Shana Abe Read Free Page B

guardian.
    Twelve years ago Lady Avalon d’Farouche had watched that very castle, her family seat, burn as she clung to the top of a birch tree she had climbed after an afternoon of playing alone in the forest.
    From her view at the edge of the nearby woods she had seen most of the details of the raid, and contrary to what the Londoners said, she remembered every second of it.
    Fat clouds of black smoke erupting from all over the castle.
    People everywhere, running, crying, chaos. Some of the people unmoving on the ground, spilling rivers of blood.
    Her nursemaid, Ona, running for the tree where she was perched, calling her name in a panic.
    A group of men following the woman.
    The men pursuing Ona were bloodied like everyone else, but oddly colored with paint and carrying weapons. They were coming to the birch, and there was a menacing intent in their steps. Even though Avalon had scrambled out of the tree to warn Ona of the danger behind her, it had been too late.
    Also contrary to what the gossips said, Avalon had not seen her father die. Only her nursemaid, slaughtered beneath the birch beside her.
    The painted men were insurgent Picts, men without homes or honor. But to seven-year-old Avalon, they were creatures straight from a nightmare: goblins, streaked blue and red with screaming eyes.
    She would have died with Ona in that moment at the base of the birch, her throat slit just as ruthlessly. But Uncle Hanoch had come. Hanoch had been visiting her father, and Hanoch had fought his way to her past the arrows and the axes and the blood, and he had killed the goblins instead. He had saved his son’s future bride and carried her away, away, to the coldest place in all the lands, Scotland.
    Yes, the last time Avalon had seen Trayleigh she had been in the arms of Hanoch Kincardine, being dragged away from it while she shrieked at the top of her lungs, while she cried and kicked until they had stuffed a wad of cloth in her mouth that had tasted of smoke and death.
    But today was fair and warm, a lifetime away from that moment. It was a day of rolling green hills and long meadows, with no sign of trouble anywhere. Lady Avalon d’Farouche, the young woman, now saw that Trayleigh Castle was much recovered from that terrible day twelve years ago.
    Throughout her time away she retained not so much the memory of the splendid castle she was born in but rather the ravaged mess that she had glimpsed from the woods that day. In her mind, Trayleigh lingered in that distressing state, burning, bloodied, and brought to its knees.
    The Picts had never been caught. They had plundered and raided and then melted away, back into the wilderness. The best that anyone had ever been able to explain to Avalon was that they were the holdouts of a remote northern clan, resisting the rule of any king, resisting civilized order. Whether it was bad luck or fate that made them pick Trayleigh to show their wrath, no one knew.
    So when Avalon shifted in her saddle to take in the first glimpse of her old home, a corner of her still expected to see the same smoke she remembered eating up the skies.
    But the castle that greeted her now was not burning. Nor was it quite what she recalled from happier times.
    It was smaller, for one thing, not nearly as imposing to the eyes of an adult as it had been to a child. The straight, plain lines of it stretched up to the blue heavens but didn’t seem to reach all the way to the angels, as she used to imagine. The lawns were better kept, the hedges more neatly trimmed. Or perhaps she had simply never noticed these things as a girl.
    The old birch tree that had been her shelter during the raid was taller, the branches thicker. It had not, apparently, burned with the castle.
    But the air smelled just as she remembered, and Avalon felt a burst of gladness at this, that something was familiar after all this time: the scent of honeysuckle and grass.
    Her cousin’s armsman saw her smile, pushed back his visor, and stared