He’d sent Kelsea out into the woods that morning, unwilling to have her witness his grief. Even from her vantage point, Kelsea could see that Barty’s round face was lined, his eyes red and swollen. It opened immediately, as if Barty had been waiting there all along. “Best be done quickly.” The speaker, a tall, lean man whose authoritative tone marked him as the leader, stepped forward and knocked three times on the front door. The soldier with the mace muttered something, and their hands went automatically to their swords. These men were in their thirties and forties, and they shared a hard, weathered look that bespoke the toll of combat. As they threw back their hoods, Kelsea saw that they were nowhere near her own age. The soldiers reached the raked patch of earth in front of the cottage and dismounted.
This jewel had an annoying habit of popping out of Kelsea’s shirt minutes after she had tucked it in, which seemed fitting, for today the sapphire was the source of her trouble. A sapphire dangled from a pure silver chain around her neck. She was dressed in deep green from her hood down to her pine-colored boots. Kelsea sat, cloaked and hooded, in the fork of a tree some thirty feet from her front door. The sullen way they guided their horses toward the cottage made things very clear: they didn’t want to be here. One man even had a mace Kelsea could see its spiked head protruding from his saddle. The riders’ cloaks swayed as they rode, revealing their costly weapons: swords and short knives, all of them of Mortmesne steel. The men rode as a military company, with outliers on the corners, all dressed in the grey of the Tearling royal guard.
Kelsea Glynn sat very still, watching the troop approach her homestead. The Early History of the Tearling, AS TOLD BY MERWINIAN Fostered by Carlin and Bartholemew (Barty the Good) Glynn. THE GLYNN QUEEN-Kelsea Raleigh Glynn, seventh Queen of the Tearling.
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