Chapter three
Outside, the chill air bit at my cheeks. The slopes of the Banes loomed from where we’d come, and their icy planes still grasped the smaller villages and towns in their bitterly cold embrace.
I didn’t know why I had taken it so personally that Bray hadn’t noticed the woman had insulted me.
Or why I cared that she had at all. She hadn’t even directly slighted me.
I was used to far worse from the people I called my neighbours.
And truth be told, it wasn’t out of character for Bray to dismiss my fae heritage or to ignore what it might mean to me.
He’d never actually asked much about my background.
And maybe that was a good thing. He didn’t pry.
He didn’t care. He didn’t seem to notice.
I paced the front of the tavern, the strain of wanting to break something taking hold in my body. I couldn’t go back in and punch Bray. Or confront the woman for her prejudices.
Instead, I kicked a trough. Hard.
I stifled a roar at the pain. It felt like my foot had broken from the impact.
Acting on my frustration might not have been worth it if I’d just broken a toe before I set out anywhere.
Some plan to leave. I get a few hours from Shadowfall, and my adventure stops, in Craven’s Rook of all places, because I kicked a godsdamned horse watering hole.
Bray might be an idiot for not seeing that his words hurt, but I didn’t want my last night with him to be one filled with anger. Against my better judgement, I decided to go back inside. I turned, shook off the pain in my foot, and made towards the tavern.
My steps faltered. A dark, hooded figure leaned against the wall before me. Something about him had me stunned into stillness.
He wasn’t exactly blocking the door. Would he let me pass?
Tendrils of trepidation ran through me at the sight of him. Like an animal that knows it’s been cornered by a predator.
Or maybe I was just still on edge, defensive, and projecting it onto this person before me.
As my hand reached for the door, the dark stranger took a sidestep and came into my orbit. His gravity pulled me to look up, even as adrenaline coursed through me.
I didn’t know what I’d do if he attacked me. Maybe I should have considered getting a blade for my journey.
A little late for that. The thought scurried through my veins.
“You keep interesting company.” The dark voice came from under the shroud.
His face was nearly completely obscured; I could only see his lips as he spoke.
Not ominous at all. Not terrifying.
But his voice wasn’t either of those things. It was like velvet night, and it drew me in.
“How would you know what company I keep?” I was sure I hadn’t seen him in there. I’d have noticed. I was certain.
Clean clothes, the striking stature. Broad but not like Bray. Taller, though. Lithe. Strong.
“Easy to eavesdrop when your husband is shouting through the whole tavern.”
So he had been inside.
“He is not my husband.” The words were out before I could think better of them. Why did I need to let a stranger know that?
His head tracked my movements, even if I couldn’t see his eyes, and I tugged on my hood for something to do with my hands.
“Your jailer, then? You didn’t seem too happy in his company. Need me to pry you from him?” There was a darkness that swam in the words. Was that a threat or an offer?
I thought he was joking, his tall frame standing sentry in front of the door, but maybe he wasn’t.
A rivulet of fear stilled my breath.
Had he seen the adamyte? What did he care if Bray and I were fighting over something?
“I don’t need protecting.” I pushed to get past him. “Stand aside,” I said, my jaw firm.
Without a word, he raised his hands a little and let me pass, a curved smile on those lips.
Part of me felt bad for being rude. But I had no patience left tonight.
I paid the tab and gathered my things without saying anything to Bray.
In the few moments it had taken to pack up, the dark stranger had sat back down at a booth I hadn’t noticed him at before. Two others were already seated, dressed similarly in dark cloaks pulled around their heads.
He didn’t look my way.
And I felt a pang of something through me as I left.
Maybe I’d have been better off taking my chances with him than trying to sort through this mess with Bray.
I woke in the musty bed of the inn just two doors down from The Fern. Slanted pillars of light pushed through the moth-eaten curtains into the dusty room.
We had slept in separate beds. In separate rooms. Bray had been far too open to the idea of sharing.
No part of me was in the mood for anything like that.
Bray had stayed long past my departure. Based on the racket and hour he arrived back at, he’d had too much ale. And I’d had enough of this town.
I woke up before Bray. I hadn’t slept well, at least not as well as Bray, judging by the snores that had reverberated right through the wall that separated our rooms.
I would tell him today.
