Page 22 of The Warrior's Innocent Captive

Linota looked around the space. Most of the room was thrown into darkness, but the light from the fire and the flickering candles showed a space that had been well maintained and obviously cared for.

‘Why do you have such a place if not for a wife?’she asked when she could stand the silence no longer.

Erik laughed bitterly. ‘If I had a wife, do you think she would want to live here when she could live in luxury at Borwyn’s fortress? Besides, who would have a bastard like me? I only survive on the good graces of my...of Borwyn. If we were to fall out, I would have nothing.’

Linota wanted to argue that she would have him. That she would be honoured to have such a man as her husband, but she knew that Katherine and Braedan would feel the same way as Erik. He wasn’t good enough, in their eyes, to marry her, despite the fact that, until very recently, their family circumstances had been just as bad. Now that they were on the rise her siblings would only want her to marry someone from the noblest families, not an unclaimed bastard.

Her throat ached with the unsaid words, the silence stretching painfully between them.

Erik’s shoulders dropped and she wondered if he had been waiting for her to give voice to the thoughts which were stuck inside her.

‘It’s getting late,’ he said quietly. ‘Let me show you where you can sleep.’

Linota’s heart began to race.

Last night they had slept next to one another. Would they do so again this evening?

Erik led her to the back of the room and she followed slowly. Her pulse pounded violently in her throat. A dark staircase took them to a narrow loft. A narrow bed was pressed up against the far wall. It was too small for the two of them to fit on it together and her fluttering heart took a deep dive.

Erik rooted around in a trunk at the bottom of the bed. ‘Here are some blankets.’ He held them out to her.

She took them from him, folding the soft fabric over her arm.

‘I’ll bid you goodnight, then.’ Erik moved over towards the top of the stairs, taking the light with him and the breath caught in her lungs. This was a horror she hadn’t prepared for.

‘I can’t.’

He paused. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I can’t be on my own in the dark. I’ve never been left alone. I mean, Katherine has always been with me. I can’t... The nightmares... They’re so bad.’

She didn’t want to describe to him what horrors she faced when she closed her eyes. Night after night her father would hang before her very eyes. The dreams didn’t come so violently if Katherine told her a story before they both fell asleep, but if she ever woke up to find Katherine not beside her in the bed then panic would set in. Her whole body would tremble, her lungs would close and she would gasp for breath. It had happened so often that she knew she wasn’t going to die from the slow suffocation, but whenever it occurred it truly felt as if she would this time.

Erik stepped back into the loft and set the candle on the trunk. He folded his arms and stared down at the floor. ‘I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep.’

It wasn’t ideal, but she could hardly ask for more without sounding as if she were offering him something, something that, however much she desired him, she wasn’t ready to give.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

Erik lowered himself on to the floor, leaning his back against the chest as she arranged the blankets on the bed. She climbed into them without taking her clothes off and turned on her side, curling up into a ball.

The night was still, the only sound in the small room Erik’s steady breathing and the faint crackle and spit of the fire below.

‘Talk to me,’ she said quietly.

His boots scraped across the floor as he shifted. ‘What about?’

‘Tell me about this place.’

There was a long silence. She was getting used to this reaction from him. For all of his jokes and smiles, he always thought about what he was going to say when the topic was serious. She lay there patiently, waiting for him to be ready to talk.

He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll tell you about it if you promise me that you won’t repeat what I say tonight to anyone else.’

Linota tucked her hands between the folds of her skirt, trying to get them warm. When she’d asked her question she hadn’t meant for him to reveal secrets. She was hoping to find out how he’d come to buy it, but now that the opportunity presented itself to learn more about him she couldn’t resist.

‘I swear on my honour that I will not tell a single soul what you tell me this evening.’

His boots scraped again as he moved once more. When he spoke it sounded as if he had turned to face her, but she could not make his features out in the darkness.

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