Captured By Her Enemy Knight

His eyes narrowed. ‘Tell me who you are.’

She swallowed her emotions, the way her body felt. She’d get through this. ‘I told you. I’m a healer.’

Eldric was glad for his walk, for his sustenance before he’d returned to confront this enemy. But the nightmare she’d been gripped in… The fact she couldn’t wake from it unsettled him.

What to do with her, bound by his hand, helpless, vulnerable? Yet she still defied him with lies, with some sort of fragility he couldn’t navigate himself around. When she looked at him with those eyes…

He couldn’t shake that she was familiar to him. That he knew her. He couldn’t seem to forget that she was a woman bound on his bed. Unfailingly stunning with something else that lured him closer to her, to desire her, which was a sick madness he couldn’t seem to reason against. It made no sense.

She. Had. Killed. His. Friends.

‘Enough of this! We will get nowhere if you continue with lies. Why do you pretend? I know who you are, little Archer.’

She flinched, just a little, just enough for him to see, and he relished it, but that was all she gave him. ‘Archer? I’m a woman. Archers are men who battle from parapets against Scotland.’

‘So aware of warriors you know their position in battle?’ he said. ‘And have you forgot you were in a tree with a bow and quiver hanging at the ready? It fell to the ground along with you. Spilled at my feet, defeated as surely as you were at that moment. And, like you, it’s trapped in this room.’

Her eyes narrowed, but they stayed on him. He both admired and detested her will. He knew she wanted to survey the room, to determine its position so, when she did free herself, she’d have the weapon at the ready. It was that very reason he’d hid it under her bed.

‘You may think you know me, sir,’ she said, ‘but I can assure you, I do not know you.’

‘You lie so easily. How can I believe you? You have been too difficult to capture not to be aware of me.’ He welcomed the malicious impulse that bolted through him then. ‘Maybe you need a reminder.’

He whipped off his tunic, turned to reveal his right arm to her and traced the top two scars. ‘Do you remember these?’

Her eyes never betrayed her. Her body remained perfectly still and he felt his anger press once again to the surface.

She should display nerves; she should be nervous. Instead, he was unnerved. He didn’t know what to do, what he would do, from one moment to another. Trained as a warrior and a spy, he only had one type of enemy these many years: ones he defeated with force.

He had fought every one of them with determination and a will to live, to defeat. They were enemies who needed to be captured or conquered, that was all.

But the Archer… This woman was the worst of them all because it felt…personal when she had killed his friends. He couldn’t explain it, but her marking him as precisely as she did; her ability to murder his closest companions wasn’t dispassionate.

And when it came to her, he didn’t burn with a righteous determination to conquer her. His hatred for her was personal. Many others had been killed by his hand, but he hadn’t bargained with the King pursuing with singularity any of them. On the battlefield, he meted out his vengeance and those who survived and escaped, he simply fought again on another field.

Not so the Archer. No, she’d marked him. Marked him and shown him what she was capable of and his need for retribution against her felt as though he’d marked her as well. Marked her as the one enemy he would defeat.

So sure of this belief that they were personal enemies, that the fact the Archer was a desirable woman—the fact she lied about her role in his life—only made his frustration blaze brighter. Why was she lying to him? He would get answers!

‘You should be aware, I didn’t actually feel the first cut you gave me,’ he said. ‘I was too intent on fighting the enemy in front of me. But Thomas’s sudden drop from his position, his sword arm flinging within my line of sight, alerted me. I was so…so aware of Thomas’s death. A friend since we were young. I felt that bolt he received in his chest.

‘Felt it, but could do nothing about it. I was still surrounded. You can imagine how I fought after that. What am I saying? You don’t have to imagine it; you watched it, didn’t you? My God, why haven’t I thought of this before? Of course you watched me. You marked me. Did my pain amuse you?

‘It must have amused you greatly because during that same battle you did it again. That one burned across my arm. Already consumed with Thomas’s death, I had to face Michael’s. You know what I did then, don’t you: called for retreat. With that arrow lodged in his throat, I called for retreat!’

Her breathing stayed the same, no finger twitched. As a warrior, everything in him demanded instant retribution. As a spy who needed information, he had to get more…creative.

Over the years, he’d promised pain to his enemies. Held a knife to throats; placed perfect cuts along the most tenderest of skin. He’d seen other spies, other warriors, mete out their own justice. Since Thomas’s death, the rage had carried him forward. The Archer deserved the harshest of punishments.

And here she was, captured, bound. He could do anything to her. Anything. Yet he found himself frustratingly bound by custom, by some moral code instilled in him.

He couldn’t raise a blade to her, couldn’t harm her. Could do nothing but rage words at her and they fell uselessly in front of him. She simply laid there, keeping her eyes on him, her breath even. With her wrists bleeding from nightmares, she looked at him as if he was the madman.

If he was mad, she was the one who brought him there. ‘This one—’ Eldric pointed to the wound directly underneath the other two ‘—I earned from you as well. It, too, preceded the killing of a man who was watching my left flank. I knew, immediately, it was you. What did you feel when I spotted you in that tree?’

She shook her head, refusing him or acknowledging his anger and pain?

This was personal. He was sure of it. He felt it in his soul.

‘Tell me this, when I found you that day. Why did you mark me? I knew it was you. You know I knew it was you. There was no need to kill Philip.’

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