Ida stood completely frozen at the doorway of her bedroom. Her hands trembled wildly at her sides. The hallway of the servants’ quarters felt exactly like a cold graveyard.
Seeing General Damon standing here was completely impossible. He belonged in the grand, luxurious master bedroom on the second floor. He did not belong in the narrow, damp corridors where the staff slept.
Ida swallowed hard. A huge, thick lump ford in her throat, making it difficult to breathe. She forced her dry mouth to make a sound.
"Is there trouble, my lord?" she asked. Her voice was thin, weak, and incredibly shaky. She tried to force a polite, sleepy smile onto her face, but her facial muscles refused to cooperate.
Damon did not answer her imdiately. His dark eyes stared right through her, cold and hollow. He stepped forward, crossing the threshold and entering her room.
He limped slightly on his injured left leg, but his body was still as solid and imposing as a massive mountain. In his right hand, he held an unsheathed heavy steel sword. He did not lift the weapon up. Instead, he let the sharp tal tip rest heavily against the wooden floorboards.
As he walked forward into the room, he dragged the heavy sword behind him.
Screech.
Scrape.
The sharp tal scraped harshly against the old wood. It made a slow, terrifying, high-pitched sound that echoed off the stone walls.
Ida saw the naked steel blade shining in the dim candlelight of her room. A cold, sticky sweat broke out across her wrinkled forehead. She quickly raised her trembling hands and covered her mouth tightly. She did not want to scream. She desperately needed to avoid waking her daughter, Nancy, who was sleeping deeply on the small wooden bed in the dark corner of the room.
Her mind began to race with sheer panic.
"Did he find out?" Ida asked herself, her heart beating wildly and painfully against her ribs.
"No, no, that is completely impossible," she tried to reason within her own thoughts. "How could he possibly know? I was so careful."
She thought about her plan. She had carefully covered her tracks in the stables late at night. She had sliced the leather saddle perfectly. She had stolen Lady Camilla’s personal white handkerchief from the laundry basket. She had used the most suitable scapegoat in the entire mansion.
"It was the perfect plan," Ida thought, her breathing becoming fast and shallow. "Everyone already hates Camilla. She is weak and annoying. It was so easy to fra the young wife. No one would ever suspect the loyal head maid who raised the General."
But as Ida looked deeply into Damon’s dark, furious eyes, her false confidence completely shattered. The look on his face told her everything she needed to know. He knew the absolute truth. The secret was completely out.
Damon took another slow, heavy step forward.
Screech.
The sword dragged across the floor again.
Ida took a step backward. For every step Damon took toward the front, she moved one step back. She felt the cold stone wall of the small room press against her back. She was totally trapped. There was no door behind her. There was no window large enough to escape through.
She looked up at his broad shoulders, his thick chest, and his hard, unblinking eyes. She knew, with absolute and terrifying certainty, that she was going to die tonight.
Damon stopped walking. He stood in the center of the small servant’s room. He looked down at the older woman trembling against the wall.
This was the woman who had baked him sweet apple breads when he was a lonely, grieving little boy. This was the woman who had wiped his tears when he fell off his first horse. She had been his protector when his parents died.
"How could you do this to , Ida?" Damon finally spoke.
His deep voice filled the small room. It was not a loud shout, but it carried a heavy, crushing weight that pressed down on Ida’s chest.
"You are the spy my uncle sent," Damon stated. It was a firm fact, not a question.
Ida shook her head slowly from side to side. Tears welled up in her eyes, spilling over her eyelashes and running down her wrinkled cheeks. But she could not find the words to deny his accusation. Her throat was locked tight with fear.
"You made believe it was Camilla," Damon continued. His voice cracked slightly, revealing the deep, raw emotional pain hiding right behind his anger. "You made suspect her."
Damon thought about the past year of his life. He thought about how poorly he had treated his young wife because he believed Camilla was the spy sent by his uncle.
"You made hate her," Damon said, his grip on the sword handle tightening until his knuckles turned pure white. "You whispered lies into my ear every single morning when you poured my tea. You told she was evil. You told she was greedy. You made distance myself from my own wife, while everything terrible that happened in this house was actually caused by you."
The pain in his voice could be heard clearly. It was the devastating pain of a son who had been deeply betrayed by a mother figure. He was a smart, intelligent military general. He could outthink enemy commanders and win massive wars, but he had been completely blind to the enemy living inside his own ho.
"You betrayed ," Damon said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, dark whisper. "I took you as my own mother, and you pushed to the wolves."
Damon lifted the heavy sword just one inch off the ground. The scraping sound finally stopped.
"If I wasn’t fast that day of the accident," Damon said, his eyes turning colder and harder than winter ice. "If my reflexes had been just one second slower when that saddle broke, I would have been crushed beneath the horse. I would have lost my legs permanently. Or I would be lying in a wooden coffin right now."
Ida continued to cry silently, her hands still covering her mouth.
"And then," Damon explained, unraveling the entire political plot, "the General title goes straight to my Uncle’s family. They take my wealth. They take my army. That was the plan you agreed to."
Damon took a deep breath. "You also made lose the bid for the land on the outskirts. You stole my private letters from my desk and sent them to my rivals. You sold my military secrets for gold."
Ida could not take the heavy pressure of his words anymore. Her old legs completely gave out beneath her.
She dropped heavily onto her knees. The hard wooden floor bruised her skin, but she did not care. She pulled her hands away from her mouth and pressed her palms together in front of her chest in a desperate prayer.
"Please forgive , my lord!" Ida begged for her life. Her voice was wet with tears and full of pathetic desperation. "Please spare ! They threatened ! They promised so much money! I was weak and foolish! Please have rcy on an old woman!"
Damon looked down at her kneeling figure. The sadness in his heart was quickly swallowed by a massive, burning, violent rage. He felt physically sick to his stomach looking at her.
"You disgust ," Damon said, his upper lip curling in pure, unadulterated hatred.
He took a step closer to her kneeling body.
"How much did they offer you that I couldn’t provide?" Damon demanded angrily. "You lived in my grand house. You ate my finest food. You had power over my staff. I gave you everything a person could ever want! Tell , Ida!"
He lost his calm control completely. He shouted the last words so loudly that the small wooden furniture in the room actually shook.
"Tell !"
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