The giant from the doorway stared passively down at Will, his eyes small under the hood of his brow. Finally he nodded slowly, his head dipping lower into the scraggle of his beard, and then he straightened again and shuffled barefoot across the room to a pantry, where he set about slowly piling a plate with warm biscuits.
Minutes passed before he turned around again, and he handed the plate to Will, then shuffled again to the fire, where stew was bubbling on the hearth. He stirred the ladle, filled a bowl with careful dips, and handed that as well to Will, under the assumption that the food would be distributed.
The little dog yipped and snarled and hopped rigid. Dorothea spat a hiss, and the dog went streaking across the room and hid under the skirt of a chair.
It hurt to see Liam like this. The boy she had looked up to -- the boy who'd chased her up trees, stolen her sweets, raced her on horseback along the cliffside, who had pulled her up every time she had fallen -- the boy she loved, knew she loved, was in so much pain and despair she felt it like daggers in her chest.
She didn't purr. She didn't rub against him. She wasn't a cat: she was a princess. She was his love. Dorothea hopped up on the arm of the chair, nuzzled his face, and with slightly extended claws she stroked his hair, just the way she'd done whenever he came to her with his troubles. She imagined his head in her lap and her arm around him, and she would have hummed a song if she thought it would sound like a song.
There was a cure to his affliction, and Dorothea would obtain it, no matter the price.
For awhile August didn't answer. His eyes were stony and locked on a candle burning in the window of the farmhouse, and the only sound was the crunch of leaves under his feet. The vision was swirling in one eye. He concentrated to keep his course and his balance. He purposely shielded his thoughts from what was happening: he couldn't afford to let emotion affect his judgment. But maybe it was too late for that.
"My purpose is to protect," the Marshal responded in a careful voice. "It's become clear that I've only been doing the opposite. I saw Raquelle poison Liam and I did nothing. I sowed enough distrust in the dwarves that they would burn men in their sleep. I killed my own men, I lied to my king, I destroyed the princess. I would have begun a war between sister kingdoms. You were nearly dead tonight because I was preoccupied with maintaining my lies.You're only here because I brought you here. You and everyone else is only in pain because of me." He said all this flatly, his voice like a stone. "And I will continue to lie and double-cross and keep my secrets for what I think is the greater good, and you shouldn't trust me as well as you do. Don't argue." He knew Sam would try to talk him out of these dark thoughts, and he would have none of it.
The door of the farmhouse was open, and he slipped inside and kept along the wall so he wouldn't be noticed; he'd seen the questions in Will's eyes, but all he wanted was to find a bed or a couch to lay Sam on, where she could sleep safely.