The Knight's Scarred Maiden. Nicole Locke

on her cooking, not on her living with him and being a servant, maybe he would leave her alone.

      Her eyes burned now with the need to sleep. She was tired, but only a few steps more and she could rest.

      ‘Where have you been?’ Rudd said, low, soft as he stepped out of the dark side of her home.

      She stopped suddenly and blinked. It was late, the village quiet. There was no need for him to be up.

      ‘Why are you here?’ she blurted out before thinking.

      He scowled and the blunt slash of his lips turned cruel. ‘It isn’t any of your business why I’m here. But your being gone is mine, now isn’t it?’

      A strange relief swept through her tired body. She was exhausted, not thinking clearly. Rudd’s parents worried for her when she came home late as she worked on a recipe. ‘Sorry, I was in the kitchens. I should have told—’

      ‘You think I don’t know where you’ve been or how you earn your money?’ Rudd held up his coin purse, though she knew he’d already hidden the coins given to her. ‘You think I’m a fool. No one makes this kind of coin off cakes.’

      Rudd’s tone of voice was as sneering as ever, but what set her heart tripping was the choice of his words, the fact he held up the purse that she knew was mostly empty. Still she argued with him.

      ‘Of course it was for the cakes. I handed you the coins; I explained how that man requested fifty cakes by tomorrow morning. I had to make some tonight.’

      ‘Oh, I can smell the fires all over you.’ Rudd sniffed. ‘I know you were in the kitchens. But I don’t see any cakes. I just see you, walking home.’

      Home was feet away. They were on the dark and quiet side of her home now. If she had reached the front, she’d be surrounded by the lights of other homes, of the inn.

      ‘It wasn’t nice of you walking home this late, and making us wait.’ Rudd took a step closer, his legs unsteady, but still upright. He had been drinking, but not enough to make him weak. Why would she care if drink made him weak?

      But she did care. It was there in his suspicious words, in the fact he approached her on this side of the house where no one would see them. It was in the fact her heart tripped a bit more and the hairs on her neck prickled in warning.

      ‘I left the cakes in the kitchens to cool. Check if you don’t believe me. I have to make more in the morning.’ She gathered her shawl closer and moved to step around him. ‘I need to lie down and get some sleep now or else we’ll have to return the money. We’ll talk in the morning.’

      A harsh chuckle escaped his lips. ‘Oh, you’ll lie down now...but it won’t be to sleep.’

      From the other side of her home, two men emerged under the moon’s light. Two men she saw earlier at the tavern. The ones talking heatedly with Rudd, and giving her looks. Rudd looking smug. Too smug.

      She pulled herself straighter, all tiredness gone. Her heart now hammering in her chest. The men blocked her way around to the door of her home; Rudd blocked the other way. The only way to escape was to run the way she’d come, but that only led to the kitchens, to more darkness and further away from any one to help her. If there was to be help.

      ‘What is this?’

      ‘You know what it is. You do take me for a fool. I have to admit I had doubts when you handed me those coins for your cakes. But then these two men showed me the error of my ways. Showed me what more could be earned by having one such as you.’

      She eyed the men, who held menacingly still. As if they were simply waiting for her to run. And she wanted to, but with her skin tightening up around her leg, she wouldn’t get very far.

      The only choice she had was to talk her way out of this. Perhaps appeal to their greed. ‘I received that for the cakes, Rudd. Cakes I won’t make again if you go through with this. I swear upon your parents—’

      ‘Don’t you mention my parents. Don’t you ever talk about my parents again!’

      Anger, fear. The men watching her changed stance like they could feel the trap they’d laid tightening on her. She could feel it, too.

      Confusion entered her fear now. This seemed too personal. This was Rudd, the son who never visited, who returned only after their death to claim everything. The son the innkeepers spoke of once, his mother’s voice breaking in the middle of the tale before the father told her the rest. He was an awful man, and hadn’t cared for them. Yet he was angry now.

      ‘I can get you more.’ She gestured to the purse. ‘Make more cakes, make more money. Just don’t do this.’

      ‘Don’t do this?’ Rudd jingled the purse a bit. ‘It looks like you were already doing it. I’ll merely profit more than I thought today. These kind gentlemen offered money as well. Not as much as you were being paid by that knight, but a deal is a deal. And you do need to pay your debt to my parents.’

      This was personal. ‘Debt?’

      ‘You don’t know?’ Rudd laughed. ‘All the better that I get to tell the tale. Get to see your ugly pious face as I break your heart.’

      Rudd ran his eyes over her and his laugh turned ugly.

      ‘You think they kept you here with a roof over your head, feeding you because they cared for you? That you worked all hours of the day, slaved until your fingers bled because you loved them back?’

      They’d told her they loved her. So much pain she had suffered at the time, so many tears with the guilt of failing her sister, her soul, failing her family. She didn’t love herself, but the innkeepers loved her. Of course, she worked for them until her fingers bled. She’d still do it.

      ‘Oh! I can see you do believe it. They bought you. Two ageing failing innkeepers needed cheap help. Although I don’t think you came cheap to them. I believe you owe more on your debt.’

      ‘I don’t owe a debt,’ Helissent said, her eyes on the men who stepped closer. Too close. She took a couple of steps in the opposite direction and saw how their smirks increased. How had they become involved? ‘Whatever these men told you, I owe no debt.’

      ‘Oh, you do.’ Rudd ran his finger down the right side of his face. ‘My parents fixed you.’ His mouth turned like he tasted something vile. ‘Such as it is, but it was the best money could buy in these parts.’

      He spit between his teeth. ‘You think your possessions from the ashes of your home paid for that healer. No, it was my parents, who paid that healer with my inheritance.’

      He reached back and pulled out of his breeches a small, heavily written-on parchment scrap. ‘I have the evidence all here. Accounts from the healer and my parents. All about your treatment, and care, and healing.

      ‘Oh, they were crafty, paying for your care. But I know better. I was born and raised by those people, and everything became clear when this parchment was read to me. My parents were wondering if their slave would be working for them soon.’

      For a split moment, she believed his cruel words for truth, felt the pain in them, but it didn’t take away her sudden yearning and keen desperation. For in Rudd’s hands was more treasure than she’d thought she’d ever see. A parchment, a few written words from two people she’d dearly loved and would give anything to hear from again.

      She had nothing left of her own family, but Anne and John had become her second family. Now there was something of theirs, something she could read, to hold in her hand, to hear their voices again.

      As he noted her fixation on the parchment, Rudd’s eyes gleamed. Let him think he’d hurt her with the words and not with the denying of a scrap of paper. He could never know.

      ‘The way I see it, you owe me, girl. And there’s only one way a disgusting creature like you could pay me back.’

      Two sets of hands clamped on to her arms. She cried out and kicked.