“And we certainly wouldn’t be here to entertain you, had a vampire been through here,” snapped Sable.
“That is true. Would you say you’ve seen anything strange? Out of the ordinary?”
“No. Not at all.”
The creaking of cabinet doors was followed by a faint clink.
Garin placed a precautionary hand on Lilac’s shoulder. “I’ll rip his head off. He won’t feel a thing—”
“Absolutely not,” she whispered back, frantically positioning herself between him and the doorknob. “What is your obsession with severing limbs?”
“I suppose I find it more satisfying than snapping necks,” he bristled back. “We don’t know how long he’ll be. And if he coerces them into talking, they’ll admit that they have visitors—visitors whom they haven’t suspected anything of, and therefore give them no reason to lie about.”
She shivered involuntarily against him. Even when he didn’t mean to be, he was absolutely and utterly magnetizing.
Behind her, Garin stiffened abruptly. Then, a crash rattled the wood beneath their feet, followed by Sable’s scream.
Before Lilac could gasp, Garin clamped a firm hand over her mouth.
“Funny,” came the guard’s voice, louder now. It was gruff, almost hoarse, as if he’d been straining it. “You say you haven’t seen anything strange. I’ll ask you one more time!”
“N-no,” Jeanare insisted. “We haven’t!”
“There’s a reason you can’t seem to find the kettle—” Something metal clashed to the floor. “It was already over the fire!”
“We—” Jeanare began, but the sudden sharpness of his wife’s tone cut him off abruptly.
“I don’t appreciate that tone under my roof. Put your filthy hands on my husband again and I won’t hesitate to report you to the king,” she warned, a slight tremor in her voice. “As Jeanare said, it’s been an uneventful day—just as it has been for the past forty-odd years here. We both couldn’t sleep last night so I put on a kettle and we had tea. I simply forgot to put it away. I’m not sure what perturbs you so greatly.”
Lilac frowned, throwing a puzzled glance in Garin’s direction. Sable was already lying for them.
“And just how long did sleep evade you?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said,” growled the guard, “How long did sleep evade you? How long were you awake before returning to slumber? Or is it typical for you to spend the entire day in your nightgown?”
“Perhaps twenty, thirty minutes” Sable answered curtly. “Oh, I don’t know. We made tea and went back to bed, for God’s sake.”
“So, you won’t mind if I search the house?”
After a few seconds of silence, the guard’s croaking laugh floated up the stairwell. “I don’t understand why you insist on feeding me alibi after rotten alibi. Your neighbors down the lane informed us that your fireplace was on for a few hours last night after they thought they’d heard a man screaming for help. The sheep were fussing. Someone was here.”
Garin let out a soft guttural snarl behind her.
“If I find anything, it’s straight to gallows for you both. Dishonesty during interrogation is a crime!”
A single, grating footstep at the base of the stairwell was the last thing Lilac heard before Garin spun her away from the door. As he swept her behind him, the couple’s outcry downstairs faded into susurration.
“Garin,” she groaned, digging her nails into her elbows. Her stomach twisted. She knew what he would do, regardless of what she thought.
“Stay behind me and be quiet, please.”
“But—”
“Now.”
With no choice but to obey, she scurried behind the wooden table and squinted her eyes, dreading the bloodbath she wouldn’t be able to stop.
The door creaked open. Eyes widening, even the guard looked shocked to see Garin standing there.
Lilac recognized the man immediately—the receding hairline and cinnabar beard gave it away even before she could focus in on him.
Even at his middle age and with his ale belly, Renald towered over both of them. He frowned down the length of his nose at Garin, who flashed him a contemplative smile.
Lilac shrunk behind his square shoulders while details of the guard’s life flashed before her own eyes: his young blonde wife, barely a few years her senior. Their two strawberry blond twins, both boys. With a sickening twist of her stomach, she regretted remembering at all.
“Good evening, sir,” Garin drawled almost hungrily.
Renald gaped for a moment before composing himself; he probably never expected to find someone in the first room he searched. Just as Lilac had at the inn, Renald likely sensed something was off about the man standing before him, unable to place a finger on what, exactly.