Across the hall, at the Fayle table, Baron Erling shifted in his chair for the fourth time in as many minutes.
His mother, Lady Ragna, placed a hand on his arm without looking at him, the way sheâd done when he was a boy squirming through temple services. The gesture was so familiar that it almost made him smile, except that tonight, the thing making him squirm wasnât boredom or a stiff collar. It was the way Baron Loghlan kept glancing toward the doors.
Loghlan sat three tables away, at the head of the Dunn delegation, his broad shoulders squared and his weathered hands resting flat on the table in front of him. To anyone who didnât know the old baron, he looked perfectly relaxed, a man attending a ceremony with the unhurried confidence of a lord who had nothing to worry about.
But Erling had watched Loghlan at enough feasts and councils to recognize the tension in the set of his jaw and the way his eyes moved. He wasnât scanning the room the way a bored manâs eyes wandered. He was watching one point with the fixed attention of a hawk watching a rabbit hole.
He was watching the doors.
Erling had received Loghlanâs message that morning, passed through three intermediaries, and delivered it in a sealed envelope bearing no crest or signature. The contents had been cryptic enough that Erling had spent the better part of the day trying to decide if the old baron had lost his mind or if something extraordinary was about to happen.
âStand ready. When the time comes, your men must move without hesitation. The future of your barony may depend on the choice you make tonight.â
Erling had passed the instruction to his knights, framing it as a precaution without explaining its source. His men were loyal and well trained, but they were unarmed save for the swords at their hips, dressed in their finest for a wedding rather than a battle. Heâd made one change, however, and looking at Loghlanâs knights, it seemed like he wasnât the only one to have done so.
Most of the attendees wore ceremonial swords for events like this. Smaller, lighter weapons with elaborate, jewel-encrusted hilts that were impractical for fighting. A few men dispensed with the pretense altogether, using blades that were so light they could hardly be considered weapons because they were more comfortable to wear for the long, tedious formalities of events like this one.
But Erlingâs men wore blades meant for war. Coming from Fayle barony, it hadnât raised any eyebrows. There had been a few snickers about knights who were too poor to afford a proper ceremonial sidearm, but the men of Fayle were long accustomed to ignoring the barbed comments of men like the knights of Leufroy at the table next to them.
They didnât know what kind of trouble might be coming, but they were as ready for it as they could be, and that mattered far more than putting on a show of wealth.
"Erling," Ragna said quietly, still not looking at him. Her voice was calm, but her fingers tightened slightly on his arm. "Whatâs happening?"
"I donât know yet, Mother," Erling said honestly. He kept his own voice low, pitched beneath the murmur of conversation and the bright, cheerful notes of the minstrels who were playing a processional as Jocelynn walked down the aisle. "But I think something is coming. Something big."
"Something dangerous?" Ragna asked. There was a catch in her voice as she spoke and her hand trembled slightly on her sonâs arm. For a moment, her eyes flicked to his, and when she saw his gaze, she saw the same intensity there that she saw when her son had gone hunting in the leanest years the barony ever faced.
To a worried motherâs eyes, Erling looked like a man carrying the weight of his whole barony on his shoulders... And he looked like a hunter who didnât yet know if his prey was also hunting him.
"Probably," Erling said, nodding slightly. "Whatever happens, I need you to trust me. Iâve already spoken to the knights. When the time comes, and youâll know when, stay close to me and donât leave the table until I tell you itâs safe."
Erling wished he could have found a way to bring his bow to the wedding. It would have been far more comforting than the arming sword he wore at his hip, but while he could explain away a dull, practical weapon meant for close combat, he couldnât explain bringing a bow and quiver full of arrows to a wedding.
Ragna studied her sonâs profile for a long moment, reading the tension in his jaw and the way his hands kept drifting toward the sword at his hip, and whatever she saw there was enough to settle the question in her mind.
"I trust you," she said simply, and returned her attention to the ceremony.
At the base of the dais, Jocelynn had reached Owainâs side. Captain Albyn released her arm with a formality that hid whatever passed between them in the final moment before he stepped away, and Jocelynn took her place beside the man she was about to marry.
High Priest Aubin stepped forward. The old priestâs white robes seemed to glow in the candlelight, and his long white hair fell past his shoulders like a mantle of snow. He carried a ceremonial staff topped with the radiant sun of the Holy Lord of Light, and when he raised it, the murmur of the hall subsided to a hush.
"Lords and ladies of Lothian March," Aubin began, and his voice, though aged, carried to every corner of the great hall with the practiced resonance of a man who had spent a lifetime filling sacred spaces with the words of the Church. "We gather in the sight of the Holy Lord of Light to witness the union of Lord Owain Lothian, Marquis of Lothian March, and Lady Jocelynn Blackwell, daughter of Count Rhys Blackwell of Blackwell County."
The words were formal, prescribed by tradition and ritual, and Aubin delivered them with the careful precision that the ceremony demanded. But beneath the precision, in the slight tremor of his hands on the ceremonial staff and the way his eyes kept returning to Jocelynnâs face, there was something that had nothing to do with ritual.
He was worried about her...