although yours seemed to have taught you how to play very adeptly."

"It was my Father's idea, Iscah." She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat at his excuse. Truvien half turned to her, lifting his hand in supplication.

"I was so ripped how I even got up those stairs is a mystery. Next thing I knew I was waking up at a physicker with my arm like this," he motioned to the cast. "Do you understand what I'm saying? They drugged me."

Iscah glared at him coldly, openly studying the damage to his face. In a single hit against her bed post, Apoch had split the skin between Truvien's brows and down his nose. The bruises had seeped under both eyes, and his nose was so swollen his voice had a nasal quality to it.

It would've been her wearing those bruises if not for Apoch. And to think, I saved his life only to be rewarded in this manner.

"Well and good. So now I know you're not only a weak man who is under his father's thumb, but a mean drunk as well," she finally retorted, lifting her chin defiantly.

His jaw dropped, dumbfounded by the spiteful words from a girl he had assumed to be meek and gentle. Behind them Korette cleared her throat pointedly, her gaze full of reproach on her charge. Iscah turned, barely stopping herself from stomping off and finding a tree branch to beat them both with.

"Look, I deserve all of that, I do. You aren't wrong to judge me so harshly but give me a chance to show you it can be different. I can be different."

She glared straight ahead, not acknowledging his words as he continued to walk by her.

"I know this wasn't the way either of us wanted things to go, but that doesn't mean they have to stay in such a state. I had my servants take part of the dowry into the city. They're loading four carts worth of literature as we speak to take back to our ancestral home."

"Your idea? Or is that one your Father's as well?"

"Mine," he ground out, his reply making her flag momentarily as she regarded him again. Seizing on her hesitancy he took her hand in his, a nervous smile ghosting his lips.

"And no doubt my father will break my other arm for such a frivolity, but if it matters to you, then it's worth it. We both hate the court and their petty games, so after the ceremony here we'll go home, and I won't press you for anything. We can take things slow, take time to grow with one another until we're ready for something more."

Iscah looked up into his pleading bruise-ringed eyes, ones she had last seen full of uncontrolled fury. So unlike Apoch. The cambion carried rage and hatred like a mantle rather than as a yoke. His control even when he had broken this man's arm and murdered her guards absolute.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

But he wasn't here, and it was time she began to rely on herself rather than placing her hope in him. Sangrath was southwest, its border touching the wall where it met the sea.

Aware of Korette who waited at an appropriate distance she worked her jaw, offering Truvien a tepid smile in response. His shoulders visibly relaxed, puffing a laugh of relief before slipping her hand over his cast and continued their stroll through the lovely, empty garden.

[https://i.postimg.cc/ht3bqpkV/blue-moon.jpg]

"Well done, my dear. Very well done," Korette murmured approvingly as Iscah stepped back by her side.

They watched Truvien's carriage curved away from the house and crunched down the driveway. Iscah's head was throbbing, yet still she wouldn't let her demure smile slip. No matter how her stomach churned over the light dinner they had shared before he finally had left.

Having mistaken her silence for clemency he had prattled incessantly through dinner, lamenting the fact the healers had banned him from the summer contests for aspiring and veteran knights. There had been no questions about what had happened in her bedroom, no curiosity about how he had survived when the two guards hadn't.

Korette turned, assessing her ward with a critical eye, noting the lines of tension tightening her brows.

"You look exhausted, child."

"I feel exhausted," she confided with a breathless laugh, relaxing her posture to push at the pressure beneath her eyelids. "A bath would be lovely right about now."

"A bath it is, then," Korette acknowledged, both women turning back towards the entrance cracked open for them by one of the two guardsmen posted at the entry.

Even now, she could meet neither of the retired soldier's eyes, the feeling of their silent accusations a knife that twisted between her shoulder blades despite the fact none of the estates protective entourage had said or done anything differently towards her.

"It's the guilt of the living," Korette finally offered, and Iscah looked at her in surprise. The older woman canted her head in acknowledgement the peace offering; her own suffering.

