Chapter 18
Afew weeks had passed since the storm, and neither of them spoke of the night Elodie had her meltdown and tried to leave.
It hung between them, that rain-soaked confession, but not like a wall.
More like a bridge half-built—something fragile and unfinished that they both tiptoed around, afraid of adding too much weight or it might collapse.
Gareth watched her with something dangerously close to tenderness when he thought she wasn’t looking.
She caught herself reaching for him, a touch on the arm, a brush of fingers, and pulling back at the last moment, her heart hammering against her ribs.
But if words remained unspoken, other things had changed.
The morning sun slanted through the high windows of the great hall, catching dust motes and turning them to gold.
Late summer had settled over Greywatch like a benediction—nearly four months since she’d tumbled out of the sky, and the world outside hummed with the urgency of the approaching harvest. The grain fields beyond the castle walls had turned from green to burnished gold, ready for the reapers.
Plums hung heavy in the orchard, their skins blushing purple.
The heather blazed across the moors in waves of violet and rose, and the air carried the rich, drowsy scent of sun-warmed earth and ripening fruit.
Elodie paused at the entrance to the hall, a smile tugging at her lips as she surveyed the chaos within, eating a plum, the juice dripping down her chin.
Three trestle tables had been pushed together near the hearth, and around them clustered what appeared to be half the castle’s household.
Old Bertram sat at one end, his weathered face creased in concentration as he practiced fingerspelling.
But he wasn’t leading the lesson anymore—that honour had passed to Marian.
The kitchen maid stood at the head of the tables with the easy confidence of someone who’d found her calling. Her cap was askew as always, hair escaping in wild curls, but her hands moved with crisp authority as she demonstrated a sequence of signs to the assembled servants.
Again, Marian signed. Slower this time. She pointed at one of the scullery maids. You—your fingers are lazy. Make them sharp.
The girl tried again, and Marian nodded approval before turning to correct a guardsman’s posture.
She’d become indispensable over the past weeks—not just fluent in sign language, but the bridge between Gareth’s silent orders and the household’s execution of them.
When Gareth signed instructions too quickly for Bertram to catch, Marian translated.
When servants needed to report to their lord but feared his reputation, Marian coached them through their signs.
When disputes arose in the kitchens or the stables, Marian mediated in two languages at once.
You’ve created a monster, Gareth had signed to Elodie just yesterday, watching Marian organise a supply inventory with terrifying efficiency. But his expression had been warm. Proud, even.
Sir Miles—gruff, barrel-chested Captain Miles, who had once suggested that Elodie might be a demon sent to curse them all—stood near the window with his thick arms crossed. His bushy red beard couldn’t quite hide the smile threatening the corners of his mouth.
“The thumb goes under,” he rumbled. “Not over. You look like you’re trying to catch fish.”
The lieutenant tried again. Sir Miles nodded, then signed back—slowly, carefully. Good. Better.
Elodie’s throat tightened with something that felt dangerously close to joy.
This was her doing. Hers and Gareth’s together, though he’d never take credit for it.
What had started as a private language between two people who needed to communicate had spread through Greywatch like fire through dry grass.
And something miraculous had happened in the process, they’d stopped being afraid.
The servants who’d once flinched when Gareth passed now greeted him with signed good mornings and received nods of acknowledgment in return.
The guards who’d whispered about curses and demons now exchanged tactical information in a language no enemy could overhear.
The children who’d hidden from the Silent Reaper now followed him around the yard, showing off their newest signs, competing for his rare almost-smiles.
A tug at her sleeve interrupted her thoughts. Thomas, the stable boy, stood at her elbow, all elbows and freckles and barely contained energy. He signed eagerly. What is “okay”? You say it all the time.
Elodie blinked. She hadn’t realised she was still using modern expressions. “It means... everything is fine. Good. Acceptable.”
He frowned, his red hair sticking up at odd angles. “That has three meanings. How do you know which to use?”
