Chapter 3
MAV
Ididn’t know how she fell asleep in that dress. It belonged to someone with a crown and a court, not a woman curled up on a sad excuse for a bed in a room with more splinters than comfort. The whole of it appeared stitched from memory, burdened by a time before war and ruin.
I’d have torn the thing off in five minutes if I’d been required to wear it.
It looked designed to strangle someone politely.
I imagined all those seams, layers, and laces soaked through with rain must be terribly uncomfortable.
And yet, she lay still, breath even, lashes resting soft against her pale cheeks as if unbothered by their gripping touch.
As though the years hadn’t touched her either.
Which, apparently, they hadn’t.
Three hundred years.
Saints.
It wasn’t the first time a stranger had slept beneath my roof, or the first time it had been a woman. But the addition of a magical tether and a charming level of madness? Those were new.
Somehow, it wasn’t the worst thing to happen to me this year, only the strangest. Last month, there was a runaway herd of sheep and a jealous husband who was certain I’d slept with his wife.
I mean, I did, but I didn’t know it was his wife or that the sheep belonged to him. The sheep forgave me quicker.
I lay flat on my back, arms behind my head, staring at the cracked beam above in hopes it might offer answers. A spider web glistened in the dim light, stretched from wall to beam. I could name every creak in this floor, every draught whispering through the ill-fitted pane.
It was her I couldn’t make sense of.
What sort of woman walked barefoot into a fight, offered aid without condition, and uttered the phrase bound for a fortnight as if it were commonplace?
It’s possible she had lied; it would have been easier if she had.
I’d heard prettier and far more ridiculous lies—but something about her didn’t strike me as false.
She’d spoken plainly, as though it didn’t matter whether or not I believed her.
It wasn’t the sort of tale a man invents.
Most lies, in my experience, benefit the liar.
I couldn’t see how being stuck with someone she didn’t know would benefit her at all.
Since she’d paid for dinner, she wasn’t even getting free meals out of this.
What lunatic would willingly sleep in a random bed next to a stranger who could mean them harm?
Part of me wanted to believe. Not in spells spun through fate or any of that holy rot.
In her.
Three hundred years under a spell that slumbered her for a century at a time, only to wake to serve another. Never in my thirty years of life had I ever heard of such magic. I’d expect to hear such things in a song, right after the verse with the enchanted ring and the invisible thief.
I turned my head to look at her. Her hair had begun to dry, curling where it met her collar. Streetlamps carved her in ethereal shadows. I had to remind myself she was real. In my chambers. In my bed.
If the neighbors heard she’d come home with me—and they would—there’d be no shortage of commentary.
I’d never seen a wall thick enough to stop gossip.
I could hear their voices now. What in all the Saints’ broken halos did that washed-up bastard do to convince her to breathe the same air as him, let alone darken his doorstep?
They’d say I’d gone mad. Speculations would swirl that she’d been bought or conjured.
Or worse, they’d say nothing at all.
Because how do you explain a woman like her being with a man like me?
And what could I possibly say?
That she’d arrived strange, sodden, and striking? That she told me I was bound to her, magically and physically, for fourteen days because I’d accepted help I hadn’t known to ask for?
I rolled to my side, studying the bent cot leg I had kicked far too many times by accident.
Maybe I’d wake to find the bed empty, her presence nothing more than a ghost of warmth on threadbare linens and a rogue silver thread. Another night I could blame on ale.
Maybe I was dreaming, but luck hadn’t been able to find me yet.
My throat thickened as a sobering thought took hold. I wanted her to be real, for all of this to be real.
There was something about her that quieted the storm in me. She was strange, yes. Beautiful, surely. More than that, she felt like a ballad half-written. And for the first time in longer than I could name…I didn’t hate the idea of joining the melody.
The dream came slowly. Smoke curling through a keyhole, thin and uncertain until it was all that remained. My feet were planted in a place I hadn’t seen in years.
