“Stranger’s hells,” the man cursed. “You didn’t say it was to be the bloody daughter of Terryn Stillhour.”

  The man was tall and broad, muscled like a bull, filling most of the cramped quarters of the bare chamber. A brutal white scar slashed across travel-hardened and pale skin covered in dirt from just beneath the lower lashes of his left eye, down across his lips, and then ended somewhere on the right side of his chin. Half of the path of the scar was walled by a thick beard resembling black and steel wire that covered most of his face and neck. His eyes were hard on Lori and her, two blood rubies shining violently in the torchlight. It appeared as though he had been traveling along the red road for many moons based on the state of his armor and lack of grooming. There was no identifying sigil on his breastplate or the black surcoat draped over the chair, and neither bore obvious house colors. This did not look like a standard wandering free sword she had ever seen. He looked far more menacing and feral.

  “Aye,” Lori said. “And you’ll train her just the same.”

  “Lori…” Wes choked out from behind her and Lori. Wrena saw tremors in the fist he had clenched at his side.

  “Wine before talk,” the man said curtly. The three children of House Stillhour did not move. “Now. Or I take my leave.”

  The three of them stumbled out of the small chamber into the sunlight of the courtyard. Wrena was all but gasping for air. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath the entire time they were in the room. Wes looked pale as he turned to face Lori. “The fucking Torment, Lori?” He was shaking—from anger or terror she did not know. “That is who you bring for her? Where in the unknown realms is your head at? You’ve brought a damned black knight to our keep!”

  Realization of what Wes had said about torment came over her. He was not talking about the feeling, but the near-legend of horror. The man inside their guest keep was the Torment of Grimstone Crag. And Lori had brought the unoathed beast right to their castle.

  “I swear it on the known and forgotten gods, Wes, I didn’t know who he was,” Lori said, his voice pained as he held his palms outstretched in front of him. “I never laid eyes on him. I overheard the lads in the garrison talking of seeing a wandering sword at the alehouse, so I sent a dove beseeching his services and to train a young apprentice. Even so, we cannot be completely certain it is him.”

  “Oh, I’m certain,” Wes said through his teeth. “That scar and blood-soaked eyes tell me all I need to know.” Wrena had never seen him angry, and it frightened her to witness the Sunlit Son shake with fury towards their lifelong friend and heart-brother.

  “He will take his leave by the time we finish our lessons today. And you will tell him so after bringing him his wine and a purse of coin. There will be no ill blood between House Stillhour and the bloody Torment of Grimstone Crag.”

  Wes stormed off towards the practice yard. Her eyes followed him, and the faintest movement caught in the corner of her eye. A quick, unassuming search of the area and Wrena spied Ser Eviyn standing in the shadows of the sheltered walkway above the yard. He had watched the feud unravel with his shrewd eyes. Fellow comrades and rivals alike whispered the gruesome and cunning tales of the Bloody Hawk around the hearth fire. On and off the field of battle his all-seeing eyes observed and tallied every score with a steady, cold patience. When he deemed the time right, his enemies would pay with their lives for whatever treachery his observations unveiled. Whether the deed called for the sword or not was not up for determination, as the Bloody Hawk only sought payment in blood. It wasn’t mere blessed fortune that led him to be her lord father’s master-at-arms, but also the brotherhood between the two. Ser Eviyn had been the ward of her lord grandfather, Merryn Stillhour, and remained faithful to their house through the Battle of Brothers and his knighthood shortly after. Most often, Wrena only saw him as Ser Eviyn, their stern but amicable master-at-arms who had played hiders-and-seeker with the Stillhour children in the yard, with the bushy black mustache and pale head free of hair. Where he stood hidden from unknowing eyes under the shroud of shadows, it was made aware to her that she now bore witness to the Bloody Hawk. Their business with the Torment would not stay secret from their lord father for long. She added Ser Eviyn to her mental list of people to contend with —a list that was swiftly becoming more difficult to manage with each passing day.

  “I will get the wine and talk to the Torment, Lori,” Wrena said softly.

  “Wrena, I honestly wasn’t sure. Or maybe I hoped he wasn’t, I don’t know.” Lori shook his head. “Either way, you shouldn’t be with him alone.”

