Page 45 of Lies Within the Darkest Tower

Owun gave a tight nod and headed to an area with shovels, brooms, wheelbarrows, buckets, rags, brushes, and a larger version of the pump and basin in my room. He put a shovel into one of the wheelbarrows and wheeled it down the wide aisle between the stalls.

I followed him as dozens of sets of large dark eyes followed us. Horses huffed and whickered and shifted and stomped. Some didn’t seem to notice us, while others stretched their heads over the doors, looking for attention. Owun ignored all of them and stopped at a stall that didn’t have a horse in it and swung open the door.

“Shovel everything into the wheelbarrow.” He held the shovel out to me. “The manure pile is outside the Tower, so whenthe wheelbarrow is full, follow me or Kasen out the pasture gate and we’ll point you in the right direction. Repeat until all the stalls have been shoveled out.”

“Got it.” I didn’t know if there was more to it. At some point we’d have to lay fresh hay, but I wasn’t sure if there were anymore steps between shoveling out the spoiled hay and adding the clean stuff, but I was sure Owun would tell me when the time came.

I took the shovel and got to work, trying to ignore the pain in my chest every time I moved, while Owun and Kasen came and went, leading a couple horses at a time out the stable door. The wheelbarrow quickly filled, and I wheeled it to the stable’s entrance where Kasen led two horses and me across the bailey and out a narrow archway in the thick outer wall near that building that I had no idea what it was.

Beyond the wall lay a rocky, jagged gray landscape swathed in mist. It reminded me a bit of the wastelands at the edge of Herstind March with scraggly trees and tough weeds, but here was sharper and more dangerous looking.

Ahead lay a field of dark green grass that didn’t fit with the rest of the barren landscape where some of the horses were already grazing, and to my right was a squat building with smoke curling from half a dozen chimneys and dozens of empty laundry lines nearby waiting for the day’s clean wet laundry.

Beyond that was an enormous area for weapons training. Men were stretching and warming up, while others had already started practice bouts or had lined up in front of archery targets. They laughed and jostled and called to each other with a familiarity and joy I hadn’t expected of the Black Guard, sending an unexpected pang of jealousy through me.

They had a comradery I couldn’t let myself have with them and one I’d never had with anyone except Sawyer. Lord Quill had been right when he’d said that Sawyer was going to gainthree hundred brothers. I was sure that like all families not everyone got along, but I could tell from looking at the men on the practice grounds that many of them did. They needed to rely on each other to stay alive and they couldn’t completely do that without first building trust between them.

Which was why using the ring after dark and endangering the lives of whoever had come to save me pissed off most of the men I’d met. I’d proven just by showing up that I couldn’t be trusted not to get them into a situation that put them in danger.

Kasen pointed me to the manure pile, which lay down a narrow path and past the practice area. Beyond it I could see the top of the fae ring, easily three or four hundred yards away, and another, wider path leading away from the pile toward the ring.

I dumped my load then headed back to the stables to repeat the process, shoveling, wheeling, returning. The stables were large, so I tried to pace myself, but the ache in my chest continued to grow and I knew that it was going to be difficult to move, let alone breathe, before my first shift in the stables was even done.

After probably about two hours of shoveling, Owun handed me a bucket of soapy water and a scrub brush and pointed me to the first stall I’d cleaned out.

“Give it a good scrub,” he said with a satisfied gleam in his eyes, but the gleam vanished when I went into the first stall and got to work scrubbing the stone floor without complaint.

I fought back my own satisfied gleam, knowing I disappointed him by not reacting like a spoiled nobleman. Complaining only drew attention to myself and hopefully, by not saying anything and just doing my job, everyone would forget about me. I’d just be an unmemorable new member of the Guard, nothing more.

Which really wasn’t that different from the life I’d left. Sure, I’d been a nobleman’s daughter, but I’d always had to do whatI was told and with Edred that had been scrubbing floors and hauling water and doing laundry with the other servants. Why pay for a servant when you had someone who could do it for free? It didn’t matter that Herstind Keep’s servants weren’t paid very well. They’d still been paid. I hadn’t been.

I suppose there’d been hope that my life would have gotten easier once Edred had finally shipped me off to a husband. But there’d been no guarantee of that, and I suspected anyone Edred liked as a husband for me had a similar disposition and wouldn’t have treated me any better. And really, even if he treated me better, he still wouldn’t have been able to give me what I wanted: the chance to be my own person and to have the skill to protect the people I cared about.

Except that wasn’tallI wanted.

A whisper of achy need warmed my core despite the fact that my nose was far too close to a sticky pool of horse piss and my chest hurt.

I wanted to be desired and loved. I didn’t want to be with a man to make Edred or any other man happy. I wanted to be with a man to makemehappy and have a man desire me for me. That was what my dream had really been about. Even if I hadn’t looked like me, I still knew that was what it had been about.

I scrubbed my way to the stall door, my thoughts wandering back to the dream and how that man had worked magic with his mouth. I’d never felt anything like that before and had no idea how I’d managed to dream about it.

“Hey,” a lilting masculine voice said, startling me from my daydreaming.

I glanced out the stall door to see another gorgeous fae with flawless dark skin standing a few stalls down cooing to a white and gray dappled horse that the stablemaster and Owun had strangely left in his stall.

“How’s he looking?” another, just as beautiful fae with long light brown hair, asked, heading to another horse that had also been left behind.

“Flint did a good job. Can hardly tell that hound got him across the nose three nights ago,” the other fae replied and stepped into the stall and started saddling the horse.

I turned my attention back to the final few feet of stall floor left to scrub. They hadn’t noticed me and maybe if I kept my head down, they wouldn’t. I didn’t want a repeat of the snide comments or even the dirty looks that I’d gotten in the great hall.

“So,” the first fae said, “did you go to the Garden last night? I heard there was a new arrival.”

Hunh, new arrival? That sounded familiar. Wasn’t that what the men in my dream had called me? What a funny coincidence that these fae would use the same words the fae in my dream had.

“I didn’t see her,” the other fae replied, “but my cousin did. Said she had all her marks and stunning dark red hair.”

My thoughts tripped on that. I couldn’t have heard that right.I’dhad dark red hair in my dream, too. What were the odds that they’d not only mention a new arrival but one with the same hair color?

---