His Enemy's Daughter by Terri Brisbin

about the world, and people, around her. Sighing, she nodded in reply.
    â€˜And the pain?’ he asked. Sybilla noticed a slightinflection in his voice, one she might not have if forced to look upon him.
    â€˜â€™Tis not the worst I have ever suffered through,’ she said.
    He grunted instead of answering then. She listened as he moved from her side and walked to the other side of the room.
    Into that corner. It stood as empty now as she was.
    â€˜There are things we must discuss, lady.’
    Sybilla tried to feel something, anything—even fear would have been welcomed to show she yet lived—but nothing was there inside. Even a fool would have been afraid of what was to come.
    â€˜Such as?’ she asked, simply to make this audience end sooner…so that she could return to her silent, dark world.
    â€˜Your men will not answer my questions. I tried to…encourage them to do so, but they will not betray you.’
    Dark threats swirled in his voice. Her men were alive? She clutched the arms of the wooden chair, curious for the first time in days.
    â€˜Who yet lives?’ A tiny thread of hope to hear the names of those who’d done so much to protect her tingled deep within her heart.
    â€˜Only a handful of your men were killed in the battle,’ he answered, with a tinge of insult echoing in his words. ‘It took little time or effort to breach the puny defences of this manor and keep.’
    At another time she might herself bristle at the insult offered to her as lady of this manor and keep, but none of her past pride rose to fuel her ire.
    â€˜How do you ask them to betray me?’
    Â 
    If he clenched his jaws any tighter, his teeth were sure to break. Soren held his anger in check and let out a breath. Did she know she tried his scant patience with every word she spoke?
    He stepped away from her, walked a few paces and turned to observe her with a bit of space between them. Teyen’s reports over the last sennight seemed accurate—the lady did not appear ill, though the bruises on her forehead and face retained the dark purple shades and swelling of a still-fresh injury. He could not see her eyes, for clean bandages covered them. Even uncovered, her eyes did not see. Now, she gripped the wooden arms of the chair in which she sat and he noticed her fingers relaxing and tightening when he’d mentioned her men. It was the only sign of interest in anything he’d witnessed from her in days.
    Oh, she might not know it, but he’d watched her many times since his arrival and since that terrible outpouring of grief had happened. She sat as she did now or remained abed for hours at a time—moving hardly at all, asking for or about nothing. The spirit he’d witnessed in the hall when she tried to protect her people from him had been extinguished like the flame of a candle in the wind.
    But, correctly, he’d guessed that her people would be her weakness as much as she was theirs. With a few well-placed and timed threats, he’d forced their co-operation in repairing the damage done to the walls and in organising the stores of the manor. Soren needed more information, though, information that only the lady seemed to possess.
    â€˜I need the rolls of the manor, to find how many owe service here and how many belong to the land. You know their location.’ He would have missed the slight nod if he’d not been watching her. ‘Where have you hidden them?’
    â€˜Is Algar dead, then?’ she asked in a soft voice.
    Part of him urged him to lie to her—not to add to the burden of guilt she must carry—but he tamped it down. The daughter of Durward deserved no such consideration, he told himself again.
    â€˜Aye, he is dead. We found his body in the rubble of the wall, along with four others.’
    He could have told her that they were following her with orders to get her to safety, but those words would not flow from his tongue.