They Hanged My Parents as Traitors, Now the Prince Needs My Heart novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Cup on the Road
Eleven old guardsmen ate in Sioned's kitchen that night, and I cooked for them.
I did it badly.
The oldest, who had one eye, said the stew needed salt.
The one with the empty sleeve said it needed less talking.
Dafydd sat at the end of the long table with his boots up and told them to leave me alone.
"Your father burned water," said the one-eyed man. "Don't take it to heart. It's in the blood."
"It was Mam who cooked," I said.
"It was Mam who cooked, and your father who ate it all and said it wanted pepper." He grinned at me with half his teeth. "He sang in the barracks, you know. Terrible. Every man in the company threatened to desert."
"Dafydd told me."
"Dafydd was in short trousers."
"I was fourteen," said Dafydd.
They told me stories until the candles guttered.
A winter patrol in the north, when Hywel had carried a frozen lamb down a mountain inside his coat.
A wedding, where he had danced with the cook and been sick in a flowerpot.
A night at the tower door, a few weeks before the end.
He had come off watch and sat on the bottom step for an hour with his head in his hands.
"What was wrong?" I said.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of They Hanged My Parents as Traitors, Now the Prince Needs My Heart are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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