The Scar Between Us
? Roman ?
I don’t sleep so much as lose the room for a while.
When I wake, Nora is cutting the blood-stiff bandage away from my side. Dawn has reached the windows, and every movement reminds me how badly I handled the night.
“Where’s Ivy?”
“In her rooms.”
“Did she make it there?”
“Yes. Water, half a piece of bread, and no collapse.” Nora glances at me. “That’s all you’re getting until I finish this.”
I wait while she cleans the wound. The scar is quieter than it should be, which makes it harder to ignore the memory of Ivy’s hand beside it.
“What did it cost her?”
“More than she admitted. Less than it’d have if she’d tried to take the pain instead of standing with you.”
“She shouldn’t have needed to do either.”
“She chose to.”
“She was exhausted.”
“So were you.” Nora ties off the clean bandage. “Neither of you understood the cost. Now you know more.”
I look toward the fire. “I almost kissed her.”
“I assumed.”
“She was carrying Eastmere. The bond was active. I’m twelve years older than she is.”
“Yes.”
I turn toward her. “That’s all?”
“The age matters. The vow matters. So does what Ivy says.” Nora drops the bloodied cloth into the basin. “You keep reaching for the facts that justify your fear and dropping the rest.”
“She hasn’t had enough choices that were real.”
“That should make you listen harder, not decide faster.”
The answer is blunt enough to sound like her.
A knock interrupts us before I can answer. Dane enters with snow on his shoulders, Holt behind him carrying an evidence case he looks ready to defend with his life.
“The quarry scouts found Lysa’s wool,” Dane says. “No blood. The trail continues south after the bridge.”
“I saw the relay.”
“There’s more.” Holt sets the case on the table and opens it. Inside lies a brass wagon plate blackened by fire. “Eastmere’s survivors pulled this from the storehouse wall. The attackers used it to cover their original plate.”
The crown transport crest is stamped on the back.
“Can it be traced?”
“To a depot, yes. Not a driver yet.” Holt opens a second folder. “The number belonged to a medical wagon retired six years ago. The retirement was recorded in the capital, but the plate was never returned to the mint.”
Dane leans over the page. “Someone kept a legal crown plate for a wagon that didn’t officially exist.”
“And used it on a Northern road,” I say.
The wound pulls as I stand. Nora puts one hand on my shoulder and pushes me back into the chair without ceremony.
“You can command while seated.”
Dane doesn’t smile, though he wants to.
“Send copies of the plate and retirement record to Rowan under separate riders,” I say. “One through the western relay, one through Birch Hollow. No capital clerk sees the originals.”
Holt nods. “I also want the Brooks freight books.”
“Ivy may know which household code would hide a retired wagon.”
The words are out before I consider how they sound.
Nora’s expression changes.
“I’m not putting another ledger in her hands before breakfast,” I say.
“No,” Nora agrees. “You’re planning to take the evidence to her and let her decide whether she looks.”
Dane glances at Holt. Holt suddenly finds the brass plate fascinating.
I ignore both of them. “When she wakes.”
“Better.”
Holt closes the case. “There’s one more thing. The dispatch scrap Ivy saw in Jace’s glove came from the pages copied before Eastmere. They included the planned route changes and the names of clerks who questioned the missing transfers. No witness list. That didn’t exist yet.”
Jace copied the route changes before Eastmere burned.
He claims he wanted evidence to challenge my command before the council.
Holt found no Bell contact, no payment, and no second intrusion after the blue chalk was laid.
Suspicion isn’t proof. I’ve spent too much of my life watching the crown treat those as the same thing.
“Mark every copy with different errors,” I tell Holt. “A changed date, a misspelled village, one false witness name in each set. If the information leaves the fortress, we learn which page carried it.”
Holt’s anger settles into purpose. “I can do that.”
He and Dane leave to prepare the dispatches.
Nora begins packing her instruments. “You do realize you just built a trap instead of thinking about Ivy.”
“I thought about both.”
“You’re turning guilt into a military strategy again.”
“I’m preventing another attack.”
“You’re also hoping enough work will make last night disappear.”
I look at the closed door.
It won’t.
“I want her,” I say.
Nora’s hands pause, then continue gathering the instruments.
“I wanted her before last night. Last night only made pretending useless.”
“Good. Pretending has never made you pleasant.”
A laugh nearly escapes me and pulls at the wound instead.
“She said I trust her judgment everywhere except with me.”
“Was she wrong?”
“No.”
Outside the door, the fortress wakes fully. Boots cross the lower hall. A bell calls the first shift. Eastmere has turned every ordinary sound into a reminder that something remains undone.
My hand moves toward the mark before I stop it.
Nora notices. “Pain?”
“No.”
“Command?”
“No.”
“Then don’t make it either one.”
I look at her.
“If the bond starts deciding for you, step back,” she says. “If fear starts deciding for her, let her say so. Until then, stop treating distance like the only honorable thing you know how to give.”
Ivy said almost the same thing, but with less irritation and better aim.
“If she asks again, I listen,” I say. “I don’t turn one yes into everything, and I don’t turn my fear into her no.”
Nora lifts the basin. “That sounds almost sensible.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“I have a reputation to protect.”
She leaves. I remain in the chair long enough to prove I can follow one medical order.
Then I take the copied wagon record and Lysa’s relay report to Ivy’s rooms. I stop outside her door, knock once, and wait for her answer before I bring the war, the evidence, or myself inside.
She opens the door in a plain robe with her hair loose and sleep still bruised beneath her eyes. She looks at the evidence case first, then at my bandage.
“Nora let you walk?”
“She failed to stop me.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
I hold out the wagon record. “You can send me away after you see this.”
Ivy steps back. I enter only far enough to set the case on her table. When Holt’s copied retirement mark catches the light, she pulls the nearest chair closer and sits without pretending she isn’t tired.
The Brooks household code beside the plate number is almost invisible, two short lines beneath the depot seal. Ivy traces them with one finger.
“Dead stock,” she says. “Wade used that mark for carriages, rooms, or accounts that were officially closed but still useful in private. He didn’t create the code. Someone in the capital taught it to him.”
That widens the conspiracy beyond one broker and one household. I should be thinking only about the road it opens. Instead, I’m watching the way she presses her thumb against the page to hide a tremor.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I say.
She doesn’t rescue me from the sentence. “For stopping?”
“For leaving you to think it meant I didn’t believe you.”
Ivy is quiet for a moment. Then she moves the second chair with her foot. “Sit down. We can be angry while we work.”
I sit. We mark every retired wagon that passed through Brooks accounts, and ten minutes later she finds a second depot number attached to a crown storage yard. When I rise to take it to Dane, she catches my sleeve.
“Come back after command.”
It isn’t forgiveness or permission for anything beyond what she said. I nod once and leave with a clearer trail than I brought in.