“Context.” At his blank look, she clarified, “The way people say it. The situation.” She demonstrated, signing fine alongside, “If someone asks how you are, and you say ‘okay’”—she shrugged, made her face neutral—“it means fine. If you taste the soup and say ‘okay’”—she nodded thoughtfully—“it means good enough.”
“And if the soup is terrible?”
“Then you say ‘okay’ like this.” She made a face of polite suffering, her voice going flat and her eyebrows rising in barely concealed dismay.
Thomas’s face lit up with understanding. He practiced immediately, cycling through the variations with the intensity he brought to everything—neutral okay, approving okay, this-soup-is-an-abomination okay.
“Perfect,” Elodie said, laughing. “You’re a natural.”
He beamed and darted off, probably to practice on the first person he encountered. Elodie shook her head, still smiling. Teaching medieval people about modern expressions was either a brilliant cross-cultural exchange or a recipe for utter confusion. Possibly both.
“You look pleased with yourself.”
She turned to find Father Aldric at her elbow, his thin face arranged in an expression of grudging approval. The priest had never quite apologised for the exorcism incident, but he’d stopped making signs against evil when she passed, which felt like progress.
“I’m pleased with them,” she said, gesturing toward the impromptu lesson. “They’re learning so fast.”
“Hmph.” Father Aldric clasped his hands behind his back. “’Tis true, I confess, when you first arrived, I thought...” He trailed off, apparently unwilling to enumerate the various demonic origins he’d suspected.
“You thought I was one of the fair folk come to steal babies and curdle milk?”
His ears reddened. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. Mayhap He sent you to us for a purpose.”
Coming from Father Aldric, that was practically a declaration of undying loyalty. Elodie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning. “Perhaps He did.”
The priest nodded stiffly and retreated toward the chapel, muttering something about morning prayers. Elodie watched him go, then turned back to the hall—and found Gareth watching her from across the room.
He stood in the doorway that led to the kitchens, a cup of something in his hand, his dark hair still damp from washing.
He must have been training already, she could see the flush of exertion beneath the tan of his skin, the slight sheen of sweat at his temples that the morning air hadn’t quite dried. Their eyes met. Held.
He signed, one-handed. You are happy.
Not a question. An observation. He’d been watching her long enough to read her mood, and something about that—the attention, the seeing—made warmth bloom in her chest.
“They make me happy,” she waved a hand, indicating the room. “This makes me happy.”
You made this. His hand moved with quiet certainty. You changed everything.
He stopped close enough that she could smell wood smoke and leather and something uniquely him.
Close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze.
Close enough that when he reached out and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear, his calloused fingertips brushed her cheek like a question.
“My lord!” Bertram’s voice cracked across the moment. “The merchant from York has arrived early. He waits in the courtyard.”
Gareth’s hand dropped. His expression smoothed into the cool mask he wore in public, and Elodie felt the loss of his almost-smile like a physical ache.
He signed to her. We will speak later. Then he was gone, striding toward the courtyard with Bertram hurrying in his wake, leaving Elodie standing in the middle of the hall with her skin still tingling where he’d touched her.
Marian appeared at her elbow. “Are you well, my lady? You look...” She made a face that suggested flushed and distracted.
“Fine,” Elodie managed. “I’m fine. Just—it’s warm in here. Very warm.”
Marian’s knowing grin suggested she wasn’t fooled for a moment.
Then, her expression shifted to something more businesslike.
“The refugees—they’re settling in well. I’ve assigned the new families to quarters in the east wing, and the children are already learning signs.
” She ticked off items on her fingers. “Cook needs approval for the increased rations. The weaver’s wife wants to know if we need more wool set aside ere winter comes.
And Sir Miles asked me to tell you the patrol schedules have been updated—he’s put the new signs into practice. ”
Elodie stared at her. Four months ago, Marian had been a kitchenmaid who flinched at shadows. Now she was running half the castle’s communications.
“When did you become so terrifyingly competent?”
