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Saeryn was uncomfortable with the way the conversation had turned. The eyes of the two men gave away what their carefully chosen words did not, and Saeryn could not ignore the barely cloaked hostility. Her pity for the Dunlending turned to blame and fear.
Why had this man come here? Saeryn had finally found a place in which hard words rarely pierced flesh. She had escaped her brother's angry moods, replacing his oppressive lordship first with Bethberry's kind and maternal caring, and now Eodwine, as close to a father as she'd had in years, as her friend and leader. She had not sworn to him... he had not asked it... she was not even certain if she would.
To be bound again to one place... to be kept and chained by duty that she would perform freely... as long as questions never lingered whether or not her choice was free.
Eodwine would make this man swear fealty. Would he make Saeryn? He had every right... it was his hall, his lands. Saeryn worked for him, but as a friend. Would she become one of his people, as this man must?
If the Dunlending stayed, would Saeryn's life be filled again with bubbling emotion, rarely displayed, but always felt?
She stroked the head of the kitten in her darkened corner and shivered at the prospect.
She had not believed Eodwine capable of bad feeling... she had only encountered him smiling, or at worst, guarding his friends against enemies. While she knew that he must have a weakness, something that could gall him beyond all else, she had assumed that it would be fleeting. She had hoped that it would be.
If this man stayed... Saeryn worried that she would not. She could not... would not... live again in a place where anger was ever present. She could not allow herself to be bound.
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