Edria
Three days after Nyrius leaves Oxwood, I drop a finished hinge into the water barrel and watch it sink.
I was supposed to fit it to the Henley gate an hour ago.
I've re-tempered it twice now because I keep pulling it too early, my attention going sideways at exactly the wrong moment.
It's not a difficult job. I've done it a hundred times.
I fish the hinge out, set it on the bench, and stare at it like it owes me an explanation.
It doesn't. I know where my head is.
The almost-kiss sits in my memory with the stubbornness of a splinter I can't locate.
Not the heat of it — the interruption. The way he'd stepped forward and I hadn't stepped back.
The way his hand had come to my face like it had already decided, and I'd let it, and then two farmers had walked in with a broken gate hinge and ruined everything.
I pick up my tongs and get back to work.
The whispers have been running through Oxwood for days before Malrec arrives.
I catch pieces of them at the market and through the open forge window — the dark elf lord and the blacksmith's daughter, how many times he came back, what a man like that wants with a woman like her.
The gossip is reaching as far as the Henley farm, which means it's reached everywhere.
I ignore it until I can't.
Malrec shows up on a Tuesday, mid-morning, while I'm working the bellows. He steps into the forge with his usual unhurried ease, robes immaculate despite the muddy lane outside.
"You've been keeping busy," he says.
"Always." I don't stop working.
"I've been hearing interesting things about Lord Nyrius's visits." He clasps his hands and studies the tool rack along the wall like he finds it fascinating. "Multiple stops at this particular forge. Extended conversations."
"He took an interest in the work." I pull the iron from the coals and move to the anvil. "Daggers, horseshoes. Standard repairs."
"Several visits for standard repairs."
"Good work brings people back." I bring the hammer down. The ring of it fills the forge and gives me a reason not to look at him. "Is there something you need, Magistrate?"
He turns from the tool rack. "I wanted to offer some friendly counsel."
I set the hammer down and face him. "Go ahead."
"Relationships between humans and dark elves rarely benefit the human." He says it pleasantly, with a tone that suggests he’s sharing weather observations. "Especially not when the dark elf in question holds regional authority. Whatever his interest in you is, it serves his purposes. Not yours."
My eyes stay on him and don’t say anything at first. "There's no relationship to speak of."
"Of course." He dips his chin. "Even so."
"I appreciate the advice." I pick the hammer back up. "Was there anything else?"
He leaves without answering.
I watch the forge entrance for a moment after his footsteps fade.
The warning was delivered too smoothly, wrapped too neatly in concern.
Malrec has never struck me as someone who loses sleep over a blacksmith's personal arrangements.
I turn back to the anvil and file the encounter away next to everything else about him that doesn't add up.
The boy shows up four days later.
He can't be more than eight — gap-toothed, mud on his boots up to the knee, clutching a folded scrap of paper like it might fly away. He holds it out the moment I appear in the doorway.
"A traveler in the woods paid me a copper to bring it," he says.
I take it, give him another copper from my apron pocket, and send him off before I unfold it. Velis's handwriting is cramped and impatient, the letters pressed hard into the page.
Finish the order. Buyers are waiting. Don't make them wait longer.
I fold it twice and drop it into the forge fire.
The problem isn't the order. I'm two-thirds done — eight blades wrapped in oilcloth under the floorboard behind the coal pile, four more to go.
The problem is the forest. For the past week, I've been spotting patrol torches in the tree line at odd hours, moving in patterns I don't recognize from Malrec's overseers. Too disciplined. Too quiet.
Dark elf patrols. Nyrius said the supply lines were being traced.
I finish the workday without rushing and do the arithmetic in my head three different ways.
Deliver fast and risk running into a patrol.
Delay and risk Velis finding another way to apply pressure.
Neither answer is good. I split the difference and keep forging at my usual pace, one blade at a time, watching the tree line from the back yard each night before I go inside.
There's another calculation I keep making, the one I don't want to admit to.
Nyrius said he'd return. If he comes back before the delivery window closes, he might be able to do something about Velis — not arrest me, he'd already decided that, but put enough pressure on the supply routes that Velis's buyers pull back on their own.
A convenient solution that costs me nothing except asking for help, which I've never been good at.
I tell myself that's the only reason I'm hoping he comes back soon.
I almost believe it.
It's well past midnight when I hear it.
The forge creak is distinct — old iron hinges I keep meaning to replace, with a specific catch at the halfway point that I've learned to read by sound in the dark. I know Finn's step and Papa's step and the way a stray dog pushes the door with its nose. This is none of those.
I look up from the blade I'm finishing.
Nyrius stands in the doorway.
He's travel-worn — dust on his coat, his silver hair loose from whatever he'd tied it back with, a tiredness around his eyes that wasn't there when he left. He looks at me. I look back. The forge fire throws uneven light across the space between us.
My pulse does something inconvenient.
I set the blade down and straighten, pulling my work gloves off one finger at a time.
I'm not sure if what I feel landing in my chest is relief or irritation — probably both, tangled up the way most things are where he's concerned.
I move away from the anvil without entirely deciding to, just a few steps toward the center of the forge, the heat of the fire at my back.
He hasn't moved from the doorway.
"You came back," I say.
"I said I would."
I cross my arms, then uncross them. My hands don't have anywhere useful to go. "It's two hours past midnight."
"I know." His eyes drop briefly to the blade on the table, then come back to me. "I saw the forge was lit."
"You've developed a habit of that."
"You've developed a habit of working past midnight."
I take another step toward him, slow enough that it could be nothing. He watches me close the distance without stepping back, without stepping forward, just standing in the doorway with dust on his coat and his eyes steadier than anything I know how to deal with.
We're close enough now that I can see the tiredness in his face is real, not performance. Whatever he's been doing for the past week, it cost him.
I stop. We're close enough that stopping feels like its own kind of statement.
"The last time you walked in here at this hour," I say, "things got complicated."
"They were already complicated."
"More complicated, then."
His eyes study me without looking away, without speaking, and I look back, and neither of us pretends the distance between us is as large as it should be.