Marian’s gap-toothed grin returned. “I’ve always been capable, my lady. I just didn’t have a language for it before.”
The afternoon found Elodie in the herb garden with Old Wynne, her hands buried in fragrant soil as she helped harvest the last of the summer’s bounty—fat bundles of lavender and rosemary ready for drying, thyme gone woody and potent in the early September heat.
The old healer worked beside her in companionable silence, her gnarled fingers surprisingly gentle as they stripped leaves into a waiting basket.
“He watches you,” Wynne said without preamble.
Elodie’s hands stilled. “What?”
“Lord Gareth.” Wynne didn’t look up from her work. “Watches you like a hawk watches a mouse. Only softer. He thinks no one notices, the witless man.”
“I—we’re—” Elodie fumbled for words. “We’re friends. I’m teaching him to sign.”
Wynne snorted. “Taught plenty of folk plenty of things in my time. Never looked at any of them the way he looks at you.” She sat back on her heels, fixing Elodie with her sharp, rheumy gaze.
“’Tis plain as day, lass. You’re good for him.
Good for this castle. Whatever brought you here—storm or magic or the Good Lord’s own hand—you belong. ”
The words hit Elodie like a blow to the chest. You belong. Such a simple thing to say. Such an unthinkable thing to believe.
But when she opened her mouth to argue—to explain that she was a visitor, a temporary anomaly, a woman out of time who might leave eventually, somehow, someday—she found she couldn’t.
Because maybe, despite everything, Old Wynne was right.
Evening painted the sky in shades of rose and amber as Elodie walked the battlements, wrapped in her thoughts rather than her cloak—the early September air still held the day’s warmth, soft against her bare arms. Below, the inner bailey bustled with the day’s final activities—horses being led to stables, chickens shooed into coops, servants carrying buckets of water and armfuls of firewood.
And in the training yard, a small figure stood facing a much larger one.
Elodie leaned against the merlon, watching as Gareth adjusted young Thomas’s grip on a practice sword.
The stable boy couldn’t have been more than ten, all skinny limbs and oversized enthusiasm, but Gareth treated him with the same patient attention he’d give a knight who’d won his spurs.
His hands guided the boy’s arms through the motion of a basic strike, slow and careful, correcting the angle of the blade with gentle pressure.
Thomas tried again. The sword wobbled. He grimaced, then—inexplicably—made a face of exaggerated suffering.
Gareth’s brow furrowed in confusion.
Thomas signed something Elodie couldn’t quite see, and Gareth’s shoulders shook in what might have been silent laughter. He signed back, and Thomas’s face lit up with fierce concentration. He squared his shoulders. Reset his stance. Swung.
The practice blade cut cleanly through the air—not perfect, but passable. Good enough that Gareth’s stern expression softened, and he reached out to ruffle the boy’s hair.
The gesture was so quick, so unconscious, that Elodie wasn’t sure Gareth even realised he’d done it. But she saw Thomas’s face change—saw the worship in the boy’s eyes, the desperate hunger for approval that Gareth probably didn’t understand he was feeding simply by paying attention.
Her vision blurred. She blinked hard, but the tears came anyway, sliding down her cheeks in hot trails.
I love this man, she thought, and the thought no longer terrified her. I have for months.
Below, Gareth looked up. Across the yard, across the gathering dusk, their eyes met.
He signed. Are you well?
She signed back. I’m happy.
And for the first time since she’d fallen through lightning and time and landed in this time, she meant it completely.
Gareth held her gaze for a long moment. Good. You deserve happiness.
He turned back to Thomas, demonstrating another stance, and Elodie remained on the battlements, watching the man she loved teach a child to fight.
From the kitchens below, she heard Marian’s voice ring out, something about bread and the evening meal, and then a burst of laughter. Thomas’s “okay” faces must have found their audience. The sound drifted up through the summer air, warm and ordinary and impossibly precious.
She didn’t try to pretend anymore that she wanted to leave.