A March of Kings - By Morgan Rice Page 0,16
with her.
Thor burst through the crowd himself, Krohn at his heels, weaving this way and that as the crowd grew thick, trying to follow her trail, to catch up with her. Finally, he broke free from the outskirts and spotted her running, far away from the others.
“Gwendolyn!” he screamed out.
She kept running, and Thor chased after her, running double speed, Krohn yelping alongside him. Thor ran faster and faster, until his lungs burned, and finally, he managed to close the gap between them.
He grabbed one of her arms, stopping her.
She wheeled, her eyes red, flooded with tears, her long hair clinging to her cheeks, and threw his hand off.
“Leave me be!” she screamed. “I don’t want to see you! Ever again!”
“Gwendolyn,” Thor pleaded, “I did not kill your father. I had nothing to do with his death. He said so himself. Don’t you realize that? I was trying to save him, not to hurt him.”
She tried to flee, but he held her wrist and did not let her go. He could not let her go—not this time. She struggled against him, but did not try to run anymore. She was too busy, weeping.
“I know you didn’t kill him,” she said. “But that doesn’t make you any better. How dare you come and try to speak with me after you humiliated me in front of all the others? Especially now, of all times.”
“But you don’t understand. I didn’t do anything at that brothel. It was all lies. None of it is true. Someone is trying to slander me.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“So then are you telling me you did not go to that brothel?”
Thor hesitated, unsure what to say.
“I did. I went with all the others.”
“And are you saying you did not enter a room with some strange woman?”
Thor looked down, embarrassed, unsure how to respond.
“I suppose I did, but—”
“No buts,” she interrupted. “You admit it then. You’re disgusting. I want nothing more to do with you.”
Her face transformed from distraught to furious. She stopped her crying, as her expression changed to one of rage. She got very calm, got close to him, and said.
“I never want to see your face. Never again. Do you understand me? I don’t know what I was thinking to spend any time with you at all. My mother was right. You are just a commoner. You are beneath me.”
Her words stung him to his very soul. He felt as if he’d been stabbed.
He let go of her wrist, took several steps back. Perhaps Alton had been right after all. Perhaps he had just been another plaything for her.
He turned without another word and headed away from her, Krohn at his side, and for the first time since he had arrived, he wondered if there were anything left for him here.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gwendolyn stood there, at the edge of the cliff, watching Thor walk away, and feeling more torn apart by anguish than she ever had. First her father; now Thor. It was a day unlike any she had ever had. She could not even describe the unfathomable grief that tore her part at the thought of her father being dead. Dead by some assassin’s hand, taken away from her without even a moment’s notice. It just wasn’t fair. He was the light of her life, and some stranger had taken him away from her for good.
When Gwen had discovered the news, she had wanted to die herself. Last night had been like one long nightmare, and this morning, like the peak of it. As his body went into the earth, she had wanted to leap in with him, and never come out.
When Gwen burst from the crowd, she had even been thinking about jumping over the edge of the cliff herself. Until Thor arrived.
Seeing him, in some strange way, snapped her out of it, had made things better, had taken her mind off her father—although in another way, it had also made things far worse. She was still furious with him, still burned with anger for his making a fool of her in that brothel. She had taken a chance by being with a commoner, and he had proved everyone right about her recklessness. Including her mother. She felt shamed beyond what she could imagine.
And now the gall of him, to show up here, to try to make things right, while he himself admitted that he had been there, with that woman. The thought of it was enough to make her sick.
As she watched Thor