Chapter 11 Scarlette
Scarlette
Iwas gathering deadfall by the sheepfold, hands numb and clean for once, when I heard his boots crunch behind me.
He didn’t speak, just held out a bundle of split wood in one hand, the other reaching to steady my elbow.
I ignored the touch, but not out of pride.
It was simpler to pretend he was a ghost and I the last woman alive.
Back in the hut, we built the fire together, working in the practiced silence of people who have run out of things to fight about.
The flames caught and grew, licking the soot-stained chimney and chasing the chill from the stones.
I sat on the ground by the hearth, spreading my skirt to dry, while Moab rooted through the pack for the morning’s meal.
“Here,” he said, offering a strip of rabbit from last night’s kill. He tore it with his teeth, then handed me the larger half, a kind of ritual I recognized from the kitchen at home, where Agnes and I would divide everything, even the punishment.
I pulled the skin off, fingers slick with grease, and ate slowly, watching him. He chewed with the concentration of a man hiding from himself.
We said nothing until the last bone was stripped. I felt the need for words, some balm for the shared quiet, but they would not come. I stared at the hearth, at the way the logs blackened and shivered under their own heat.
He was the one who broke first. “You hungry for more?”
I shook my head. “Not for food.”
He grunted, a sound that might have meant anything.
I gathered my hair in both hands, twisted it up and away from my face. The ends crackled with static and something else. “Where did you learn to change like that?” I said, keeping my voice careful. “In my world, it’s a witch’s talent.”
He didn’t answer right away. When he did, his eyes were on the flames. “No one taught me. It just happened. He shrugged, but his hands flexed on his knees, the veins standing out white against the skin. “Now, I use it when I need to.”
The memory of last night lingered, sharp as vinegar. I tried not to color it with shame. “You could have killed me,” I said.
He didn’t look up. “Didn’t want to.”
I laughed, then. I couldn’t help it. “You say that like it’s a favor.”
His mouth twitched, almost a smile. “Maybe it is.”
I let the moment stretch. The wind outside had settled, leaving only the soft complaint of the walls as they settled into themselves. I studied his profile, the way his jaw flexed when he was thinking, the scar by his eye, the animal patience in his every movement.
“You’re not what I expected,” I said.
“Neither are you,” he replied. “Not for a lady.”
I rolled my eyes, but it didn’t sting the way it should have. “I was never much good at being a lady. Ask anyone.”
He looked at me, then, really looked. “Why’d you run?” he said, voice quiet but rough around the edges. “Was it just Aldric?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. The truth sat on my tongue like a coin.
“It was everything,” I said at last. “The walls. The rules. I don’t follow rules very well.
The way they’d already decided who I was supposed to be.
” I stared at my hands, the dirt ingrained in every line. “Aldric was just the last straw.”
Moab nodded, like he understood. “They do that. The men in charge.”
I thought of my father, of Sir Aldric, of every man who had ever spoken about me instead of to me. I made a noise in my throat, not quite a word.
The silence this time was easier. I pulled my knees to my chest, warming them over the fire. “So what are you?” I asked, the question spilling out before I could stop it. “You say you weren’t always this way. What were you before?”
He scratched his chin, thinking. “Trouble, mostly.”
That made me laugh again, a real sound. “That’s not a job.”
He leaned back, boots planted wide, and let out a breath that steamed in the air. “Back home, I was Sergeant at Arms. Means I kept the peace, but mostly I broke it. Fought for my people, the club.” He hesitated, then, “It was a kind of brotherhood.”
I chewed on that. “Like knights?”
He shrugged. “Less shiny, more blood.”
I pictured it, the tattooed arms, the rituals, the code. “Did you like it?” I said.
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
But it did, and we both knew it. I wanted to press, to ask what it felt like to belong to something so completely that you’d fight or die for it. Instead, I offered what little I had. “My world isn’t so different,” I said. “You find a place, or you’re cast out. It’s just the costumes that change.”
“It hasn’t changed,” he said. “It’s still that way.” He studied me, eyes hooded. “You ever kill anyone?” he asked, not unkindly.
The question landed like a stone in the gut. “No,” I said. “Not yet.”
He grinned, and this time it was real. “You will,” he said.