"When Anann was kidnapped, during the whole process we still lived our daily lives helplessly looking while guilt that we weren't doing enough slowly crushed us. There was always this nagging voice in the back of our minds that our family blamed us, our neighbors judged us, that we were at fault because we lived and she was gone."

As they walked through the corridors with only their footsteps for company, Iscah mulled over her own feelings, clearing her throat of the dryness that coated her tongue. "I still see it at the most random times. The way Gerard fell, his blood spraying into the air. Over and over again, as if it will make it less real or make me less sane. I still don't even know the name of the other guard that died."

"You can't blame yourself, child. They sacrificed themselves honorably to save your life, to protect you from the assassin."

But that's just it, she replied in her mind. It wasn't a fight, it was a slaughter for nothing. He had spared me, and then saved me from Truvien.

Was that entirely true though? Her brows furrowed at the train of thought. Would Apoch or even Truvian have shown themselves if her maids had still been present, or guards at her door? Had she saved some lives and damned others?

She understood the guilt Korette spoke of, but it went an even deeper level. One that made her wonder if perhaps there was something truly wrong with her.

The dreams still continued, and all she wanted was to see Apoch again.

Her steps faltered at the base of the stairs, and she turned shyly towards Korette. "I have need of the privy, would it be all right if I meet you in my bathing chambers?"

The chaperone hesitated, and Iscah did her best to keep her facial expression painfully neutral. Korette capitulated, dipping her head in approval. "Don't dally."

Curtsying she turned, and headed straight for the toilet room.

The house was old, having been in her family for generations. While the grander bedrooms shared bathing rooms, the toilets were still regulated to ancient co-ed chambers located on each end of the house wings. Merged bathing and toilet rooms had become the norm in the city, but for country estates who's walls were fortified stone, moving plumbing required taking the structures down to their foundations. While her family could afford it, her father was of a mind to not change something that was not broken.

Iscah glanced back, catching a glimpse of Korette's shoe on the stairs before vanishing above the ceiling. Picking up her pace she headed for her father's study, turning the knob as quietly as possible and closing it in the same fashion. His normal evening routine was to retire to the library with her mother, and even if he had been in the office she had plenty of reasons to want to speak to him alone.

Opening a small box on the desk she took out two pre-cut strips of paper designed to fit into a carrier pigeon's tube. She checked the top drawers for a fountain pen came up empty, resigning herself to use the feathered quill set in a heavy stone base. Focused on opening the jar of indigo without spilling the ink, she reached blindly for the pen, her knuckles pushing the brass tube it rested in at a forward angle.

There was an audible click, and her heart slammed into overdrive as she jerked upright towards the door, expecting to have been caught. Instead a bookshelf moved on otherwise silent hinges, swinging into a secret area she hadn't even known existed.

Risking more time than originally planned, Iscah approached the opened entry. Rather than a mysterious chamber however, she found a lightless hallway, a draft sifting through the unruly hairs at the base of her neck inwards. She leaned further in, trying to see to the end but it was hidden in the darkness.

Hands shaking, she bolted back for the desk and tilted the pen back to its original angle. Waiting in terror, she counted the seconds before the shelf closed as quietly as it had opened. The urge to giggle hysterically nearly overwhelmed her, and she clenched her belly to calm down her highly strung nerves.

Dipping the quill carefully she wrote out a quick note to Jalen and another longer one to Agatha before setting the pen back carefully into place, blowing on the ink and hiding the small scrolls in her sleeve.

Checking the desk to make sure nothing was out of place as she retreated she turned, pressing her ear to the door and waited three heartbeats. Hearing no noise she pulled it open and stepped out into the empty hallway.

Once in the privy she hid the papers in a crack of the mortar, in utter disbelief her luck had held out the whole time. She clamped her hands over her mouth to muffle the squeal she had been containing since the office, twirling in victory.

If Apoch wasn't going to come to her, then this time she would go to him.