Page 60 of Never Love a Lord
His time at Fallstowe was nearly over. The king would send for him soon. But now Julian planned to be far from Fallstowe when the summons came, Lucy and Sybilla Foxe with him.
Whether she went willingly or nay.
Chapter 20
It was the middle of the night. She had come straight back to Fallstowe lands from Bellemont, although Fallstowe had not been her initial destination. She’d gone instead to the Foxe Ring, where she had laid herself down on the flat center stone in the moonlight while Octavian meandered about the ring. She had lain there for hours, watching the stars spin and slide across the sky, watching the moon flicker and glow in its misty shroud. She let the cold of the rock seep into her body, her bones, as her mother’s voice whispered to her.
I told you not to trust him! You can trust no one but yourself!
“Not even my own mother,” Sybilla breathed. “You used me to save your own skin.”
It wasn’t that way at all! I knew you could take care of yourself; you were the only one who could! If only you had heeded my direction from the start and obeyed me! You always disobeyed me!
“I disobeyed you once, and it saved England,” Sybilla answered. “You were a liar, a traitor, a betrayer, even unto your own.”
No!
“You loved Cecily, you loved Alys, but never me. I was disposable. A weapon you forged and wielded.”
I loved you best of all, don’t you see? Why can’t you see? You were the only thing in this world that was truly mine, that truly belonged only to me! Only you could do the things such as I have done, been as strong, as cunning! You were my child, alone! I trusted you with my life, with our legacy!
“I am ashamed of you,” Sybilla said, her voice catching. “Ashamed of myself, how I defended you to everyone, deflected the rumors. The true reason I kept your nasty secrets is that I knew that if I told, I would be just like you. No loyalty. No honor. And I am nothing like you.”
You are exactly like me. Youareme. We are one.
“No.”
There will come a time when you will see that what I say is true. When you love someone so much that it does not matter what happens to yourself or anyone else. You will lie or steal or kill to see them safe. I loved you, loved your sisters, loved . . . others in that way. There will come a time, and you will see.
Now Sybilla felt as though she had been formed from ice as she made her way through the darkened passages of Fallstowe from her ruined chamber. She had traded her damp and dirty gown for one of sheer, white silk, which tied at the chest and claimed simple, billowing sleeves with drawn satin ribbons. Her hair was undone, brushed down her back. Her bare feet made not the slightest whisper on the icy stones; her breathing was shallow, silent.
She came to the foot of the spiral staircase and paused, looking up for a moment.
He had come to Fallstowe knowing everything he did about her, knowing the castle would be made his if he turned her in to the king. He had fooled her into trusting him, into making her almost believe that he could love her, help her. He had played to her every weakness, and she had believed him. Most likely Julian Griffin would only have laughed at her after handing her over to Edward, smirked while she was dragged away to the gallows.
She began to climb the steps. The jeweled dagger in her cold right hand felt light, warm, alive. With each riser she gained, slowly, numbly, a different memory flashed through her mind, spanning years, going both forward and backward in time.
The way Julian had held her, threatening to snap her neck, the night he’d arrived at Fallstowe.
The weeks after Lewes, when she’d found her mother weeping bitterly over some letter she’d received.
Lucy’s warm body snuggled next to hers while she’d lain in Julian’s bed.
Morys Foxe stealing her away from her lessons to go riding through the demesne with him.
Julian Griffin destroying her bed in a rage.
Amicia’s face, tears leaking from her useless eye, her clawlike hand grasping Sybilla’s so tightly as she’d slipped away from this world.
Alys, always laughing.
Cecily’s sweet smile.
All of them gone from her now.
The chamber door was cracked open a bit, and it made not the slightest creak on its hinges as it swung open slowly, seemingly of its own accord. Sybilla stepped through the doorway, the chamber nearly as dark as the stairwell save for the little glow from the fading fire. But Sybilla was beyond the light then, full of darkness herself, and so she could see quite keenly the shape of Julian Griffin in the center of the bed.
She seemed to float over the floor to the end of the bed, then stopped there, watching him sleep. Her fingers unclenched, shifted, then curled back around the hilt of her dagger.
