“I think,” Grey Horse said, “they will feel the thunder in their bones and remember the sky is larger than any man’s gun.”
?
That evening, as purple light fell over the drenched prairie, Violet walked down to the riverbank. It was unrecognizable. Swollen and wild, its edges were now blurred with debris. She thought of Pale Moon’s words:the river cannot be stopped.
Grey Horse joined her quietly, water still dripping from his hair. “You see what happens when it tries to run two ways at once,” he said. “It eats its own banks.”
She nodded, watching the current foam around a fallen branch. “Like men who think they can own the world and not answer to it.”
He looked at her then, not as he had before, with guarded affection, but with something like loving pride. “You begin to speak as one who listens.”
“I’ve been listening,” she said softly. “Since the day I arrived.”
The wind off the river lifted her wet hair and flung it against her cheek. Grey Horse reached out and smoothed it back, fingers slow, respectful. The gesture said what words could not, that the storm, whatever shape it took next, would find them standing together.
For a moment, neither moved. The air between them carried the scent of rain and wet earth, a sweetness born of survival. Violet felt the pulse in her throat quicken, not from fear but from something far more unsettling, a pull she could no longer mistake. His hand lingered near her face, fingers roughened bybowstring and reins, the touch both foreign and familiar. When she looked up, she met his gaze fully, and the world narrowed to the space that joined their breath.
Grey Horse’s eyes, dark as river stone, held no question now, only the steady recognition of what had been growing between them since the night the stars had first seen them together. His thumb traced the line of her jaw, and she leaned toward him without willing it, as though drawn by something older than choice. The thunder far off rolled once more, softer now, a memory of its former power, and she felt its echo in her chest. When he spoke, his voice was low and unguarded. “Even the river waits before it joins the sea,” he said. “But it always knows where it will go.”
Violet’s breath caught. She could feel the heat from his skin even through the damp air, could sense the steadiness beneath his stillness. She had once feared touch. Feared what men might take when a woman’s voice was quieted. Yet nothing in Grey Horse’s nearness felt like taking. It was an offering, wordless and patient, as though he waited for the world itself to give permission.
She lifted her hand, tentative at first, and laid it against his chest. Beneath her palm his heartbeat was slow, deliberate, a rhythm she felt she had known long before she could name it. His breath shuddered once, and she saw the flicker of restraint in his eyes … the effort of a man who had learned to master his own hunger. The river hissed softly behind them, rainwater hurrying past stones, and the sound seemed to weave around their silence like a blessing.
When he reached for her, it was with care, his fingers brushing the curve of her neck, tracing the edge of her wet hair. The world tilted closer. His lips touched hers lightly, almost a question, then deepened with certainty when she did not turnaway. The kiss was not fierce but sincere, filled with the weight of everything unspoken: gratitude, grief, the quiet miracle of having found one another through ruin.
When they parted, the wind had gentled. A lone raindrop slid down from the cottonwood above and landed between them, darkening the earth. Grey Horse rested his forehead against hers, and she could feel the smile in his breath when he whispered, “The river knows now.”
?
Behind them, campfires sparked anew, their smoke rising in delicate threads toward the bruised sky. Ezra’s voice carried faintly, instructing the young men to keep watch through the night. Somewhere, Red Willow was singing, low and rhythmic, to coax strength back into the earth.
The storm had passed, but the world was changing its skin. Violet could feel it: the air alive with tension, the river whispering of trials yet unseen. And still, her heart was steady.
Grey Horse reached for her hand. “The river rises,” he said, his voice barely above the wind. “Tomorrow, we ride.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Edge of the World
The morning the soldiers came when it was bright. The sky stretched endless and blue, a bowl without a flaw, and the prairie glittered with dew as if it wanted to look innocent. The storm had washed everything clean—the grass, the hides, even the air yet Violet woke with the feeling that the world had only been scrubbed so that something darker could write itself upon it.
The camp had been stirring since dawn. The smell of woodsmoke rose with the cries of children and the thud of hooves. Men checked their weapons, women rolled hides and tied bundles. Word had come from the watchers on the ridge: dust approaching, low and thick. And riders, many of them.
Grey Horse had been gone since before first light, riding the line of the river with two scouts. When he returned, his horse was lathered and his expression said more than words.
“They come hard,” he told Ezra. “Two wagons and twelve mounted soldiers. Blue coats. They follow the road like dogs on a scent.”
Ezra swore under his breath. “They’ll think this camp’s guilty of killing Thomas and his buddies without cause.”
“We will tell them the truth and hope they believe it,” Grey Horse said grimly.
He turned toward the people gathering around him. The camp quieted, the kind of silence that falls before thunder. “We will not run,” he said. “But we will not be fools. Take the horses to high ground. Keep the children and elders beyond the ridge. When these men come, we will meet them with words first.”
Pale Moon nodded, her face set like carved wood. “And if they attack with their guns?”
Grey Horse’s eyes swept over everyone, then came to rest on Violet. “Then they will learn that the wind still answers to no man.”
?
By midmorning the soldiers had crossed the far meadow. From a distance they looked small, like toys arranged on a child’s quilt: bright jackets, brass catching the sun, horses moving in stiff formation. But as they drew nearer, the rhythm of their march became a sound Violet could feel in her chest. Drums of hooves, the sharp jingle of bridles, the occasional barked order carried by wind. It was civilization approaching, in all its confidence and blindness.