  “Why, because I’m a lady?” Wrena said as she poked his chest. “I have my knife on me, I will be all right. You have mending to do with Wes, and Ser Eviyn has his eyes on you.”

  Lori worked his jaw, the battle of duties warring in his mind apparent on his face. He didn’t want her to brave the Torment of Grimstone Crag alone, but also didn’t want to face Ser Eviyn’s usual method of punishment—climbing down and back up the Cliffs of Unrest on the thousands-of-years old ill-maintained Path of Pain. Wrena had thought to walk it once to see what all the fuss was about after the lads had come back weeping and complaining from their first encounter with the Path. When she saw the devilishly steep and winding pass stretch beneath where she stood at the edge of the cliffside, she had turned back. And she’d never made light of it again.

  “If that really is the Torment, I don’t trust him. I’d sooner face the Path than your death, ” Lori said with a wink.

  Lori split off on their way to the kitchens to tell Ser Eviyn that he would be late due to helping Wrena with a problem. That was one way to put it. Wrena entered the kitchens that sat on the northwest side of the castle and found Granny Clem sitting at the workbench with her grandson Jornyn on her lap in the pantry outside the main cooking area. She was peeling potatoes and talking amicably with Mourna, one of the scullions, and her young daughter, Lily. The smell of fresh loaves, onions, and garlic cloves filled her nostrils as she entered the limewashed chamber. White walls with high arched ceilings and wooden shelves and drawers gave the room an open and temperate air. She had loved the kitchens as a younger girl, having dreamt of becoming a baker before her eyes first laid on Silence outside of her sheath. Cold steel had taken the place of ground wheat and the warmth of the hearths, though she still took pleasure in coming to them.

  “Lady Wrena,” Granny Clem called to her. “What brings you to the kitchens, dear?”

  “I’m in need of a flagon of wine,” she replied. “And discretion.”

  “Bit early on in your life to develop such a thirst, my lady,” Granny Clem said. “Will your guest also be in want of some bread?”

  “We have a guest?” Wrena asked with feigned surprise. That was a quick one, she was getting better at that.

  That notion was quickly squashed like a beetle.

  “That might have worked on your lady mother, but it won’t work on me, child,” Granny Clem said. She handed two-year-old Jornyn over to Mourna who quickly took her and her daughter’s leave. The sudden departure did not bode well for Wrena. With a quick inhale, the beloved crone of their family pushed herself up from the workbench. Joints cracked as she righted herself and inched her way towards the far end of the pantry cupboards where the ready-to-drink wine was kept waiting for its chance to jumble the minds of men.

  “You needn’t have gotten up, Granny Clem!” Wrena shrieked. She winced with each crack of her aged bones as she walked. “I only needed to know where it was stored. Please, sit.”

  When the old woman made no move to heed her, she rushed to Granny Clem’s side and offered a supporting arm. It was swatted away by gnarled hands. “Bah! I chased you and your siblings around the great hall with these bones, I can certainly fetch some wine from across the chamber with them, child,” she chuckled.

  Stubborn old crone. Wrena grinned to herself at the fierce nature of the woman who’d had a strong hand in rearing her—which was no painless duty. Few in Westermin understood the wild heart that drummed in her chest, and fewer still had the means in which to temper it. Granny Clem was a woman cast-iron forged by the benevolent gods of the Stillwood, lending her formidable will and soft heart to the children of House Stillhour for four generations. The twisted, knurled hands speckled with dark spots and creased like rumpled silk had helped bring twelve Stillhour babes into the light of the world, cradled them by the hearth as she whispered stories of the faeries of the Stillwood, and issued due discipline. Muddled brown hair was long ago replaced with the white of a dove that crowned her head, and was rolled into a simple bun that was mainstay to her. She still wore the gold and black livery that marked her as a servant of House Stillhour, though she had long been retired. Her father had said once that Granny Clem was mythed to have been a great beauty when she first arrived at Westermin to become his lord grandfather’s wet nurse. That was hard for Wrena to imagine when gazing at the withered and age-bent form in front of her. She did not enjoy imagining herself becoming an old woman, unable to climb the outside walls of the aviary tower, wield a sword, or ride a great destrier. However, advancing in years was not an honored privilege common to knights.

