Page 22 of The Iron Hex

Not that there hadn’t beenanypain.

Rhona needed to find Lady Maeve so she could try to figure out what was going on with her predictive capabilities. Certain kinds of magic were still permitted—seering was decidedly not one of them. Seeing the future gave witches too much power to affect it, and the De Clare dynasty had used seers totheir advantage for hundreds of years—seers and other, more dangerous, magic.

It was teatime, which meant that the ladies were likely in one of the sitting rooms waiting for their husbands or fellow courtiers to finish their jobs for the day. It was a gossip pit full of viperous noblewomen, and Rhona hated it. Rhona had never been a fan of gossip; it was always just another way to be cruel to her as she grew up. She suspected the noblewomen used it as an opportunity to withhold acceptance from other women. But Rhona Mayhew was a knight of the Iron Empire and could go wherever she pleased in the castle, so she headed in the direction of the sitting room that overlooked the cliffs and the cold, dark sea.

The room was seafoam green, with tiny cream-and-pink flowers painted on the walls. Matching cushions and chairs and chaises peppered the room in groups of three to six so that the women could congregate in whatever size gathering they wished. Rhona hated this room—it epitomized everything she despised about the refined women she’d wanted to be like growing up. Nothing like this existed in her family’s tiny farmhouse.

She scanned the area and spotted Lady Maeve Heathecote in a group with two other women. There was a seat near a window where Rhona could hear what the women were saying. As Rhona walked past them the three women lapsed into silence, watching her as she stomped through the room. Rhona’s eyes connected for the briefest flash with Lady Heathecote’s before she turned and sat in the plush wingback chair, cracking the spine of her military strategy book and pretending to read.

It took the women a while to continue their discussion and Rhona could still feel their eyes periodically on her, wondering why she was here.Not for any reason you think, Rhona thought.

“Did you hear that Lord Wilmer nearly died today?” thewhite-haired one said, Lady Langley. Her father was a tavern keeper who had opened luxury taverns in some of the larger cities in Astra. He wanted to ensure that other nobles had a safe place to stay when they went to a town where they didn’t own land, and it was proving to be a great way for his family to gain status quickly.

“I did not hear that,” Lady Heathecote said, her dainty hand lifting a teacup to her full lips as she spoke. Rhona found herself staring at the woman as she watched the motion, her book forgotten.

“Apparently,” Lady Langley said as she leaned in toward the other two women conspiratorially, “he was trying to throw himself off the cliff and a knight saved him.”

Rhona scoffed before she could stop herself. Shit.

She looked up to see the three women looking at her, Lady Heathecote’s dark eyebrow raised slightly.

“Excuse me?” the third woman said. Rhona wasn’t entirely sure who she was; there were new nobles cropping up every day in the Iron Empire.

“Forgive me, ladies,” Rhona said, her face warming. “I overheard what you were saying and couldn’t help but react when I heard something untrue.”

“Untrue?” Lady Langley chuckled.

Rhona watched Lady Heathecote smirk as she tilted her cup to her lips. She knew.

“Lord Wilmer did not intentionally attempt to fall off the cliffside. He had partaken in... a little too much liquor and lost his balance. I caught him before anything bad could occur.” Rhona waited for Lady Maeve’s reaction, hoping she’d be able to decipher something from it.

“Isn’t that wonderful news?” Lady Heathecote grinned. “We ladies are forever in awe of the capabilities of our Iron Retinue guards.”

“It’s simply our job,” Rhona said, trying not to arrest Lady Heathecote right where she smugly sat. What was she playing at? As if she hadn’t warned Rhona about Lord Wilmer. If Rhona could have passed off Lady Heathecote’s comment to her as simply knowledge of Lord Wilmer’s drunkenness before, she certainly wouldn’t be able to now. This would be the perfect opportunity for the lady to use her knowledge of his drinking as powerful gossip fuel. Saying nothing to her friends, pretending that it was all Rhona, well, that made her even more suspicious. But if she was smart enough to hide her seering capabilities from her friends, why did she feel confident potentially exposing them to Rhona? Perplexing.

“Well, you’ve all proven time and time again that you were well chosen for knighthood,” Lady Langley said dismissively before turning back to the other, newer noblewoman and continuing their conversation.

Rhona turned back to her book but could feel the weight of eyes on her. As she looked up, her gaze connected with Lady Heathecote’s, who was watching her. Watching, and unafraid to look away.

They sat there, looking at each other for a moment that stretched on, and Rhona did everything she could to stop herself from blushing at the persistent eye contact. Lady Heathecote was everything Rhona wanted to be: petite and beautiful, with perfectly coiffed hair and dresses that accentuated her perfectly proportioned, curvy body in the perfect way. Rhona was big and gruff and strong, and everything that Lady Heathecote wasn’t. If the lady was the perfect woman in Rhona’s eyes, well, it would be even more of a betrayal for a woman soperfectto actually be a witch using illegal magic.

Their gazes finally parted and Rhona felt the warmth of anger, and perhaps of something else, leaving her.

The three women fell into silence once again, reading books they had placed on the tables beside them, and Rhona felt thepangs of hunger, a stark reminder that she’d now skipped two meals to observe this situation.

She stood abruptly, drawing the attention once again of the ladies reading their books, and walked out of the sitting room, only feeling like herself again once she was back in the barracks and heading to get something to eat.

14

Eira

Eira fell through the doorframe, the nearly deadweight of a barely conscious Hugo over her back. He was definitely bleeding all over the only cloak she had with her—bleeding because he’d been stabbed. Stabbed by whoever,whatever, the hell that thing was. The thing she’d ultimately dispatched. Did that make her a murderer?

She heaved Hugo onto the bed with a grunt and Pennyroyal immediately jumped up to him, sniffing the part of his shoulder where he’d been injured.

“Penny,” Eira said, pushing her away. “I need to work.”

The rabbit turned and hopped, giving Eira just enough space to work.