Page 17 of Saved By the Headless Horseman
“Still you.”
Pulling apart, she tucks a longer piece of red hair behind his ear.
“Let me think on it, okay?Give me some time to form a plan.”
My voice grows hoarse as I scream at her not to go.I urge them both to get dressed, steal one of my father’s horses, and never look back.They don’t hear me.Not as they both rise and share a parting kiss.Brushing the hay from her hair, I love you’s are shared one final time.Krane watches her as she slips from the barn and into the quiet main house.
“Go, Krane,” I sob.“Leave me behind.Save yourself.”
He would never do that.Krane was a good man, kind and loving.The kind of man my father could never dream of being.He was honest, and that honesty got him killed.Krane put his trust in the wrong people—me, my father.While I may not have killed him outright, my love for him caused his death—my arrogance in wanting us to have the life I always envisioned left him vulnerable.
He loved me and my father, and in the end, we both betrayed him.Krane had thought that if he approached my father, man to man, and asked for my hand, he would hear him out.Honesty and true love weren’t going to fill my father’s coffers, nor would they sign over new lands to him.
We were always doomed to meet this end, cursed by one man’s ambition.
The memory swirls into the fog.The tendrils lick over Krane until he is gone.From its depths, a new setting emerges.I watch as Krane, dressed in his simple clothes, approaches Crow’s Claw Manor in the dark.He looks both ways before opening the door, trepidation in each muscle.
Unease grips me as I watch Krane walk along the front room.He pauses outside my father’s study.Voices echo deep from within.Three to be exact.My stomach sinks.
After I left Krane in the stables, I slipped in through the back of the house.I had no idea they were there that night.
The oak door to my father’s study pushes open, and there they are.My father, clutching a glass of brandy beside a roaring fireplace adorned with a proud stag’s head, and Duke Marc of Greenbrooke and his son Bram.All three sets of eyes turn towards Krane as he enters the room.
His simple clothes are a far cry from the gaudy embellishments emblazoned on the three men surrounding him.Krane stands out amongst them despite that.He is taller than the duke and his son, nearly a head taller than my father.He is stronger than all of them.His beauty easily eclipses that of the awful prince.
The scent of smoke and pine dances throughout the dungeon.The heat of the fire licks along my body.Krane bows to them, ever the dutiful servant.My stomach rolls at the subservience.He was always seen as beneath them when he was better than all of us.
“Krane,” my father says with surprise.“What are you doing here?”
Krane’s cheeks heat.It would be unusual for him to be in my father’s study, especially without invitation.Not to mention the last time they were face-to-face, he had been inside of me.Still, he clears his throat and straightens his spine.
“Sir, I wanted to?—”
“Offer congratulations to the duke and his son.Earl Bram and Scarlett will make their union formal in a month.”
There is a glint in her father’s eye I don’t miss.This was his way of giving Krane an out.If he had agreed to his words and left, my father would’ve let him live.At least he would’ve let him live long enough to escape.But Krane was too headstrong—too in love to heed the subtle warning.
I see it all the same, and my stomach rolls.
Krane shakes his head, squaring his shoulders once more.
“I came to speak about that with you.”He swallows loudly.“I wanted to ask you—beg you—to wed her to me instead.”
There is silence for a moment.The three men look at each other before breaking into riotous laughter.My father nearly doubles over as he wipes tears from his eyes.Both the duke and his son look smug.Color floods Krane’s cheeks and stains the tops of his ears.
I want to go to him and shield him from their cruelty.My heart breaks for him—how earnest his plea was and the callous laughter it was met with.I should’ve killed my father when I had the chance.
Krane weathers their indignation, never backing down.
“Wed her to you?”my father asks once he catches his breath.“Have you lost your mind?A poor stable boy?A bastard with no family name to speak of?What could you even possibly offer that would tempt me into giving you her hand?”
“I love her—have since we were children.”Krane braves my father’s cruel remarks.“We handfasted in the woods.She is already my wife.”
The laughter in the room dies like a candle being blown out.Something forbidding settles amongst the party.I can feel it from where I am trapped.Ice nails of apprehension claw down my neck.
“Richard,” Duke Marc hisses.“This will not do.”
My father licks his lips before draining the rest of his brandy.Whatever tenderness he felt towards Krane is gone.That glint in his eye deepens and lays bare the rotten soul he’s always possessed.