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  Granny Clem brought the flagon of wine to the far left counter that housed the castle's bread and placed a day-old loaf in a basket with dried and salted venison. Arriving back at the table she bade Wrena to take a seat before she delivered the goods to the Torment. “Now,” she began, “I haven’t a need of knowing why that black knight has taken up in our guest house. But I’ve enough wits about me still to warn you of what a dangerous predicament you’ve tangled yourself in.”

  Wrena stared at the waves of grain in the ash-colored ironwood table. Would that Lori hadn’t brought the beast here and she never offered to resolve it. The Stranger take him and his ill-fortuned favors. Despite the dread she felt when considering the Torment, curiosity coursed through her like a cur on the hunt. “What do you know of the Torment, Granny Clem?”

  The crone’s gaze on her seemed aglow like the fires of the hearth around which she told her stories. “They say the northlands house of Grimstone Crag has giant’s blood running through their icy veins—tall and broad and hale as the forgotten rulers of the Winnowing Peaks. Long ago, when the Nordal people crossed the Newkings Sea and found purchase on the eastern shores of Ileth, giants had reigned masters of this realm. The formidable natives of Ileth stood as tall as our wall around the fortress, their skin the hue of a storming sky and their eyes made of fire and blood. In a wave of fury and desperation for Ileth’s fertile land, the mighty warrior Nordals took fate by the sword and decreed that all five kingdoms run red with the blood of the giants. Seeing the end of his kind in a divine dream from their gods, the king of the giants, Ruli’aath the Wise, went under the cloak of starlight to beseech a compact between the sons of Norda and its clans. They favored the impregnable passes of the Winnowing Peaks to the north, and vowing to forever bend the knee to the Nordal king and lord of the known lands of Ileth, took ownership of that land for thousands of years until only whispers of their kind remained.

  “That same blood is believed to run through the veins of the lords of Grimstone Crag. They are the descendants of Ruli’aath the Wise and—along with our Stillwood and the creatures of the Stygian Wastes—they are the dying embers of the forgotten gods. They are a brutal and fearsome people, the most savage of the northlands houses. Who you know as the Torment was at one time a young child, not too unlike yourself. But the rearing of their little lords is a cruel and vicious affair that twists the souls and minds of their young, ensuring to breed the fiercest warriors and fighters in the realms when the duty calls. Prior to his renown, the Torment was known as Montayne Fiuress, third son of Lord Wyzn Fiuress of Grimstone Crag—”

  “Third son?” Wrena asked. “Vitasan Marsun told me that House Fiuress only has two sons; Wycell the heir and his younger brother, Viktar.”

  “Aye, and I was getting to that, girl.” Granny Clem chided. “Vitasan Marsun did not speak in err as now there are, indeed, only two Fiuress sons recognized. The second-born son was cast out from the vassal house and declared forgotten to the family for the grave sin that Montayne committed. Even the descendants of brutes have lines they do not cross. ‘What wicked wile did the young lord enact’ you might be asking yourself, for I see the question ready to squeal like a burning kettle from your lips. Patience, child. There’s art to a story, after all.

  “Shortly after his eighteenth name day, his lady mother died under what the realm knew only as mysterious circumstances. The fearsome Lord Wyzn cast a shroud around the fortress, commanding absolute silence of his people on the matter of his second son and the mistress of the Crag. And yet, whispers of the manner of Lady Hermina Fiuress’ death leaked and trickled in small streams down the Winnowing Peaks, spreading as ink in water throughout the five kingdoms. In those whispers the realm learned that Montayne Fiuress had thrown his lady mother from her favorite tower in their castle, the one now known as Starfell after her untimely death, laughing and howling in revelry as she plummeted ten thousand feet to her death. His lord father and his steward found him on the balcony of the turret, his eyes shining in the light of the full moon with a muted oath of chaos, covered in blood and laughing like the Stranger took his heart. There, with the stars above that his mother cherished as his witness, Montayne swore to forfeit the life of his brother, Wycell, along with every member of the house and vowed to be the torment of House Fiuress and Grimstone Crag until he was the last to draw breath. They cast him in the dungeons that night, though at dawn of the next day, his cell was found empty. Who had helped him, no one knew or gave tell of. The man has been a black knight since, wandering the realm, looking for a house to ally with him for the chance to sate his thirst for vengeance. But honorable lords will not openly have a black knight in their service for fear of ill repute and drawing on the wrath of the North.”

