Chapter 3: Broken Comrades
The silence was a physical thing, broken only by the crackle of frost under his knees and the soft rustle of Willow’s dress as she shifted. Then, a new sound carved through the chill.
Metal. A distant, rhythmic clank of plate armor, growing louder. Muffled curses echoed from the tunnel entrance. A voice, familiar and booming with misguided bravery.
“By the Sun Crown, what filth is this? Willow! Face me, you hag! Your forest ends here!”
Sir Gareth. Lloyd knew the voice instantly. A bull of a man, from a rival house, always a half-step behind Lloyd in tourney rankings, forever nursing a grudge. Of course he’d follow. Hoping to claim the glory Lloyd had failed to secure.
Lloyd froze, his back rigid under Willow’s boots. Shame, hot and new, flushed through the cold. This witness was a deeper violation.
Willow didn’t move her feet. She sighed, a sound of mild annoyance, and took a final sip from Alaric’s skull. “See?” she whispered down to Lloyd. “Noise.”
Gareth burst into the chamber, his sword a bright slash of steel in the gloom. He filled the doorway, his armor smeared with forest muck, his face flushed with exertion and triumph. “Witch! I’ve come to—“
His eyes adjusted. The triumphant battle cry died, strangled in his throat.
His gaze swept the room—the bone throne, the tapestries, the heap of Lloyd’s discarded armor—and finally landed on the scene at the foot of the dais. His jaw went slack. The point of his sword dipped toward the frost.
Lloyd kept his head down, wishing the floor would swallow him. He saw Gareth’s boots, caked in mud, rooted to the spot.
“Lloyd?” Gareth’s voice was barely a whisper, then it hardened with disgust. “Gods. What is this?”
“It’s a footstool,” Willow said cheerfully, leaning forward. Her voice was a casual knife. “Much more useful than he was as a knight. Don’t you think?”
Gareth’s face cycled through horror, pity, and a savage, gleeful contempt. The last one stuck. A cruel smile split his beard. “So the great Sir Lloyd ends as a rug. I’ll have to write a ballad.”
“He’s not ended,” Willow corrected, her tone chilling. “He’s repurposed. But you… you’re interrupting.” She lifted her boots from Lloyd’s back. The sudden absence of pressure felt like a new kind of exposure. “Get up, pet.”
Lloyd didn’t want to. Moving would make it more real for Gareth to see. But his body, trained to obey her voice, pushed him up onto his knees. He kept his eyes on the floor, his nakedness a second skin of ice.
“Look at me, Lloyd,” Gareth commanded, his old rival’s tone returning.
“He doesn’t listen to you,” Willow said. She stood, flowing from her throne like dark water. She walked to the heap of Lloyd’s gear and nudged his sword with her toe. It scraped on the frost. “He listens to me. Pick it up.”
Lloyd’s head snapped up. His eyes met Willow’s. Her expression was placid, amused.
“No,” he rasped, his voice unused.
“Yes,” she said, no louder than before. “Sir Gareth is a pollutant in my home. A loud, smelly, arrogant pollutant. Remove him.”
Gareth barked a laugh, raising his sword. “You think that broken dog can lift a blade against me? Look at him! He’s less than a man.”
That was the ember. The words blew on it. Lloyd saw not Gareth, but every sneering lord, every doubting squire, every person who had ever thought themselves his equal. The hatred found a target outside of himself.
“Pick it up,” Willow repeated, her voice slipping into that melodic, irresistible channel. “And make it messy, my pet. I so dislike neat, orderly deaths. They lack poetry.”
Lloyd’s hand moved. It felt alien, a thing of corded muscle and frozen joints. His fingers closed around the familiar leather grip of his longsword. The weight of it was an anchor. It felt like the only real thing in the room.
He stood. The cold air washed over his bare skin. He faced Gareth, who now wore a mask of uncertain defiance.
“Lloyd, don’t be a bigger fool,” Gareth spat, but he took a professional step back, settling into a guard stance. “Fight the witch, not me! Remember who you are!”
That was the problem. He didn’t know who he was anymore. The knight was a shattered idea. All that was left was the ember, and the command, and the blade.
Lloyd attacked. It wasn’t his style—no feints, no measured grace. It was a raw, overhead chop, all fury and muscle memory.
Gareth parried, the clash of steel shockingly loud in the bone room. “So that’s it?” he grunted, shoving Lloyd back. “You’re her hound now?”
Lloyd didn’t speak. He pressed, his movements efficient but brutal. He fought in silence, every clash of steel echoing Gareth’s taunts.
“Your father will hear of this! A naked dog, doing a witch’s bidding!”
A lunge. A deflected slash that nicked Gareth’s pauldron.
“They’ll strike your name from the rolls! You’ll be nothing!”
A low sweep aimed at the legs. Gareth leapt back, his balance faltering on the slick floor.
The fight was ugly. It wasn’t a duel; it was butchery in the making. Lloyd had the skill, but Gareth had the armor and the crumbling, righteous anger. Lloyd’s bare feet slid on the frost. A wild swing from Gareth caught him on the shoulder, not cutting deep but painting a red line across his skin.
The pain was clean. It focused him.
He saw an opening, a half-second where Gareth overextended, trying for a killing thrust to end the farce. Lloyd didn’t parry. He stepped inside the blade, ignoring the threat. He brought his own sword around in a short, savage arc.
It wasn’t a killing blow. It was the messy one she’d asked for.
The steel bit deep into Gareth’s thigh, above the greave. It wasn’t a slice; it was a chop, into meat and bone. Gareth screamed, a high, shocked sound. He collapsed, his leg buckling underneath him. His sword clattered from his grasp.
He fell onto his side, hands clutching at the gushing wound. His blood was startlingly red on the white frost, steaming in the cold air.
Lloyd stood over him, breathing hard, the point of his sword hovering at Gareth’s throat. Gareth’s eyes were wide with pain and terror, all contempt gone.
“Please,” Gareth whimpered. “Lloyd. Brother. Please.”
Lloyd looked from the ruined leg to the pleading face. He saw his own future in Gareth’s eyes—a thing broken and begging. The ember of hatred guttered. What was left was hollow, and cold, and waiting for instruction.
He looked back at Willow.
She had resumed her seat, one leg crossed over the other. She was leaning forward, chin resting on her hand, watching with rapt, glittering interest. She smiled, a slow, warm, approving smile meant only for him.
“Finish it,” she said softly, not a command, but a suggestion. A reward. “Then come here. You’ve earned a rest.”
Lloyd’s grip tightened on the sword. Gareth’s sobs were short, wet gasps. The smell of blood and voided bowels filled the air. He looked down at his rival, his witness, the last link to the man he had been.
He raised the blade.