The Hall of Teeth
The travel from secure safehouse to confrontation ground consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The laughter from the hall below was a sound of grinding stones, harsh and mocking. Reid Blackthorn’s voice, amplified by the high stone ceiling of the Royal Council chamber, was a triumph of performance. Gideon stood on the rampart, the wind from the mountain peaks cutting through his wool cloak. The fire behind him, the one they’d built as a signal, crackled and spat, a defiant orange star in the encroaching twilight.
He watched the scene unfold below through the crenellations. The council lords, a flock of black and grey, had been herded into the chamber like sheep by Reid’s men, their faces a mixture of fear and outrage. Owen Blackthorn stood at his father’s right hand, a sneer carved onto his face. Reid was mid-speech, his words a venomous stream aimed at the absent Gideon and the woman who stood beside him.
Freya’s face was pale, but her eyes were dry. She held Liam’s hand tightly. The boy, so small against the vast, cold expanse of the courtyard, stood straight, his chin lifted in a way that was painfully reminiscent of his father. His other hand was tucked inside his coat, clutching something—probably the carved wooden horse Gideon had given him a year ago. A meager comfort in a fortress of enemies.
Gideon’s hands were steady on the cold stone of the rampart. The plan had been for him to slip away with Freya and Liam, to use the beacon as a signal to their allies in the valley. But Reid’s herald had arrived before the fire had even fully caught, bearing a proclamation that was less an offer of truce than a final, arrogant demand. The words were branded into Gideon’s memory: *’…the so-called Lady Freya, known whore of the northern marches, and her bastard whelp… present themselves before the King’s Council to answer for their treason.’*
He had seen the flicker of fear in Freya’s eyes when the herald read those words. He had seen her swallow it, her jaw setting with a cold resolve even as her knuckles went white around Liam’s hand. She had not been broken. She had been ignited.
Now, watching Reid play to his audience of terrified lords, Gideon felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. He turned from the rampart, his gaze finding Freya’s across the short span of the battlement. The firelight danced in her eyes, turning them to molten gold. There was no fear left in her expression. What he saw was a burning, focused fury.
His voice was low, a grim rasp that cut through the wind’s howl. “Reid’s proclamation calls you a whore and Liam a bastard. So much for their flag of truce.”
Freya didn’t flinch. She looked down at the top of Liam’s head, then back at Gideon. “Then we give them no more lies to trade in.” Her voice was quiet, but it was the quiet of a blade being drawn from a sheath. “They want a fight in that hall of teeth. Let’s walk into it.”
Gideon held her gaze for a long moment. He saw not the girl he’d married in a hurried midnight ceremony, nor the frightened mother he’d found in the mountain village. He saw the Lady of Halden Hall, the woman who had kept his name a secret, who had navigated a court of vipers for years to protect their son. The plan had been to run, to buy time. But the fire had already been lit. Running now would only leave them hunted in the dark. Here, in the light, in front of the realm’s skeptical lords, was the only ground that mattered.
“My lord,” Dorian’s voice was a low rumble from the shadows of the stairwell. He was a mountain of a man, his face half-scarred and his eyes scanning the courtyard below with a predator’s calm. “Five of our men are positioned. The rest are holding the inner bailey, but if Reid’s men seal the hall, we’ll be cut off.”
“We won’t be coming out,” Gideon said, his gaze never leaving the hall below. “We’re going in to end this.”
Dorian’s hand tightened on the pommel of his sword. “Then we make our own way out.”
They didn’t use the main gate. Gideon led them down a servant’s staircase, through a low, damp passage that smelled of old wine and rat droppings, and into the shadows of the council hall’s antechamber. The heavy oak door before them was aged, its wood carved with the sigils of old houses, the Blackthorn wolf prominent among them. He could hear Reid’s voice through the wood, smooth and poisoned.
“…and this is the measure of our king’s peace! A Northman whelp who would burn our stores and steal our kin, hiding behind a woman’s skirts! He does not even dare to look us in the eye!”
