Chapter 758: A Stolen Throne (Part One)
"Kiss the ring ’o Dame Sybyll Hanrahan, and help me put an end to the usurper’s line!"
Sitting on the floor and struggling to take deep breaths, Sir Carwyn stared at the signet ring bearing the seal of the Hanrahan Barony, blinking several times in confusion. Dame Sybyll Hanrahan? When had the Hanrahans ever produced a woman who could be awarded the title of a knight? And she claimed to be Baron Ian Hanrahan’s cousin?
But she was a vampire! How could a vampire be related in any way to one of the noble houses of the Kingdom of Gaal, much less the one he was pledged to serve?
Sybyll’s demand left Carwyn stunned and confused but it drew exactly the opposite reaction from Hugo.
"No, you can’t," Hugo said, scrambling around the dinner table to put himself between the vampire and the fallen knight. "Don’t do this to him," Hugo said. "He, he’s a good man who won’t compromise his oaths. If you have a problem with my father, or a problem with me, then, then take it up with me."
"But don’t ask a good man like Sir Carwynn to break his oaths," Hugo pleaded. "He, he deserves better than that," he said, though his voice grew weaker and less confident toward the end as Sybyll’s crimson eyes bored into him.
Hugo’s heart thundered in his chest and he needed to keep a hand on the back of a chair in order to keep himself upright with knees that felt like jelly, but he refused to move out of Sybyll’s way. He’d just been thinking about how pure and upright Sir Carwyn was compared to his own bent and twisted self and he wasn’t about to let this woman who claimed to be his cousin do to Sir Carwyn what Owain and Sir Rain had already done to him.
"So there is a spine to ya, cousin," Sybyll said with a light, musical chuckle that sent a shiver down Hugo’s spine. "So be it," she said, withdrawing her hand and tucking the ring back into the pouch at her waist.
"Since yer willin’ ta stand fer him, I won’t make it rough on you," she said as she returned to her seat. Her posture when she sat was hardly dignified or lady-like, and the high slit in her red dress parted enough to reveal an exceptionally toned and well muscled thigh, but Syble gave no sign that she even noticed. Instead, she reached for the bottle of wine on the table, pulling out the cork with her bare hand and taking a long swallow directly from the bottle.
"I told ya ta sit, didn’a I?" Sybyll said as she looked from Hugo to Carwyn and back again before she gestured at their seats with the bottle in her hand. "Sit, drink with me, I won’t be here long. I jus’ came ta take a look at me little cousin."