We ate the rest of the meal in silence. I passed him a handful of wild berries I’d found on the walk, and he took them without a word, fingers brushing mine. The hut was warm now, the air thick with smoke and animal. I let the comfort of it settle in my bones.
When the moon rose, slanting silver through the cracks in the wall, I was the first to move. I stretched out on the straw, cradling my head in my arms. He watched me, the fire painting his face in orange and black. The wolf tattoo on his arm glimmered, the ink alive in the shifting light.
“You tired?” he said.
I closed my eyes. “No. Just resting.”
He made a soft sound, then banked the fire, careful not to let the light die completely.
I listened to the rhythm of his breath, to the way the night pressed in around us. I thought of the world outside, of the men who might be searching even now, of the promise I’d made to myself never to go back.
In the dark, he moved closer, not touching, but close enough that I could feel the heat of him. I drifted off, and when I dreamed, I dreamed of running—not from, but toward.
***
I woke to the sound of bones settling, the slow pop and creak of flesh thawing after a night in the cold.
The fire was a wound in the darkness, a single pulse of red that painted Moab’s face in sharp relief.
He sat on his haunches by the hearth, forearms braced on his knees, the wolf tattoo luminous as burnished silver in the ember light.
For a moment, I thought he was asleep, but then he looked up, eyes catching the red, and I saw that he was somewhere else entirely.
I watched him in the hush that followed, careful not to announce my waking. There was heaviness in his posture, the kind that comes after a confession or a beating. I had seen that look on men before, usually after a hunt, sometimes after a killing, never in the company of someone they trusted.
He didn’t move until the coals hissed under a drift of settling ash, the sound startling him back to the room. He rubbed his hands together, then reached into the coals with a stick, rearranging the logs with more care than the task required.
I cleared my throat, as softly as I could. “I’m awake,” I said, though it hardly mattered.
He grunted, then reached for the battered metal cup by the fire. He poured the last of the water, held it out for me.
“Thanks,” I said, wrapping both hands around the cup, more for the warmth than the contents.
He looked at my hands, then at my face. “You get cold easy.”
I smiled, embarrassed. “Always have.”
He shrugged, as if to say it was a fact of nature, like frost on a window or bruises after a fall. “I can get more water,” he said. “Or wood, if you want.”
I shook my head, sipping slowly. “No point. The cold just comes back.”
He snorted, not unkindly. “True enough.”
I watched the lines in his face as he sat back down. He was older than me, I realized, by more than a handful of years. Not old, exactly, but used to the world in a way that made it hard to imagine him ever being young.
I set the cup on the hearth, watching the steam curl away, and said, “You never finished telling me what it was like. Your brotherhood.”
He leaned back, hands tucked behind his head. For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer. But then he did, the words as blunt as the man.
“It was about the code,” he said. “About having a line you didn’t cross. Even if you broke the rest of the rules, you kept to that one.” He stretched, the leather of his jacket creaking. “It’s what kept us alive. Or thought it did.”
I nodded, remembering the stories of my father’s youth, the battles fought for lord and manor, the pride in belonging to something larger. “In my time, we have a word for that. Fealty. You swear to a lord, or a cause, and it owns you. Even when you hated it.”
He grinned, the white of his teeth a shock in the gloom. “Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”
I pulled the fur tighter around my shoulders. “So what happens when the code breaks?” I asked, voice small. “What do you do then?”
He was quiet, the question curling in the space between us like a live thing.
“You improvise,” he said at last. “Or you die.”
We let that hang. The fire sank lower, the hut cooling to stone. I watched the breath leave my lips in white puffs, watched the way his fingers drummed against the floor, restless.
“You regret it?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why I needed to know.
He looked at me, long and carefully. “Some of it,” he said. “Not all.”
I wanted to ask which parts he kept, but didn’t. Instead, I said, “You know, your brotherhood isn’t so different from knights sworn to a lord. They talk about honor, but really, it’s just about whose orders you follow. And who you bleed for.”
He snorted again, but this time it was almost a laugh. “Guess all men are the same, no matter when.”
I shook my head. “Not all.”
He glanced at my hands, still cupping the empty mug. “You ever wish you belonged somewhere?” he said.
The question stung more than I cared to admit. “Maybe once,” I said. “But then I saw what belonging cost.”
He made a sound in his throat, something halfway between a growl and a sigh. “It’s cheaper to be alone. But not better.”