Chapter 12
Twelve
Morning came soft and silver, the Peaks veiled in mist as though the mountains had drawn curtains around themselves. The glade was still, dew clinging to every blade of grass, the fire a faint bed of embers pulsing in the half-light.
Maude stirred first, blinking against the pale dawn. Her ward shimmered faintly along the perimeter. She pressed her palm against the earth, testing. The weave held. No unraveling, no fractures. Pride sparked in her chest.
She rose stiffly, pulling her coat around her shoulders, and only then realized how close Wesley was.
Sometime in the night, they must have drifted together, bodies hunting warmth the way roots seek water.
His shoulder brushed hers, his breath a slow fog in the cold air.
His face, slack in sleep, looked nothing like the man who needled her in waking hours with endless teasing.
His cheeks were flushed red from the chill, his nose pink at the tip, his ash-blond hair a tousled snarl that refused to be tamed.
She found herself caught by the stillness of him—the softened mouth, the faint crease at the corner of his eye that hinted at laughter even in rest.
Her gaze lingered a moment longer before she pushed to her feet, pulling her coat close as she turned toward the waiting work.
The horses stood at the edge of the clearing, their breaths steaming white in the cold.
Pickles flicked his ears as she approached, nuzzling her hand with a familiarity that made her smile.
She busied herself with the practical: checking hooves, rubbing down damp coats, doling out oats from the leather pouch tied to her saddlebag.
Wesley’s gelding muscled in for his share, snorting against her palm.
Maude shoved his nose back, muttering, “Greedy brute,” even as she measured out an extra handful for him too.
By the time she returned, Wesley was crouched by the fire, coaxing flame from ash. A pan already sat warming, strips of dried meat laid across it. “Breakfast,” he said without looking up.
Maude sank onto her haunches beside him, pulling a small cloth bundle from her satchel.
She unwrapped it slowly, revealing a handful of dried figs, their skins wrinkled and dusky, seeds glinting faintly in the firelight.
She’d tucked them away more out of habit than intent—a forager’s instinct to hoard small comforts when she found them—and promptly forgotten until now.
She held one out wordlessly.
Wesley glanced over, brow lifting, then took it without hesitation.
With a quick twist of his thumb, he split the skin, revealing sticky, seedy flesh.
He smeared the dark sweetness over a flatbread warming on the fire, then added a few thin slices of cured meat, pressing them down until the fat began to melt into the heat.
The scent rose immediately—smoke and salt, sweetness and spice—curling through the air until Maude’s stomach tightened in response.
He broke the flatbread in half and held one piece out to her.
She didn’t thank him, just tore a bite with her teeth. The tang of fig hit first, rich and honeyed, followed by the salt of the meat and the soft warmth of the bread. A sound slipped out of her before she could stop it.
Wesley didn’t comment. He didn’t even look at her. He only smiled faintly down at the fire.
When they finished breakfast, Maude brushed the crumbs from her lap and pulled the map from her satchel. The parchment was creased from years of folding, its ink smudged in places by damp fingers and spilled potions. She traced the ridges and winding trails until she found what she wanted.
“We’ll follow the ridge trail,” she said at last, her voice steady. “If the weather doesn’t turn, we’ll make the ruins by midday.”
“Ruins?”
Maude didn’t look at him. She folded the map along its worn seams and tucked it back into her satchel. “Bailey and I used to gather shadowbell there. They like places that remember what’s been lost. Leavings of death, decay, battles…memory clings to the soil, and shadowbell thrives in it.”
His brow arched higher, but—for once—he didn’t comment. She was almost disappointed.
They broke down the campsite in silence.
Wesley doused the fire, scattering the embers with a stick before tipping the last of their water over the coals.
Maude gathered the bedrolls, folding hers with neat, exacting corners while his was shoved into a bundle that still somehow looked tidy.
She tucked her satchel shut, herbs and vials clinking faintly inside, then tugged her coat back over her shoulders, fastening the clasp at her throat.
Once everything was in order, Maude swung up into the saddle, ignoring the pull in her arm as Wesley fell in just behind, his horse’s hooves crunching steadily against the frost-hardened earth.
The sun was pale overhead, weak and washed out.
Maude kept the map in her mind, following landmarks burned into memory—old oaks split by lightning, a crooked boulder shaped like a crouching beast, the faint ridge trail winding toward the Peaks.
Pickles’s ears flicked nervously. Wesley’s bay huffed, restless, its muscles bunching under the saddle.
And then Maude felt it.
It wasn’t mist this time—it was memory. The air grew heavy, the way a room feels when someone has just left it forever. Sound dulled around them. The wind stilled. Even the horses’ steps seemed muffled.
Her skin prickled. She knew this place. Knew it in her bones, though she hadn’t been here in years. Bailey’s laugh ghosted through her head, echoing against stones long since fallen. She shoved the thought away before it could lodge too deeply.
The path bent once more, and the ruins came into view.
They were neither grand nor close, just a broken skeleton of a chapel. Moss clung to cracked pillars, and the altar lay in shards, half-buried under ivy. Yet the place throbbed with presence. With sorrow soaked into the stones.
And in the center of the ruin, a shimmer of light congealed into form.
The guardian.
It rose taller than a man, its body a shifting weave of smoke and memory. Its face was featureless, yet Maude felt its gaze pierce her, cold as moonlight. When it spoke, the sound pressed inside her skull, hollow and resonant, like bells tolling under water.
“All bloom is bought in pain. All grief must pay its tithe.
Lay bare the wound that bleeds the loudest—
surrender the memory that chains your soul.
One truth for one truth.
One loss for one flower.”
The words shivered through her bones, and her pulse slammed.
