A Feast of Dragons - By Morgan Rice Page 0,69

a different person.

“I sought you out to apologize,” he said. “I was lying to you. And your brother. I came to tell you the truth. About your father. I was told you were up this way, and I came here looking for you. I stumbled across your encounter with this man. I’m fortunate that I did.”

Gwen looked at Steffen with a whole new sense of gratitude and admiration. She also felt a burning curiosity to know.

She was about to ask him, but this time Steffen needed no prodding.

“A blade did indeed fall down the chute that night,” he said. “A dagger. I found it, and took it for myself. I hid it. I don’t know why. But I thought it unusual. And valuable. It is not every day something like that falls down. It was thrown into the waste, so I saw no harm in keeping it for myself.”

He cleared his throat.

“But as fate would have it, my master beat me that night. He beat me every night, from the time I began working there, for thirty years. He was a cruel, horrific man. I accepted it every night. But that night, I’d had enough. Do you see these lashes on my back?”

He turned and lifted his shirt, and Gwen flinched at the sight: he was covered in lacerations.

Steffen turned back.

“I had reached my limit. And that dagger, it was in my hands. Without thinking, I took my revenge. I defended myself.”

He pleaded with her.

“My lady, I am not a murderer. You must believe me.”

Her heart went out to him.

“I do believe you,” she said, reaching out and clasping his hands.

He looked up, eyes welling with tears of gratitude.

“You do?” he asked, like a little boy.

She nodded back.

“I did not tell you,” he added, “because I feared you would have me imprisoned for the death of my master. But you have to understand, it was self-defense. And you promised once that if I told you I would not go to jail.”

“And I still do,” Gwen said, meaning it. “You shall not go to jail. But you must help me find the owner of that dagger. I need to put my father’s killer away.”

Steffen reached into his waist, and pulled out an object wrapped in a rag. He reached out and handed it to her, placing it in her palm.

Slowly, she pulled it back, revealing the weapon he had found. As Gwen felt the weight of it in her palm, her heart pounded. She felt a chill. She was holding her father’s murder weapon. She wanted to throw it away, get as far away from it as she could.

But at the same time, she was transfixed. She saw the stains on it, saw the hilt. She gingerly turned it over every which way.

“I see no markings on it, my lady,” Steffen said. “Nothing that would indicate its owner.”

But Gwen had been raised around royal weapons her entire life, and Steffen had not. She knew where to look, and what to look for. She turned it upside down, and looked at the bottom of the hilt. Just in case, just in some off-chance it belonged to a member of the royal family.

As she did, her heart stopped. There were the initials: GAN.

Gareth Andrew MacGil.

It was her brother’s knife.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Gwen walked beside Godfrey, her mind reeling from her encounter with Gareth’s dog, with Steffen. She could still feel the scrapes on her knees and elbows, and felt traumatized as she thought how close she had come to dying. She also felt traumatized to think that she had just killed a man. Her hands still shook, as she relived her swinging that iron staff again and again.

Yet at the same time, she also felt profoundly grateful to be alive, and profoundly grateful to Steffen for saving her life. She had badly underestimated him, underestimated what a good person he was, regardless of his appearance, his role in his master’s murder, which was clearly deserved and self-defense. She was ashamed at herself for judging him based on his appearance. He had found in her a friend for life. When all this was over, she was determined to not let him wallow away in the basement anymore. She was determined to pay him back, to make his life better somehow. He was a tragic character. She would find a way to help him.

Godfrey looked more concerned than ever as the two of them marched down the castle corridors; he had been aghast as she’d recounted