“See? Not an idiot.” He waggled the folded list between his fingers.
She rolled her eyes.
They didn’t linger. Oli’s manor rose behind the stables, lamplight glowing in every tall window. But today, the place was crawling. Carriages lined the gravel path, coats and polished boots shuffled up the steps, and a low hum of conversation spilled from the open doors. The kind of company Maude had no interest in ever keeping.
Oliver’s family hosting officials wasn’t unusual. But Oliver always told her. Always. Yet again, he was keeping something from her.
Her brow furrowed. “What’s this?”
Wesley adjusted his bag. “Charity, from what I’ve heard. He catered one of their dinners last month—something about an endowment, funds for restoration, maybe. He was vague, but…” Wesley’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Sounded like more than just a vanity project.”
Maude narrowed her eyes at the sight of Oli, dashing in his emerald coat, laughing too easily with a cluster of aldermen. “He would.”
“Would what?”
“Play both sides,” she muttered. “Host the magistrates, play benefactor, keep everyone guessing which way his loyalties fall.”
Wesley glanced at her, curious, but didn’t press. She was glad.
Sylvie emerged, leading two saddled horses. Pickles for Maude and a sturdy bay gelding for Wesley.
“Your chariots, as requested,” Sylvie said with a grin, passing the reins. “And if you come back with half the forest following you again, I’m quitting.”
“Noted,” Maude said, swinging onto Pickles. Wesley mounted beside her just as Oliver appeared inside the barn doors, gilded in early light, grin wide enough to split his face.
“Going somewhere, my darlings?”
Maude clicked her tongue. “If you don’t start talking, I’m testing poisons in your wine cellar.”
Oliver only laughed, waving them off. “Safe travels! Bring me back something scandalous!”
Maude gritted her teeth, spurred Pickles forward, and let the manor fall behind.
They passed the outer farms first, cottages crouched in mist, smoke curling from crooked chimneys. Farmers paused their chores to watch—pitchforks idle, wary eyes following.
The road soon narrowed to a dirt vein, swallowed by forest within minutes. Branches clawed at her coat, skeletal fingers snagging for want of purpose. Leaves whispered overhead, mottling the path in green-gold shadows that shifted with every gust.
Maude tugged her hood lower, fabric brushing her lashes, her pack a dull weight against her shoulders. Wesley rode beside her, posture infuriatingly straight, reins loose in his hands.
For a few hours, the only sound was hooves against the forest floor and the occasional snap of a twig—that was, until, the Peaks came into view.
Pickles’s stride was steady, comforting in the way only an old, slightly bitter horse could be. Even so, unease scraped along her spine. The deeper they went, the stranger the air felt.
It started small. A crow perched on a branch, silent. A squirrel frozen mid-scamper, eyes too wide. Even the wind seemed reluctant, brushing the branches in half-hearted sighs. Pickles shifted uneasily beneath her.
Maude’s fingers tightened on the reins. Something about this stretch of woods was wrong. Not dangerous in the obvious sense—no wolves, no bandits—but wrong the way milk turned overnight.
Untamed. Liminal. The kind of place that ate people whole and left their bones moss-coated in the underbrush.
Her throat closed like a trap. She shoved the thought down where all the sharp ones lived and risked a glance sideways. Wesley sat tall in the saddle, jaw tight, eyes forward. No grin. No infuriating smirk. Just silence and that furrow between his brows he probably didn’t know he had.
So he felt it too. The sough of wrongness that clung to the bark, to the stones, to the air itself.
For a second, just one, she almost asked him. Almost. The words gathered in her throat, heavy as iron, but she couldn’t force them past her teeth. Vulnerability wasn’t her language.
Instead, she said, “If you get yourself killed, I’m not hauling your body back.”
His mouth twitched, just enough to be irritating. “All right. But if you get yourself killed, I’m selling your cat to Lydia Dross.”
