A knock sounded loudly on the door, reverberating through the entire house. That noise had Ryanna blinking, sitting up in bed and listening with groggy eyes-half open, ears straining. That harsh knock sounded again, along with the click of metal against the wooden door. Ryanna thought for a moment, thinking it might be rings, but not sure, getting up either way. She pulled her cloak from the peg once she got to the door, putting it on and wrapping it around her for modesty. No need to be answering the door in just a tunic.
Ryanna reached for the knob, turning it slowly before flinging the door open.
“So, a little bird told me someone was having too much fun at the Gulbrand Farm.”
Ryanna regretted her decision to get up the moment she opened the door.
* * * * *
She knew.
It had been just two days since Ryanna opened the door that night, and she had barely gone out since. Ryanna had gone in the morning after the incident, to tell Kysis she could not work for a few days. He had been concerned, but Ryanna had given up no information, leaving as quickly as she came. She had not been stalking the night patrols either, preferring the solitude of her home to anything else.
It had been a long two days.
Ryanna reached her hand up slowly, touching the cut running from her cheek bone, curling up and around to knick the edge of her left eyebrow before continuing up a little into her forehead. It still stung. Ryanna flinched, putting her hand back down. There were worse wounds than that. There was a bruise on her right cheek, where she had been hit so hard it knocked her cold. There were thin red lines all on her back, from a fine-tipped whip.
Those words still clung to her mind, the last words she had heard before receiving the full force of a back-hand, ring carving its own red line across her face, the one she had just touched. When Ryanna had backed up, pleaded for her to see reason, another hit came, everything going black. She had woken up to excruciating pain. Her tormentor had been there when she came to, a wicked smile on her lips, a message on them too. Ryanna could not forget those words, either.
“Remember, affairs above your head are to remain that way, commoner. If that pretty little nose of yours shoves itself in any place even questionable, I’ll break it.”
Ryanna shivered, even though it wasn’t cold. She had a full fire burning, was sitting in front of it, on the floor. Though she wore beige pants that she normally considered comfortable, it did not feel so now. Her tunic was what bothered her, off-white linen hanging painfully over her wounds, blood prickling the cloth in mirror of the bloody design beneath it. If it didn’t hurt to be lying down (at least how she generally slept, on her back), she’d be curled up beneath the sheets, sleeping the pain away. Ryanna did not even want to go out, in the state she was in.
Had anyone even noticed her absence?
The fire didn’t even feel warm after the visit by Lady Maracatte. Nothing could.