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but if we stay away from the mansion we should be safe. I hear all his traps are within its halls.”
    Haern leaned his head against a branch and closed his eyes.
    “Don’t let me fall,” he said. “Please?”
    “Sleep if you must,” she said, reattaching her belt. “I’ll keep us safe.”

CHAPTER
3
    M aynard Gemcroft paced the halls, his bare feet cushioned by the thick carpet. He paced far from the windows. Even though he had paid handsomely for thick glass, he did not trust it. A heavy stone followed by a single arrow was all it’d take to lay him out on the carpet, bleeding red on the blue weave. A thin, wiry man, he lived amid constant protection with over a hundred guards. One of the three lords of the Trifect, he controlled the Gemcroft empire from within his fortress-mansion, hiring mercenaries, plotting guard routes, and approving a dozen trades a day. Only the king was as well protected.
    Yet two days prior, Maynard had nearly died.
    A guard opened a door and stepped inside. His teeth were crooked, and when he talked the sight of them disgusted Maynard. He wore chain armor, with a dark sash wrapped around his waist signifying his allegiance to the Gemcroft family line.
    “Your daughter is here to see you.”
    “Send her in,” Maynard said as he checked his robes and smoothed his hair. He always prided himself on his appearance, but lately he found less and less time to primp and preen. It seemed as if every other night he awoke to alarms and cries of trespassers. Come the morning, somewhere on the grounds, yet another guard would lie dead. It made keeping their ranks full a nightmare.
    The guard stepped out, and his daughter entered.
    “Alyssa,” said Maynard as he approached with open arms. “You’ve returned early. Were the men in the north too boring for you?”
    She was short for a lady, but her slender body was supple and strong. Maynard had never seen a man best his Alyssa in any feats of dexterity, and he knew she could outdrink many as well. Her mother had been a wild one, he remembered. A shame she had slept with another man. Leon Connington’s gentle touchers had never been given a woman so fine.
    Alyssa brushed a hand over the red hair cropped around her shoulders and woven into tight braids. Her fingers pulled aside an errant strand and tucked it behind an ear. Her green eyes twinkled with mild amusement.
    “
Boring
does not go far enough to describe them,” she said in a husky voice. “The women there preen and prattle like they’ve never heard of a cock, and so the men oblige by never pulling it out to teach them otherwise.”
    She snickered as Maynard felt his neck flush. He knew she was just trying to embarrass him. John Gandrem ruled the Northern Plains from Felwood Castle. The lord had, through his letters, kept him painfully aware of whom Alyssa had slept with. When any one of them could produce a potential heir to the Gemcroft fortune, even the most private details had to be known.
    “Must you use such … such …
common
language?” Maynard asked.
    “You sent me to live with common women. Fosters and sitters whose entire wealth couldn’t buy the privilege to clean the … filth from my bottom.”
    She winked at her father.
    “I did so for your own safety,” Maynard said. He caught her nearing the windows and put himself in the way. When he opened his mouth to explain she pressed a finger against his lips and kissed his forehead.
    Servants arrived to inform them that the evening meal was ready. Maynard took his daughter’s hand and led her through the mansion to the extravagant dining room. Suits of armor lined the walls, holding erect lances decorated with silken flags of kings, nobles, and ancient members of the family. Over a hundred chairs waited at the giant table, their dark wood upholstered in purple. Decorating the top were twelve roses, each in a ruby-encrusted vase.
    Twenty servants stood ready, although only the two leaders of the family would eat first.