Chapter Five Selka’s Warning #3
Willa rode beside Riksa, with Selka on her other side and Torren close enough behind to satisfy himself without offending Osa retroactively. Noll and Brann ranged wider. The trees dripped. Old snow clung in dirty banks. The air smelled of thawed leaves, horse sweat, and secrets loosening under mud.
Halfway to Red Creek, Selka spoke.
“Do not tell him.”
Willa looked at her.
Selka kept her eyes forward.
“Who?”
“Torren.”
“About your bond pulling?”
Selka’s mouth tightened. “He hates Marek.”
“Yes.”
“He will think I am a danger.”
“Torren thinks most things are danger.”
“To you.”
Willa did not answer immediately.
The mark pulsed, as if it had heard its name in another language.
Torren, behind, could likely feel her attention shift but not the words.
Privacy inside herself.
Selka deserved some too.
“If your bond becomes a risk to Pike Hollow, we have to know,” Willa said.
Selka’s face went rigid.
“I know.”
“But I do not have to run to him with every piece of you.”
Selka looked at her then.
Startled.
“You mean that.”
“Yes.”
“Even after what I did?”
“You carried Davra’s request. You envied me. You wanted me marked so your bond would look less dead.”
Selka flinched.
“Yes.”
“And then you warned us. Stood at Red Creek. Broke a man’s wrist. Hit another with a bucket. Told the truth when lying would have sent you home cleaner.”
Selka looked away.
“I was never clean.”
“Neither was I, according to Frostmere.”
That won a sharp little laugh.
Willa let the road take a few more hoofbeats.
Then she said, “I am not giving you trust as a gift. I am giving you a chance not to make me regret it.”
Selka’s eyes flicked back.
Something like respect moved through them.
“That is less sentimental.”
“I learned from Hessa.”
“Unfortunate for everyone.”
“Useful for me.”
Selka’s mouth almost moved.
Almost.
Then she looked forward again.
“Marr will offer me back to Marek soon.”
Willa’s stomach tightened.
“Offer?”
“Not demand. Offer. Publicly. They will say a completed bond should be healed privately. They will say Pike Hollow shelter is damaging what sacred rites made whole.”
“Made whole,” Willa repeated.
Selka’s laugh was silent.
“Yes.”
“And Frostmere?”
“Frostmere will want Marek looking pitiable. A grieving bonded male separated from his mate because Pike Hollow’s marked woman keeps interfering.”
Willa’s fingers tightened on the reins.
“They will make me the wedge.”
“They already have.”
The mark warmed.
Torren drew a little closer behind them.
Willa breathed once.
Mine.
His.
Not now.
“Why tell me?”
Selka stared at the road ahead.
“Because if I panic when they do it, I want someone to know I saw it coming.”
Willa’s throat tightened.
“You can choose before then.”
Selka’s face closed.
“Choose what?”
“What you want.”
The laugh that left Selka was brittle enough to cut.
“You make that sound like a door.”
Willa thought of boundary stones. Frostmere’s hall. Torren’s room. Osa’s side door.
“Sometimes it is only a crack in the wall.”
Selka said nothing.
But she rode closer after that.
Red Creek came into view under a low gray sky.
Unlike Pike Hollow, Red Creek spread wide along its namesake water, with houses and work sheds arranged around a central yard and a long witness hall whose roof had been patched in three different colors. Smoke rose from several chimneys. Wolves watched from fences and doorways.
Mistress Orla waited near the hall steps.
Miri Saff stood beside her.
Willa knew her immediately because grief had a posture.
Miri was young, perhaps Willa’s age, perhaps older by hardship. She wore Bluebank blue at her cuffs and a dark shawl pulled tight around her shoulders. Her hair was braided severely. Her face was pale, eyes red-rimmed but dry.
Perrit stood several feet away, eating an apple with the air of a man who had completed a task and wished payment to occur before anyone died.
Miri’s gaze went first to Torren.
Fear flickered.
Then to Willa.
Then to the mark.
Willa let her look.
Miri’s mouth tightened.
“You’re the marked woman.”
Torren went very still.
Willa stepped forward before his silence could grow teeth.
“I am Willa Renn.”
Miri’s eyes lifted to hers.
“My brother thought he had found something worth disappearing for.”
Good.
Perrit had delivered the line.
“What was it?” Willa asked.
Miri reached into her shawl.
Torren moved.
Not forward.
Ready.
Miri saw and froze.
Willa touched the mark.
“Slowly,” she said.
Miri withdrew a folded strip of oilcloth.
Orla stepped closer.
“She showed me first.”
Miri handed it to Willa.
Inside was a rubbing.
Charcoal over thin paper.
The image showed a mark carved into wood or stone: three cuts crossing a crescent.
Redjaw.
Beside it, another symbol.
Not Stonewatch.
Not Frostmere.
Willa did not know it.
But Hessa might.
Torren did.
The bond went so cold she nearly gasped.
His voice came from behind her, low and terrible.
“That was my father’s mark.”
Silence fell.
Miri looked between them.
“Arlen found it on the lower pass marker,” she said. “Under the old moss.”
Willa stared at the rubbing.
Redjaw mark.
Torren’s father’s mark.
Together on the lower pass.
Spring road rumors had become something older than rumor.
Torren did not move.
Willa did not reach back to calm him.
She stood beside him, rubbing in hand, mark burning at her throat.
Exact, she thought.
This time, the word was for both of them.