Chapter 8 - The Father’s Betrayal
Only one person remained near the open doors.
Roland Thorne stood frozen in the snow, his face pale as a sheet, staring at the terrifying man who had just dismantled five trained warriors without breaking a sweat.
Davian turned his cold, golden gaze toward Roland.
He walked slowly toward the old man, his bare chest slick with sweat from the brief exertion, his wounds firmly closed. Roland dropped to his knees in the snow, weeping hysterically.
"Your Majesty! Forgive me!" Roland sobbed, beating his hands against his own chest. "I didn't know! I didn't know she brought you here! I was just trying to clear my debt! I am a ruined man!"
Davian stopped three feet from him, looking down at him with utter disgust.
"You sold your daughter," Davian said softly. "A woman who carried you through your grief, who worked your tavern without pay, who risked her life in a blizzard to save a stranger. You traded her soul for two hundred silver marks and a bottle of whiskey."
"I had no choice!" Roland shrieked.
"You had every choice," Davian growled. He turned his back on Roland and walked over to Dorothy, extending his hand to her. "Come, Dorothy. We leave for the capitol."
Dorothy looked at Davian’s hand—broad, warm, and strong. Then she looked past him at her father, kneeling weeping in the snow.
Despite everything—despite the tavern, the debt, the contract, and the ultimate betrayal—a deep, painful knot tightened in her chest.
She walked past Davian and stepped out into the snow, stopping in front of her kneeling father.
Roland looked up, his eyes filled with pitiful hope. "Dorothy... my girl... tell him! Tell him I brought you up! Tell him to clear my debts!"
Dorothy looked down at him. The tears in her eyes dried up, replaced by a profound, hollow stillness.
"The King cleared your debts, Father," she said, her voice terrifyingly quiet. "The crown will pay Voss the three thousand marks. You are a free man."
Roland gasped, a wet smile touching his lips. "Dorothy... thank you... you can come back to the tavern—"
"No," Dorothy interrupted.
She took off her old wool shawl—the one her mother had made for her years ago—and dropped it softly onto Roland’s trembling knees.
"You sold me, Father," Dorothy whispered, her voice breaking slightly before holding firm. "You signed the paper that traded my freedom away. The debt is paid, but Dorothy Thorne is dead to you. I have no father. And you have no daughter."
Roland’s breath hitched. "Dorothy... no... please..."
She turned her back on him and walked back into the barn.
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Davian watched her, his golden eyes filled with a quiet, profound respect. He did not offer empty words of comfort. He simply wrapped his heavy fur coat—which one of the enforcers had dropped in his panic—around her shoulders, pulled her close against his warm side, and led her out the back door toward the eastern road.
Behind them, Roland Thorne’s weeping faded into the howling wind of the blizzard, until there was nothing left but silence.