A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd. Gideon heard a lord’s reedy voice pipe up, “And where is the woman, Lord Reid? You said she would be brought to answer!”
“She is being found,” Owen snapped, his voice sharp with youthful arrogance. “She cannot have gone far with a brat in tow.”
Gideon’s hand went to the latch. He glanced back at Freya. Her face was a pale mask, but her eyes were steady on his. Liam stood beside her, his small hand placed trustingly in hers. He wasn’t trembling, merely watching his father with wide, serious eyes. Gideon gave him a slow, deliberate wink. It was a small gesture, but it was a promise.
He turned the latch, pushed the door open, and stepped into the lion’s den.
Every head in the chamber swiveled. Conversation died as if a bucket of water had been thrown on a fire. The council lords, a collection of greybeards and nervous younger sons in fine velvets, stared as Gideon walked forward, his boots echoing on the stone floor. He wasn’t wearing armor, just a dark tunic and a heavy cloak, but he moved with the unhurried, controlled grace of a man who had faced down worse than a room full of muttering nobles. Dorian and four of his guards filed in behind him, taking positions at the door, their hands resting on their sword hilts.
Reid Blackthorn’s face went from theatrical outrage to genuine, cold fury. His hand, resting on his ornately carved chair, clenched. Owen took a half-step forward, his face flushing with color. “Crane! You have the audacity to—”
“I have the right,” Gideon’s voice was calm, measured, cutting Owen off. He didn’t raise it, but it carried to every corner of the silent hall. “I have the right to stand before the King’s Council and answer these charges.”
Reid recovered quickly, a sneer twisting his lips. “You have the right to be hanged. You come here uninvited, armed, and you dare to disrupt the King’s justice?”
“I came to present the truth, Brother Blackthorn,” Gideon said, the title dripping with contempt. “Something you seem universally allergic to.”
Before Reid could retort, there was a rustle of fabric at the back of the hall. Freya was walking up the aisle, her head high, her hand firm around Liam’s. She didn’t look at the murmuring lords. She didn’t look at Owen’s smirk or Reid’s glare. Her eyes were fixed on Gideon, and they were blazing. She stopped in the center of the floor, directly before the high table where the council sat, and placed her son in front of her as a shield of pride, not one of fear.
“Lord Reid,” she said, her voice clear and unwavering. “You called me a whore. You called my son a bastard. You have dragged my name and my blood through the mud to hide your own thievery.”
The chamber erupted. Lord Arden, an old man with a kind, rheumy eye, rapped his cane on the floor. “Silence! Let the woman speak!”
Reid’s face was a thundercloud. “This is a mockery! I will not listen to the ravings of a common—”
“The only mockery here is your claim,” Freya’s voice cut through his bluster like a winter gale. “Threats. You came to my home, with soldiers, and ordered me to disappear. You told me my son would be ‘dealt with’ if I failed to vanish. Owen,” she turned her gaze to the younger man, who paled, “was more generous. He offered to let the boy live if I left the North forever. His own father was willing to kill a child to protect a piece of paper.”
She spoke the words calmly, as if recounting a mundane shopping trip. The lords looked at the Blackthorns, shock and suspicion in their eyes. Owen’s hand twitched, but his father silenced him with a gesture.
“She lies,” Reid said, his voice flat. “A desperate fabrication to save her own skin. I have proof of her husband’s death in the Crusades.”
Gideon stepped forward. “You have proof of a man who died in the sands of Acre. A man who never signed a marriage contract with Freya. You have proof of your own forgery.”
He produced a long, leather-bound ledger from his coat and held it up. “This is the physician’s ledger from my father’s holdings. You, Reid, or your father before you, had this page burned or rewritten to claim a child was born out of wedlock. The truth is written in the ink used, in the weave of the parchment, in the age of the binding.”
