Page 25 of Leila’s Legacy

She leaned her back to the cold wall, tucked her knees to her chest and let her mind drift from one painful thought to another. About her sisters, about her father, about the Lion. She wished he would not show her kindness, that he would be as cruel as Alban.

She rested her forehead on her bent knees. Her visions had always been so frustrating. Showing who but not how—or how but not when—or any other combination of the three. She always had pieces that never fit into anything whole, especially when it came to her own future. To where she was now.

“Ye’re awake.” A masculine voice sounded from the barred door.

Not the Lion. Leila made the assessment before she even lifted her head. This man’s voice was not as deep and lacked the authoritative edge. She looked up to find a reiver with wavy dark hair standing outside her cell. He crouched and slid a plate through the gap in the bars near the floor. The space was not large enough to climb through, but wide enough to properly deliver food and a bit of ale.

A spear of light streaking through the shutters cast its light over the plate, revealing a heel of brown bread and a knob of cheese. Her stomach knotted at the idea of eating, but still she thanked the man who had brought it to her. He continued to watch her through the bars.

“Are ye a witch?” he asked.

“I’m not,” Leila replied honestly.

“But ye are a healer?”

“I’ve been trained in the art of healing and know much about herbs.” Leila got to her feet to better look at the man who stood several feet away.

“My sister’s been sick more than a sennight.” He glanced behind him, as though he feared someone catching him speaking to her. “No one will see to her. All the healers are dead and anyone who could help willna for fear she’s ill with the pestilence. ‘Tis no’ the pestilence, but I canna get anyone to listen.”

“Does she have swelling at her armpits, neck or groin?” Leila asked.

The reiver shook his head.

“Is she coughing up bloody sputum or vomiting blood?” Leila tensed. Heaven help them if that illness descended up on them.

He shook his head again and her body relaxed.

“Can ye help her?” The reiver asked. “Even if ye are a witch, if ye can cast a spell—”

“I’m no witch, but I have herbs that can help. In the basket I dropped, there are several small linen bags with herbs in them. They are to cool a fever and ease body aches. If it is simply a fever, it will aid her. If it is something more than a fever, I would need to see her to offer better guidance.”

He lowered his head in gratitude and opened his mouth to say something more. A clattering came from the front of the prison and sent him jumping back from her cell as though the bars had burned him. Someone was coming.

Leila’s heart slammed hard in her chest. She straightened from her position against the wall to peer into the hall, to glimpse who had arrived.

Mayhap it was the villagers come to break her bones. Mayhap it was the Lion with his kindness and gentle hands.

“Leila.” The voice echoing down the long hall was all too familiar and filled with desperation.

Leila’s heart crumpled with recognition.

He was perhaps the one person who could destroy her control. Already, the stoic reserve around her had started to crack.

“Papa.” Leila whispered his name from lips that did not move.

She had not called him that in years. Not since she was old enough to realize the ugly truth of her birth, that her true father had been a marauder, a murderer, a thief and a rapist. She could not say Papa after that, not when she was so undeserving. Yet, neither could she bring herself to so formally refer to him as Lord Werrick.

She pressed herself to the icy bars of her cell. They stank of old iron, a dirty, metallic odor that she tried to ignore. “Father?” Her voice broke and echoed back at her from those cold whitewashed walls.

The clipped footsteps coming toward her fell faster and suddenly, he was there. Lord Werrick, the man who had always loved her as a father, stood before her cell in his regal doublet and mantle. He sucked in a pained breath as he regarded her, his eyes filled with such hurt that another crack splintered through Leila’s composure.

“Leila.” He said her name in a thick voice. Exhaustion lined his face and created shadowed hollows beneath his eyes.

“Father.” The word quavered in the thin air and she had to swallow before speaking again. “You should not have come. The pestilence—it’s too dangerous—”

“God himself would not be able to keep me from coming for you.” He rushed to the iron barred door and grasped her fingers in his warm, warm hand.

She wanted to curl her entire being against him to revel in that heat, the way she’d done as a girl when she sat on his lap, his chest rumbling at her back as he spoke, telling tales of wandering knights and defeated dragons. She was no little girl now though, and this was no story. He could not stay. It was far too dangerous.