Hunted Queen

Chapter Sixty Four • Shame

**Warning this chapter contains mentioning the subject of rape. This chapter contains domestic violence against women.**

Read at own volition. 

-Eleonora- 

"What is this?" She asked the very moment her brother's foot touched stone in the courtyard. 

Her lady in waiting had informed her that the king had returned, and not in a glory filled victorious manner. Around him he had only a score of men compared to the hordes he had left with and had constantly sent to him while away. 

At first, Rowan did not answer her. In fact, he seemed to ignore her or pretend like he had not heard her. She studied him from boot to helmet. As he pulled his helmet off she saw that the war had been troublesome and exhausting, even for her brutal brother. 

He appeared tired and battered. The hard face showing a faint hint of misery and hopelessness. The dirt covering his face in a bleak brown hue, she did not even think of, men got dirty in war and rarely had a proper place to bathe. 

What happened to him? Did they beat him or did he willingly retreat? She wondered when thinking of her husband and son in battle. They were skilled in combat and her husband a respected leader, but her brother had them grossly outnumbered. At least that was what he had told her. And she knew that his men was not weighed down with morals and honor. No. He would not retreat. He is too proud. 

Rowan rolled his shoulders forward and backward, stretching his sore body and handed his reigns over to one of the stable workers. All the while not answering her question. 

Those men he hired and those he had in his forces from the start was as brutal as they come. Would rape and kill without blinking. So why and how is he back here in this state? 

"Rowan." She spoke his name sharply. Demanding an answer out of him and setting of to meet him on the courtyard.

"What does it look like, sister?" He asked in return without meeting her gaze as she walked towards him. 

"Is she dead?" She threw the question at him, as harsh and sudden like an unforeseen slap to the face. Desperately clinging to what little hope she had left of her son's wife's death. To the promise Rowan had made her before leaving for the war. 

However, there had been little time for joy before she had received word that things had not gone as planned. Which she had been forced to read about, in the safety of his castle, from his letters he sent by pigeons or men whenever he had the time. The latter normally delivering longer letters of course, and the previous short updates that mostly told her if the war was going in their favor or not. 

In his initial letters, Rowan had told her that the peasant was not only carrying William's child but she was in fact within their camp. One of his men who had been captured and tortured for information had returned with the intel that the false queen had traveled to the front to tell her husband that he was to be a father. Upon reading these news, Eleonora had screamed, cursed and thrown her wine glass across the room. Because not only had she gotten the worst possible news and not able to do anything about it herself, the letter had ended with this information. 

Thankfully, in his next letter, Rowan explained that he had planned a kidnapping and conjured up a plan that would have both the peasant, and the filth growing inside of her, dead before they became an even bigger problem than the girl already was. All the while keeping Eleonora's son's fierce temper under control. 

However, after these letters, things had quickly fallen apart for her brother. In his following letters he had explained to her the chaos that had followed. His men had successfully managed to abduct the peasant in the middle of the night, gotten her back to their camp and into a cage... but for what? She had gotten away! Or more correctly, William and his men had stormed the camp and nearly burnt it all down to a crisp after having deduced that it was Rowan's men who had taken her and without hesitation come for her. How anyone would risk their life for her was a mystery to Eleonora but so was the fact that everyone in her own court seemed to have accepted the girl.