He let the words sink in, then gestured to the back of the hall. “And I have a witness. A man of the cloth who performed a marriage, in the chapel at Winter’s Crest, seven years ago this spring.”
An older man in simple grey robes stepped hesitantly from the shadows, his face pale. “I… I remember the ceremony. It was a small affair. The lady was in a simple blue dress. The lord was wounded, but his eyes were bright. They exchanged vows before God.”
A collective gasp went through the council. The ledger and the priest together were a powerful, undeniable testament in this age of word against word. Reid was fuming, his fists clenched on the chair arms. He was losing the room.
“A wife?” Owen spat, his face turning ugly. “A secret marriage? How romantic. And yet you still produced a child in sin, a weakling—”
“Enough.” The voice wasn’t Gideon’s. It was a shrill, furious cry. All eyes turned to see Liam.
The boy was no longer standing quietly. He had stepped forward, his small fists balled at his sides, his face red with a child’s raw, uncomprehending anger. “My father is not weak! You are a liar!”
Time seemed to stop.
Owen’s smile was a flash of white, predatory. “Ah. The little wolf has a bite.” He moved.
It was a blur of motion. Owen surged forward, his long stride eating up the distance before anyone could react. His hand lashed out, grabbing a fistful of Liam’s coarse wool collar and yanking the boy off his feet. A small, jagged dagger appeared in his other hand, glinting in the candlelight as he pressed it against the soft skin of Liam’s throat.
A scream was torn from Freya’s lips. “NO!”
“Dorian! The doors!” Gideon roared, but Reid had already acted. At his father’s signal, a half-dozen of his guards had slammed the heavy hall doors shut, the sound like a death knell. Dorian threw his massive shoulder against them, but the bar was dropped into place from the outside. They were sealed in.
The lords recoiled in a flurry of black velvet and panicked shouts. Owen dragged the struggling boy backwards, toward a small, vaulted archway on the far side of the room that led down into the crypt. It was a chilling, deliberate move. The chill of the stone tomb, the finality.
“Owen, you fool! Put the boy down!” Reid snapped, but there was no conviction in his voice. He was watching the room, calculating.
“They’ve taken the lady’s story as truth,” Owen hissed, his face contorted with rage and fear. “Let them look at the truth of her blood! A boy who shrieks and claws like a girl! He is no born lord!”
“Dorian!” Gideon’s eyes remained fixed on Owen and Liam. Dorian was already moving. He wasn’t a man who talked. He was a man who acted. He didn’t draw his sword, but he threw it, a single spinning arc of steel that clattered across the stone floor, sliding to a halt at Gideon’s feet.
The world narrowed to a single point of light: the steel at his feet, the boy in a madman’s grip, the wife he’d loved in his peripheral vision. Freya was on her knees, her arms outstretched, her face a mask of terror. The lords were frozen, a tableau of fear.
Owen dragged Liam to the top of the short set of worn stone steps that led down into the crypt. The air coming from the hole was cold and damp. He held the boy up like a trophy, his hand twisted in the child’s hair, forcing his head back, exposing the pale column of his throat to the assembled council.
The dagger was sharp, a sliver of polished steel. A single tremor of Owen’s hand and it would be over.
“Let him go, Owen!” Gideon’s voice was low, a rumble that was more vibration than sound. He didn’t move from his spot, his hands held out slightly, palms open, a show of surrender. “This is between you and me.”
Owen’s breath was ragged. “You see, lords? You see the panic in the great lord’s eyes? He cares for nothing but his own blood! A man who would burn a kingdom for a single bastard! Is this the man you wish to rule you?”
Gideon’s eyes flicked to Freya. Her gaze was locked on Liam, her lips moving in a silent prayer. He looked at his son. Liam’s eyes were wide, but beyond the terror, there was a flicker of something else—a silent plea for his father to act, to do something, to prove the tales his mother had told him were true.
Owen shook the boy. “Kneel, Gideon, or watch your only heir bleed out on the stone.”