It was like tossing a rock into the air. Eventually, it was going to land.
They circled the curving staircase, down into the shadows and glow of torches, her young guard in the lead, the stern-eyed captain behind, creaking with leather and clinking with steel.
She kept her fingertips on the curving wall. Composure and control were all in the moment to come, and Katarina was a master of such arts. She’d spent years honing them against the whetstone of the Irish wilderness, restraining and controlling anything reckless and fast-moving inside her, anything that might make her misstep and lose everything.
One did not maintain an English castle beyond the Pale by being reckless. Impolitic. Emotional. Tempestuous.
All things of Katarina.
She knew very well she was not fitted to rule. How many times had she been reminded of this fact? No, she’d learned the way through, and it was not her way. So, she’d hammered herself anew. She was akin to steel now. Tempered, capable of great harm.
To this dismal end.
It made one wonder why one hammered oneself at all. It made one reconsider…everything.
Even now, anger pushed at her. Anger was dangerous. It made her do intemperate things, like steal blades from warriors.
She pressed the anger down where it belonged, deep inside, with all the other dangerous things, like passion and hope.
And the madness downstairs? Naught but a misstep, a regrettable error in judgment, harkening back to the old ways. It must not be repeated.
It would not be. She was calmer now, prepared, reasoned. Leashed.
It was for the best.
All she had to do was see what punishment the Irishman thought fitting. The Irishman who had possession of her castle. The Irishman with eyes of blue ice, who had pressed his neck into a blade with terrifying intensity. Who had run his hot tongue across her ear and dared her to…to…
To what?
She stumbled on the stone steps.
They stepped out on the landing before the lord’s chambers. A crowd of soldiers milled there, as if they’d just left and were about to disperse to the various tasks attendant on conquerors.
Bran stepped forward into their midst. Loud conversations and a general sort of self-approving masculine din died down as she passed through, until there was absolute silence as she waded into the thicket of sword-bearing, hard-eyed, long-haired warriors.
Her fingertips were so cold, it felt as though they would break off if she were bumped too hard. Every man tilted his head down to peer at her as she passed by. She felt as though she was in a forest of men.
Her young guard stopped at the outer chamber door and rapped hard.
The men stared at her back, and Katarina knew, quite suddenly, what creatures on display must feel like. The giraffes and lions in the queen’s menagerie, the bears muzzled until their fight. They were fodder for food or fight. Entertainment. Not even prey anymore. Simply doomed.
To the good, doomed things did not need to wrestle with options or consider consequences. The future was laid out rather neatly, if uncomfortably. So she returned a regard as disdainful as the ones fixed on her. She slid her gaze across them all, man by man.
A few raised their eyebrows, one laughed, and then a low, male murmur rippled through their steely midst.
“You’re wasting your fight on the wrong mark, my lady,” someone observed drily, nodding toward the chamber behind her. A few rumbles of appreciative laughter followed.
She returned a cold smile. “I waste nothing. You are all my mark.”
A surprised hush swept the landing. Then, almost as one, they threw back their shaggy heads and burst into laughter.
It shook the room. Or mayhap that was inside her.
The young guard at her side spoke quietly. “He’s ready for you, my lady.”
She turned, skirts gripped in her fingertips. The door to the outer bedchamber had been pushed open. A pair of boots could be heard moving in the inner chamber.
“My lady?” Bran’s voice was quiet at her side. “You may go in.”