Edria
They release me on a Tuesday.
No ceremony to it — a court clerk comes to the cell block with a single piece of paper, reads a formal suspension of proceedings pending investigation review, and tells me I'm free to return home under conditions of continued regional oversight.
I sign where he points. He takes the paper and leaves.
Cyran is waiting in the corridor with the key to the chains.
The morning air outside the courthouse hits me like stepping into a different world — cold and sharp and smelling of frost and wood smoke and the earthiness of Oxwood's lane mud after rain. I stand on the front steps for a moment and breathe it in.
Then I walk home.
The forge is cold. Papa has kept it clean in my absence — tools hung back in their places, the coal pile covered, the floor swept.
Everything exactly where it should be and none of it in use.
He's been managing on the legal repair work, Finn told me, but barely.
The money from Sorella's collection got them through the worst of it.
I don't light the fire the first day. I sit in the forge and let the quiet exist around me and try to remember what normal feels like.
It doesn't feel like much. Normal, it turns out, requires the village to behave normally toward you, and Oxwood is not quite there yet.
Some of them are fine. The Pelley brothers stop by the morning after my release, hats in hand, awkward but genuine. Old Perrin leaves a bundle of dried herbs on the doorstep without knocking. Sorella comes and goes freely, loudly, as if daring anyone to object.
Others are not fine. I hear it on the lane — low voices stopping when I pass, a woman pulling her child closer, the silence that means people were just talking about you.
A man I've sharpened knives for twice a year calls my unborn child an abomination under his breath outside the grain merchant's. He doesn't know I hear him.
I do, and I keep walking, keeping my face a stone mask.
Sorella arrives three days after my release with bread still warm from her kitchen and an expression that says she’s not going to accept any answers she doesn't like.
She sits down on the workbench beside me without asking and tears the bread in half.
"You're blaming yourself," she says.
"I'm not—"
"You are." She hands me half the bread. "I know what it looks like on you. You've been wearing it since you were a girl." She takes a bite, chews, continues. "Stop."
"A man called my child an abomination yesterday."
"One man." She meets my eyes. "One loud, frightened man who is also the same man who cheated the miller's daughter out of three silvers last market day and nobody thinks well of him regardless.
" She breaks off another piece. "Edria. The Pelleys are on your side.
Aldric came to me two days ago asking how you were doing.
Half this village has eaten bread they could afford because you kept their tools working.
" She pauses. "They're going to come around. "
"And if they don't?" I look at my hands. "This child grows up in Oxwood. They'll know what people say."
"This child grows up in Oxwood with a father who is a dark elf border lord and a mother who dropped a horseshoe at a soldier's feet and didn't flinch.
" Sorella's voice is warm and firm. "They'll be fine.
And they'll be one of us, regardless of what anyone thinks right now, because they'll have been born here and that's what counts. "
I eat the bread and don't argue, because arguing would require energy I don't currently have and also because she isn't entirely wrong.
The fears don't go away. I sit with them instead, which is the best I can manage.
Nyrius comes when he can. Not long visits — his time is consumed by the investigation, by correspondence with the court, by the political fallout he warned me about.
But he comes, arriving quietly at the forge in the late afternoon when the light is going grey and sitting with me while I finally, slowly, get the fire going again.
He asks after the baby. He asks after Papa's ribs. He asks after Finn with attentiveness ans care.
"Do you regret it?" I ask him one evening. "Saying it publicly. The way you did."
He looks up from the cup he's been turning in his hands. "No."
"The court is making trouble for you."
"The court was always going to make trouble for me.
I chose that when I started the investigation.
" He sets the cup down. "Claiming you and the child in public was not what created the problem.
The problem existed the moment I looked at Oxwood's ledgers.
" His eyes are steady on mine. "I regret nothing about you.
Nothing about this child. I need you to understand that. "
I study the forge fire for a moment.
"I've never thought past surviving," I say.
"Day to day, week to week. How to get through the next bad season, the next tax collection, the next impossible month.
" I rest my hand on my stomach. "I don't want that for them.
I don't want them growing up counting every copper piece and wondering if it's enough. "
"They won't." He stands and crosses to where I'm sitting, and takes my face in both hands — the same gesture, the same careful hold he always uses. He presses his lips to my forehead. Then to the tip of my nose, which is so unexpectedly gentle that I almost laugh.
"What was that for?" I ask.
"You needed it." His thumbs rest against my cheekbones. "You don't smile enough."
I manage one, small and real, which he receives without comment.
Then his expression sobers slightly. "There are still obstacles.
The noble retaliation is coming — Thalen is building something, I can feel it.
The investigation will drag before it concludes.
" He strokes his thumb once along my jaw.
"I want you prepared for a harder few months before this settles. "
"I know." I cover his hands with mine briefly. "I've handled hard months before."
"Not alone this time," he says.
I hold that for a moment.
"Not alone," I agree.