He snorted. “You’ll get used to me. A wife must.”
She sat frozen on the edge of the bed. The candlelight blurred, her eyes stinging with tears she dared not shed.
Thomas lowered himself to sit beside her, the mattress sinking under his weight. His hand clamped over her wrist, heavy and final. “You’re mine, Violet. Remember that. You came here to be mine, and that’s what you’ll be.”
Her breath caught, her whole-body tense as wire. She prayed he would not force more. She prayed Ezra’s presence nearby might restrain him.
For a long moment his grip held. Then he gave a short laugh, low and hard. “Not tonight. You’re skittish as a fresh colt. Tomorrow, maybe. But don’t think to run. There’s nowhere to go.”
He released her with a shove, stretched out, and closed his eyes. Within minutes his snores filled the room.
Violet sat rigid, her heart racing. Relief and dread tangled in her chest. Tonight she was spared, but tomorrow was another day.
She lay down at last, at the edge of the bed, silent tears soaking in her thin pillow.
?
Sleep came in snatches, broken by dreams. She saw the Kiowa camp, the fire’s glow, Grey Horse’s face bent close as his hands wove her hair. She heard his voice:Braiding joins the past, present, and the future … like us.
Then Pale Moon’s voice cut through, sharp as flint:His heart belongs to the past. If freed, it will be mine.
The dream shifted. She stood midstream in a river, Thomas on one bank, Grey Horse on the other. The current roared around her. She began to struggle to one side, then changing her mind, she headed to the other. Then quickly she turned back again to the first. Finally, she stood still, not knowing which way to go. Until the river pulled her under, carrying her away.
She woke gasping, the darkness thick, Thomas’s snores shaking the bed.
Her hand pressed to her chest.Grey Horse… if you are near, come. Please come.
?
Dawn bled gray through the cracks in the shutters. Thomas stirred, scratching his beard, his eyes heavy. “Up,” he barked. “Daylight’s wasting.”
Violet rose, weary and raw. She fetched water from the barrel outside, her skirts brushing dust. The yard was bleak, the barn sagging, the fields barren. A rooster crowed thinly from somewhere unseen.
She stared at the place that was meant to be her home and felt her spirit shrink. The ranch was a lie, as false as Thomas’s smile in his letters. She had left safety, even hope, for this.
Her hands trembled on the bucket.
But then, a faint call from beyond the creek, she thought she heard it—the cry of a distant hawk, or perhaps a signal, distant but real. Her heart leapt.
Grey Horse is near.
She bent her head quickly, hiding the spark of hope that flared anew.
She glanced back at the cabin to see Ezra lingering near the doorway, rolling his blanket tight. It frightened her to think of him leaving, leaving her alone with Thomas.
Thomas counted coins into Ezra’s palm with a sour look, muttering about the cost of guides and the worth of women. Ezra closed his fist around the money, his expression unreadable.
As he walked past Violet, his eyes held hers just long enough to send a shiver through her. “Mind yourself,” he said quietly, so Thomas would not hear. “A man’s house can be as dangerous as the wild. Remember—roads fork. Even the one you’re on.”
Violet’s throat tightened. She gave the smallest nod. Ezra tipped his hat and strode to his saddled horse, swung up, and rode away without another word, his figure shrinking smaller down the dirt road until it was gone.
For the first time since the stage coach, she felt truly alone.
Chapter Twenty: The Hunter in Shadow
The trail had lain plain as scars across the earth. Hooves had gouged deep into the clay, broken twigs pointing like arrows. The faint ash of campfires drifted in the wind. Grey Horse followed without haste, without error. His pony moved light and steady beneath him, head low, ears flicking.
Each sign he’d read cut deeper than the last. Violet’s small print in the mud, the mark of her skirt where it had brushed through grass, the sudden sharpness of Thomas’s deep prints beside hers. He’d read her story written on the land taken, claimed, carried farther with each passing hour.