Verdelune, or what was left of it.
Once, it had been the heart of everything.
Morning drills. Shouted commands. The iron-sour taste of blood behind my teeth.
I’d broken my arm here and had to learn how to fence left-handed.
I’d split my knuckles on a squire who thought noise was a suitable stand-in for skill. He learned to brag from farther away.
A sycamore stood near the edge of the meandering path.
Initials were carved into the bark the year the drought nearly starved us—J.H.
and S.T., with all the grace of a drunk’s stagger.
I used to sit beneath it, binding my wrists after training, and wonder what it might be like to experience something gentle, a life that didn’t require violence to be meaningful.
It had been years since I’d thought of it, the tree or the ponderings of a young knight with a penchant for poetry under the shade of its boughs.
The courtyard was half-lit, dusk bleeding through.
The old stones lay cracked and tufted with weeds.
The fountain at the center stood dry, its basin a cradle of dead leaves.
My nostrils filled with the phantom scents of polish on my gauntlets and the scorched air of summer.
My ears waited for the clash of steel at the call of drillmasters, but the quiet remained.
A breeze wrapped around me as an unseen rope pulled at my ribs, drawing me toward a newly familiar warmth.
I turned to find Quinn standing across from me.
My heart gave a double-beat. Yes, I recognized her from having met her today, but there was something deeper, a stirring of memory I couldn’t quite place.
This place of grime and ghosts didn’t suit her, and yet, she seemed so right. My hands curled. In another life, I’d have reached for my sword, but she was no threat in the typical sense. She was dangerous in the way the cliffs of Balforte were; falling is a choice—until it’s not.
Quinn.
Barefoot still, standing where the captain once paced.
The silver gown was whole here, shimmering, moonlight made cloth, shifting with every breath of the wind.
Her hair spilled in dark waves over her shoulders, and when she turned, her bright blue eyes found me with unerring clarity.
I’d dreamed of blood and drill yards before, but I was always alone.
Maybe the tether tied more than just bodies.
Perhaps our minds now shared a connection.
She glanced around, taking in the rough stones and broken weapons. “You were a knight.”
“Yes,” I replied, a knot already forming in my stomach.
“Why are you no longer?”
The question rooted me to the barren ground. The old weight of expectation and disappointment pressed down until the specter of chainmail and armor rested on my shoulders. I let out a strangled breath.
“I broke my oath.”
Quinn tilted her head, a shadow of sorrow in her gaze. “What manner of circumstance would cause you to do so?”
The ache in my chest deepened. I shook my head once, hard. “It’s not a story I want to tell.”
She didn’t press, but the following silence carried its own demand.
A strange and sudden gust of wind whistled through the courtyard, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
My eyes flicked to the space between Quinn and me as tiny beads of light sparked and arranged themselves into shape.
A shimmering thread, no wider than a strand of hair, stretched from her chest to mine.
Its golden glow was bright enough to burn against the dark.
Shock traveled over my skin. “You see it too?”
Her fingers floated above the taut string. “The one which binds us.”
The urge to step back and sever the tie rose within me before it could bind me to something I had no chance of keeping. Instead, I stood there, staring at the line connecting us. A horn sounded, distant but growing nearer. The stones began to blur beneath my boots.
Quinn’s eyes never left mine.
And then she was gone.
I woke with a jolt.
The air was colder than it had been. My spine ached against the floor.
I lifted my gaze. Quinn was still here. I could almost see the shimmer of the connection between us, even in waking.
The scents of the sycamore and stone lingered in my nostrils.
My mouth was dry, my hands unsteady from the way she’d looked at me in the dream, as though she’d found every piece of truth I’d buried and hadn’t found the courage to name.
A small crease cut between her brows. Her fingers shifted against the blanket, reaching for something beyond her grasp. For the briefest moment, I wondered if she was reaching out for me. Part of me wished I could step back into the dream and learn the answer.