Edria
Iwake up before the forge fire and lie there staring at the ceiling beams.
My hair is still loose around my face. I find the tie on the pillow beside me and braid it back before I get up, moving quietly past Papa's door and down to the kitchen. The water in the basin is cold. I splash it on my face and stand there dripping, and try to think practically.
It doesn't entirely work.
Last night was—I don't have a clean word for it.
Good doesn't cover it. Complicated covers it better, but complicated was already true before anything happened.
What it actually was, stripped of everything else, was something I wanted.
I've known that since the almost-kiss. The wanting isn't the problem.
The problem is everything the wanting sits inside.
Nyrius governs this region. I forge illegal weapons for smugglers who supply rebel factions.
He knows about the second part and hasn't arrested me, which makes him either principled or reckless, and I'm not sure which one is better for my situation.
A relationship between us—if that's even what this is—draws attention I can't afford.
It makes Malrec more suspicious. It makes Nyrius more visible in Oxwood, which makes everything I do here more scrutinized.
And I don't even know what he wants from me beyond last night.
I dry my face and go light the forge.
He comes by mid-morning.
Papa is out pricing timber, and Finn is running grain to the Pelley farm, so it's just the two of us.
Nyrius steps into the forge without the edge he usually carries in with him—no provoking remarks, no deliberate baiting.
He leans against the door frame and watches me work with his arms loose at his sides.
It's more unsettling than the provocation.
"How's the Henley order coming?" he asks.
"Done yesterday." I fit a bolt to the hinge I'm assembling. "You're not here about the Henley order."
"No." A pause. "I'm leaving Oxwood again. Today."
I keep working. "How long this time?"
"Hard to say. There are things that need my attention elsewhere."
I nod, turning the hinge over to check the alignment.
He watches me do it without filling the silence, which is new.
When he first arrived he'd have filled it with something designed to get a rise out of me.
Now he just stands there, and the quiet between us is different—not comfortable exactly, but honest.
"Edria." His voice drops just slightly. "Stay out of trouble while I'm gone."
I tip my head back to look at him. He's not smiling, but there's something behind his eyes that isn't entirely serious either.
"I'm not making any promises," I say.
He holds my gaze for a moment. Then he dips his chin once, pushes off the door frame, and walks back out into the lane.
I watch the empty doorway for longer than I should before I turn back to the hinge.
I give up on the afternoon entirely around the third hour. Nothing I touch comes out right—two fittings filed off-angle, a bolt head I strip trying to rush it. I bank the fire, wash my hands, and head to the tavern.
Sorella has the look on her face before I even sit down. She sets a cup in front of me and leans her elbows on the bar.
"You look different," she says.
"I’m tired."
"You look tired and different." She tilts her head, studying me with the focused attention she normally reserves for travelers who might be lying about who they are. "The elf lord came back."
"He came by the forge. Yes."
"And?"
I wrap my hands around the cup. "And he's left again."
Sorella is quiet for exactly three seconds. "Edria."
"What?"
"Something happened."
I keep my eyes on the cup. My face does something I can't completely control, and Sorella, who has been reading people across this bar for ten years, catches every bit of it. She straightens up and presses both hands flat on the counter, and her whole expression shifts into something warmer.
"Oh," she says.
"We're not talking about it."
"We absolutely are." She refills my cup even though it's still full. "Tell me everything."
"There's nothing to tell."
"The color in your face says otherwise." She leans in. "Is he—I mean—obviously he's—but was it—"
"Sorella!"
"I need something. Anything." She's grinning now, helplessly, the way she does when she's genuinely pleased about something. "You let a dark elf into your forge after midnight."
"Keep your voice down." I glance toward the two men at the far table, who are deep in their own conversation. "It's not—it’s complicated, or maybe it isn’t. That's the problem."
"Does it have to be something defined right now?"
I open my mouth. I close it. She has a point, which I find irritating.
"He's leaving again," I say. "Regularly. He has a territory to govern and I have a forge to run and nothing about this is simple."
"Nothing worth having is." She rests her chin in her hand. "But you wanted it. That matters."
I drink and don't argue with her, which she correctly reads as agreement. We sit with it for a while, talking around the edges of it more than directly, and when I leave, some of the tightness in my shoulders has loosened.
The letter is on the kitchen table when I get home.
Finn is sitting across from it like it might move on its own. He looks up when I walk in. "Magistrate's seal," he says. “One of his collectors dropped it off.”
I pick it up and break the seal.
Malrec's handwriting is neat and precise, the penmanship indicating his educated background. At least, that’s what he wants me to think.
Miss Edria — it has come to my attention that Lord Nyrius's interest in your forge extends beyond professional matters.
As a representative of this region's administrative welfare, I must remind you that Oxwood's internal affairs are precisely that — internal.
Any information shared with outside parties, however well-positioned, reflects on the village as a whole. I trust your discretion.
I read it twice. Then I fold it and tuck it into my apron pocket before Finn can ask what it says.
Internal affairs. However well-positioned.
The phrasing is careful, but the threat underneath it isn't. Malrec isn't warning me about gossip.
He's warning me about what Nyrius might learn.
And a man who worries about what a border lord might learn from a blacksmith has things he can't afford to have found.
Nyrius is getting close to something, and Malrec knows it.
I take a different path to the forest that night, cutting north along the creek bed before turning west toward the drop point. Velis notices.
"New route," he says.
"Patrols have shifted." I hand him the bundle. "You should switch yours too."
He counts the blades, nods once. "Already planned for it. We'll rotate three paths. Nothing regular." He looks up from the bundle. "The dark elves are moving on this faster than expected. Word is they want to shut down the western corridor completely before the cold season ends."
"How close are they?"
"Close enough that I'm not using the same man twice on any delivery." He ties off the oilcloth. "You should be careful."
"I'm always careful."
"Be more careful."
I take the coin and go.
The creek path home is longer, colder, the frost already hard on the ground underfoot. I move carefully, listening for the sound of patrol horses, and find nothing but wind and the creak of bare branches.
I think about Malrec's letter the whole way back.
And I think about Nyrius — the way his investigation into Oxwood's records directly threatens whatever Malrec has been running. The closer Nyrius looks, the more dangerous his proximity becomes. Not just for me, with my hidden weapons and my forest meetings. For him.
An elf lord with a personal attachment to a human woman in a village where everything is already political — it's a handle anyone could grab. Malrec, the courts. It hands them something to use.
I push through my front door into the cold dark house and stand in the kitchen for a moment, listening to the quiet.
Whatever last night was, it may already be costing him more than I know.