If I could just find the words to explain I was leaving. I wasn’t sure he would understand. To him, his family was everything.
His father had raised him to farm sheep, just as his father had raised him before that. His mother doted on him, her only child. She could find no fault with him.
And I envied that sense of surety, that sense of comfort. Knowing where your place was. Even if it was Shadowfall.
I waited for Bray to rouse as I picked at my porridge, which the lady of the house had placed in front of me. It was cold and lumpy, and I didn’t bother eating much.
Bray finally wandered down the stairs, his eyes still bleary from the night before. His dark curls were stacked chaotically atop his head as he brushed the sleep from his eyes.
“Forgive me?” he said, taking a seat beside me at the small breakfast table.
I wasn’t sure he’d bring it up, so I was a little taken aback by his contrition. I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded.
His response was to grab my bowl of porridge and shovel in a few mouthfuls. His face contorted into a grimace at the cold grime now stuck to the roof of his mouth.
That had me in a better mood.
I’d given Bray the adamyte shard from last night and shown him how to fracture it so he was able to trade parts of it instead of the whole thing.
Bray would purchase and take back all the medicines and food he could carry. And I would leave with more than a healthy conscience.
I had milled about the stalls with tired awnings all morning, picking at small ointments and tinctures for the journey ahead of me.
But all the while, I felt like I wasn’t alone. A cold wind at my spine, a figure I couldn’t see, no matter how I looked. Like a dream you try to hold on to as the sun rises.
Or maybe I was just on edge that Bray still didn’t know I wasn’t going back with him.
Bray was beaming when he returned from his time with the merchants, his hands laden with things I was certain he didn’t need. But I didn’t comment. Better that he be in a good mood when we parted ways.
We’d tucked everything into the packs we had and took equal loads despite my knowing I would have to rearrange the packs or give him mine when the time came.
When the time came.
Soon.
I had to tell him soon.
It was well past noon by the time we left the town limits, aiming for the forest trail home.
Eventually, we stopped in the clearing of a meadow, dry boggy soil dotted with snowdrops and bright calendula flowers and very little snow.
The packs were heavy, and we needed to rest. It should have been only a couple of hours or so back for us, but the extra weight slowed our movements.
And I had to find a way to leave.
“I’m going to wash up,” Bray announced once we dumped the packs. “I don’t fancy a frigid bath when I get home. And I’m still aching from that soap water ale.”
“Where are you going?” I called after him as he made for a tree line behind me.
He flung a hand to the trees. “The river. It will be warm enough still.” He looked to the gallant sun hung above us; she was losing her fight to the evening greys that would soon pull in atop her.
I chewed on my lip as Bray left.
Now. I should leave now.
But I hesitated. I dug the adamyte from my pouch and held the four remaining crystals in my palm.
Guilt or some misplaced sense of duty had my face scrunched, and I grabbed one more crystal and put it into Bray’s pack. He could find use for it later. Shadowfall, Leesha, the baby. They’d need it more than me.
I wrapped the remaining few in a piece of leather and tucked them into the top of my repacked bag.
Three would have to be enough.
Bray had been gone for over an hour, and I still hadn’t left. I had decided somewhere in the minutes that dragged on in his absence that I would find the words to tell him. I owed him that.
The silver birch were long and spindly here. I paused on my walk through the dusty grove to pluck a stone from the undergrowth to give my hands something to do as I chewed on what to say. I palmed the smooth, flat stone back and forth between my hands.
Heavy breaths in and out filled the stillness around me.
None of it did anything to calm my nerves.
I had to tell him.
Now.
I clenched and unclenched my fingers as the stone left them. Back and forth. The sun cast delicate beams of warm, golden light that slipped between the fine trunks. The undergrowth was a quiet carpet of clover and pansies under my boots.
Maybe I didn’t have to tell Bray.
If I turned around now and just left, wouldn’t that be easier? He’d find me gone when he returned.
But something pulled my gut like wet leather being rung out.
I thought of how I was left without anything to go on.
I knew what it felt like to be abandoned.
To lie awake at night and think of all the things you could have done differently, to change the outcome of your present.
I knew how it felt to be deserted. Unwanted.
No care or thought for the ache of not knowing that would gnaw at you.
I screwed up my mouth and bit my lip.
I could tell him. I would. I could do that.
He’d understand. He had to.