“Yes. It is how all the daughters of the temple wear their hair.”
“Will you take it down?”
With shaking hands, she unwound her braid and ran her fingers through the strands. His fingers followed.
“It is soft . . . and it waves like the wind on the water.” The palm of his hand followed the length down her back, and something warm curled in her belly. His hand immediately fell away, as if he’d heard the hitch in her breath, but his attention was elsewhere.
“They are looking for you, Ghisla. The king has sent a guard for you, and no one knows where you are. A woman is calling your name.”
Ghisla scrambled up, but Hod was frozen, listening. “She has sent Dagmar to look in the cellar.”
She turned toward the hatch, terrified that a member of the king’s guard would suddenly emerge from the door in the hillside, calling her name.
“You cannot be seen with me,” she warned, suddenly far more afraid for Hod than she was for herself. She’d been so foolish. “The king will kill you.”
“Don’t worry, Ghisla. I am just a blind man. Everyone looks past me.”
“I didn’t.”
“No . . . I felt the moment you saw me.”
“You put your hand on your heart,” she whispered.
He nodded, and a new emotion flitted over his features.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” she whispered, aching. Scared.
“Tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. We will stay all week. I have entered the archery contest, and I plan to win.”
“How will you see the target?”
“I won’t. I will hear it.”
“How will you hear the target?”
He grinned. “Arwin will stand beside it, and I will shoot to the left.”
He could hear Ghisla singing—not in his head but with his ears. And yet . . . it brought him no joy. He was afraid for her. She’d gone back through the tunnel and into the temple, and before he’d gotten back around the wall and through the entrance gates, which were kept open for tournament traffic, she had already been escorted to the castle. She’d lied easily, saying she’d fallen asleep on a bench in the sanctum where the air was cool and quiet. The woman—Ghost—was too relieved to question her.
It was so late, and she was kept too long, her voice soaring through melodies that had no words—or if they did, she did not sing them. Hod knew she sang for an audience of one and the rest of the occupants of the mount could not hear her like he could. He would have been able to hear her from the hillside—her skittering heart and her soaring voice—but he hugged the walls of the castle until he was as close as he could get and listened until she stopped. She did not move after she ceased singing but waited as though she needed to make sure the king was truly asleep. Her heart settled and the whisper of her small feet on wood floors moved through the room, out into a corridor, and down a flight of stairs, the sound changing as she descended into an entrance hall that echoed like a cavern.
Two guards escorted her across the empty cobbles, the clap of their longer strides bracketing hers. The temple doors creaked opened and swished closed behind her, and the two guards retraced their steps, clop, clop, clop, clop, talking quietly to each other.
“During the full moon, the king cannot sleep without her,” one muttered. “It is a pattern I have noticed.”
“He cannot sleep without her . . . and he cannot sleep with her,” the other quipped. “Lothgar and the other chieftains would not stand for it.”
“He is the king. He will do what he wants.”
“Aye. It’s just a matter of time, though he’d better tread carefully. The whole country is about to blow.”
“He cannot take one of the daughters to wife. The moment he does—”
“The moment he does, the whole kingdom will fall.”
“The dam will burst. They are either off limits to all—even the king—or none.”
“The other daughters won’t be safe for a single day. Not just the daughters of the temple . . . but the women in the clans. It is a fine line he’s walking.”
“’Tis a fine line we’re all walking.”
“There are thirteen maidens in the village, all of marrying age—”