It wanted a tithe. A memory—a memory so raw it ached in the moment of offering. And once given, it would be gone. Forever.
The specter turned toward her, its shape wavering like water disturbed by a breath. “What do you offer, child of the Wilds?”
Her stomach clenched. Bailey’s face rose in her mind, silver hair falling loose as he bent over parchment, his muttering voice in her ear, his warm hand steadying hers when she fumbled a sigil.
She couldn’t—not him. Not even a piece.
“No,” she whispered. Louder, she said, “I won’t.”
The guardian tilted its head, formless face unreadable. The air thickened, pressing like stone against her lungs.
Beside her, Wesley dismounted slowly. His boots whispered against the cracked stones as he stepped forward. “I’ll do it.”
Maude spun toward him, heat spiking through her chest. “What?”
He didn’t look at her. His gaze stayed fixed on the guardian. “Take mine.”
The guardian’s voice pressed harder. “Truth for truth. What memory do you yield?”
Wesley’s jaw flexed. His hand closed at his side, knuckles whitening, but his voice stayed even.
“My mother…she used to sing while she worked. Nothing grand—just simple things. Humming under her breath while she mixed salves. When I was a boy, I thought it was the sound of safety. The sound of home.”
Maude’s breath caught as the air stilled. The guardian drifted forward, and for a moment the ruins filled with the scent of rosemary and smoke. Then it surged, rushing through Wesley as if his body were nothing but a doorway.
He convulsed, breath tearing from him. The guardian’s quivering outline shuddered once, then dissolved into the stones, gone as though it had never been.
The ground trembled.
Between the cracked bones of the altar, buds unfurled, pushing up through dust and ruin. Dusky blossoms curled open, their petals dark as twilight, their shimmer tinged with sorrow. Shadowbell.
A sour twist knotted Maude’s gut. “What is wrong with you?” she said, fury spilling from every word. “Why would you—why would you give that up? Something that precious?”
Wesley turned, his face pale but composed. His eyes, when they met hers, were unflinching. “What’s the point of holding it,” he said quietly, “if it doesn’t help someone else?”
The words punched through her anger, striking deep.
She opened her mouth, but nothing came. She wanted to scream at him.
She wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled.
Instead, she stood frozen, breath ragged, staring at him as the shadowbell shimmered in the ruin’s gloom.
For the first time, Maude didn’t see a rival, a thorn in her side, the bakery idiot who ruined everything.
She saw a man who gave of himself freely.
Who lost and still chose to offer what remained.
And it shook her more than any curse.
Her knees went soft, her breath hitching sharp and shallow.
Fury surged hot under her skin, tangled with devastation so serrated she thought it would split her open.
She shook—hands, chest, every bone trembling as though her body couldn’t decide whether to collapse or combust. Her throat burned, bile rising.
She pressed a hand to her mouth, convinced she was going to throw up.
And then, in two quick strides, Wesley was in front of her.
Pulling her into him like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Her face pressed hard against the solid breadth of his chest. Heat radiated through his shirt, carrying the faint, grounding scents of flour and smoke, yeast and spice, a touch of pine from the woods still clinging to him.
It was jarring. Lovely. Warm.
She hated it.
Saints, she hated it.
Him.
For giving something so sacred. For making her feel like she was the selfish one, clinging to grief like a dragon hoarding bones.
Maude fought the urge to shove him away, to spit every venomous word she had saved for him since the day his bakery doors had opened.
But her arms betrayed her. They lifted, hesitated, then clutched him tight, fingers curling in the fabric at his back.
She buried herself deeper into his chest and let the tears fall.
They came hard, hot, and endless, streaking down her cheeks until the ruins blurred into nothing. She didn’t sob—there was no sound, just the violent shake of her shoulders, her chest heaving like it couldn’t contain the heartache anymore.
And he held her.
One broad hand cradled the back of her head, the other firm at her spine as though she might shatter if he let go.
His chest rose and fell beneath her cheek, slow, steady.
When she finally forced herself to lift her head, her face worn and damp, she found his eyes waiting.
They were glassy, rimmed faintly red. His cheeks flushed as though he’d stood too long by the fire.
He blinked hard, but it didn’t mask the truth of it—what he’d given up. It had scraped him raw, too.
Maude thought of him humming in the mornings, tuneless, infuriatingly cheerful, as if mocking her gloom.
How she’d resented it. How she’d muttered curses under her breath each time he did it.
All this time, he had been humming his mother’s song.
Carrying her with him into every loaf, every roll, every cake while Maude steeped in her fury, crafting spells and potions with Bailey’s voice in her head.
And now that song—its sound, the shape of it—was gone. Surrendered to the ruin. Did he still know the tune? Could he still feel it in his bones, or had the guardian truly stripped it clean away?
The thought gutted her. It was too much.
With a ragged sound, Maude shoved back—broke free of his arms, turning hard so he wouldn’t see the tears that still hadn’t stopped. She wiped at her face furiously, scraping her skin until it burned, until it felt like something she could control.
She dropped to her knees before the newly blooming shadowbell, the flowers glowing faintly in the hush of the ruins. Her hands shook as she reached for them, but she forced her breathing even, steady enough to cut the stems clean and tuck each bloom carefully into the pouch at her belt.
Behind her, Wesley didn’t move. Didn’t speak. She could feel his presence, though—warm and watchful, like the hearth-fire she wanted to ignore but couldn’t.
Eventually, his shadow fell beside hers. He knelt without a word, his long fingers moving with surprising gentleness as he helped gather the blossoms.
Neither spoke.
And though she wanted to hate him, wanted to shove him back into the mist and pretend he hadn’t given something up so she didn’t have to, she couldn’t.
Not with him kneeling in the dirt beside her.