  “But…why? Why kill his mother?” The thought of the unknown woman falling from the renowned heights of the Crag’s Starfell tower made Wrena sick. What level of madness could drive a boy to inflict such an atrocity against his mother and vow to end his house, she did not know. The world felt darker with this knowledge, of learning what men without virtue are capable of.

  “I suspect no one other than your guest would know the answer to that,” Granny Clem responded. “I would advise you not to ask him—it’s said that mention of it sends him to fury and lends him the blackened hand of the Stranger.”

  Wrena nodded slowly and took all that she heard in. Going back to that small chamber and standing in the shadow of such a man turned her bowels to liquid. Thankfully, she would not be alone. But she did not think Lori would be enough to stay the Torment’s hand if he did erupt. “Thank you for your council, Granny Clem. I should be on my way, then…and wash my hands of our guest.”

  “Wise choice, girl.”

  She had returned to peeling her potatoes. As though Wrena’s chore was to send a letter on the wings of a dove from the aviary, and not release a harpy from within an adder pit. “You won’t tell Father, will you?” she asked. Fear of her lord father’s disappointment rivaled her fear of facing the Torment.

  Granny Clem snickered. “Oh, my sweet dove-winged child. If you think your Father lacks awareness of the goings on of his castle, your hopes of reaching that senseless dream you claw so blindly for are far lower than you’d like. You’re much too smart for that, lady Wrena, so act like it. You’re of an age now, so put these childish ways behind you where they belong.”

  Heat spread through Wrena’s cheeks and she clenched her jaw, barring it from a childish retort that climbed up from the fire that burned in her chest at Granny’s insult. She snatched the basket and flagon from the table and stormed out of the kitchens. Her feet smacked across stone, and then the wet earth of the yard, anger snapping at her heels. No one in Westermin believed in her. Her lord father and lady mother, the servants, the guards, nasty Dinna Lestreyne, Ser Eviyn—no one. She was looked at as a young and foolish girl, steadfast in her immaturity and refusing to accept the cup being passed to her as she comes of an age. She would not drink from that cup. Her tongue would shrivel up and fall from her mouth before she quenched her thirst and accepted the chains of a lady’s duty. Let them laugh as they drown her in it. She would not yield.

  Blind with ire and shadowed by her thoughts, she had not seen Lori where he stood awaiting her near the entrance to the side yard where the guest house sat.

  “What held you so—Wrena, what’s the matter?” Lori asked, changing course when he saw the fierceness of her gait and the redness of her face.

  “It’s nothing,” she bit out. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “All right…are you sure there’s nothing—”

  “I said it’s nothing,” she said. She released a shaky breath. It felt hot on her tongue. “I don’t wish to speak on it, Lori.”

  “I will do this alone, you need not enter the harpy nest with me,” he said and gave her a lopsided reassuring smile.

  “But I’m a harpy, remember?” She forced a smirk back. There wasn’t ‘no one’ who believed in her in Westermin, really. There was Lori, with his hair made of fire and his heart brimming with faith in her.

  “Aye,” he said and tousled her hair. “That you are, my lady. Let’s be on with it, then.” They both looked to the plain, wooden door that presently shielded them from the Torment of Grimstone Crag. Nothing to do but open it. Yet there they both stood, mute—two minds lost in contemplation of what would happen when that barrier was removed.

  He’s only a man, Wrena reminded herself. Only a man renowned for his horrid nature and fondness of torture. She threw up a wall to those thoughts and turned the knob of the door, pushing it open.

  In the modest ironwood chair in the back right corner of the chamber sat not the overbearing form of the Torment, but an imposing man nonetheless—crowned by honey and wheat hair streaked with white, bearing a strong boxy jaw lined with a neatly trimmed beard of sand and snow, and eyes that sparkled the same shade of blue as the Quiet Sea beneath them.

  The man that sat before the two was Wrena’s lord father, Lord Terryn Stillhour of Westermin.