While Owain was drinking and feasting with his fellow hunters in the Lothian hunting lodge and Jocelynn had just crawled into her luxuriously soft bed to sleep off the effects of too much wine, someone else was 'enjoying' the far more humble comforts of a room in the Broken Blade Tavern in the village of Maeril.
The room smelled of tallow and old wood, and the bed was a miserable thing.
Lady Cerys Stormbrook sat propped against the headboard with her broken arm cradled in a linen sling that chafed at the back of her neck every time she shifted her weight. The mattress beneath her was stuffed with straw rather than feathers, and it crinkled and poked through the threadbare fabric whenever she moved, which meant she'd barely rested since the strange, dark-eyed merchant had deposited them in this room more than an hour ago.
