She turned onto her side, her hand brushing the braid. Past, present, and future. Joined.
And she wondered, not with fear, but with a trembling awe, whether her dreams had been more than dreams, whether they had been a warning … or perhaps a promise.
?
In the hours and days that followed, Violet’s closeness with Grey Horse deepened. She walked with him along the river, carrying water. She sat beside him while he cleaned his rifle. He showed her how to grind dried berries into powder for drink, how to tie knots she had never known. The language between them grew from words into gestures, from gestures into glances, from glances into emotions.
When she laughed once—a true laugh, the first since Boston—he turned his head sharply as though startled. Then he smiled, a small, rare thing, but real.
That smile warmed her more than any fire.
She tended his wound each evening, unwinding the bandage, washing it, binding it again. He never flinched beneath her touch. And every time, she felt her own breath steady, as though she too were being healed.
?
One night, as the stars thickened overhead, she asked, “Do you think the soldiers will come again?”
Grey Horse’s face grew hard in the firelight. “Yes. Always again.”
“And when they do?”
He looked at her, his eyes steady, fierce. “Then I fight. And you …” He paused. “You stay with me.”
Her throat tightened. She nodded.
It was not the promise of safety alone that mattered now. It was the promise of being bound together. Of past, present, and future, braided like hair in his hands.
Chapter Fifteen: Shadows of Pale Moon
The days after the battle unfolded in quiet rhythm, though the silence that hung over the camp was heavy with loss. Smoke drifted from small fires, and women moved steadily about their work. They sang low songs for the dead, their voices weaving with the river’s hush. Children were hushed, too, their games quiet, their laughter dampened.
Violet kept to her tasks: carrying water from the river, helping bind wounds, gathering wood. Every step was new, yet it all felt familiar—almost like something she had already walked through in another life. At night, when she closed her eyes, she dreamed again of camps like this, of firelight spilling over hides, of faces she could not name. And every morning she woke to find those same shapes and sounds around her.
Once, long ago in Boston, she would have called it coincidence. Now she was not sure. Now she wondered if her spirit had indeed walked ahead of her, as Grey Horse had said.
?
Grey Horse walked beside her often, not speaking more than needed. Yet his presence steadied her. His shoulder was healing, and each evening she unwound the bandage, cleaned the wound, and bound it again with strips she tore from her garments. Heendured the touch with calm, though his eyes on hers sometimes left her breathless.
One evening, after she finished tending him, he surprised her by drawing something from his pouch—a small carved piece of bone shaped like a bird. He set it in her palm.
“My father made this,” he said. “I carried it when I was a boy.”
She looked at him, startled. “You’re giving it to me?”
“You keep it now.” His voice was simple, firm.
The bird was smooth under her thumb, worn by years of handling. She closed her fingers over it, moved beyond words.
Every night, Grey Horse quietly wove her hair with his steady hands, carefully forming a braid. Always, Violet stilled under his touch, her breath catching in her throat. When he was finished, he turned her to him and she whispered her thanks. Briefly, although it felt to Violet endlessly, his dark eyes held hers, unreadable, before he turned back to the river.
?
But not everyone looked kindly on her place beside him.
Pale Moon had been watching.
She was young, younger than Violet herself, with eyes like polished stones and hair that gleamed blue in the sun. She moved through the camp with the assurance of one who belonged to it completely. The women whispered that her family had long promised her to Grey Horse, that she would one day be his wife.
