It wasn’t the first time a stranger had slept beneath my roof, or the first time it had been a woman. But the addition of a magical tether and a charming level of madness? Those were new.
Somehow, it wasn’t the worst thing to happen to me this year, only the strangest. Last month, there was a runaway herd of sheep and a jealous husband who was certain I’d slept with his wife. I mean, I did, but I didn’t know it was his wife or that the sheep belonged to him. The sheep forgave me quicker.
I lay flat on my back, arms behind my head, staring at the cracked beam above in hopes it might offer answers. A spider web glistened in the dim light, stretched from wall to beam. I could name every creak in this floor, every draught whispering through the ill-fitted pane.
It washerI couldn’t make sense of.
What sort of woman walked barefoot into a fight, offered aid without condition, and uttered the phrasebound for a fortnightas if it were commonplace?
It’s possible she had lied; it would have been easier if she had. I’d heard prettier and far more ridiculous lies—but something about her didn’t strike me as false. She’d spoken plainly, as though it didn’t matter whether or not I believed her. It wasn’t the sort of tale a man invents. Most lies, in my experience, benefit the liar. I couldn’t see how being stuck with someone she didn’t know would benefit her at all. Since she’d paid for dinner, she wasn’t even getting free meals out of this. What lunatic would willingly sleep in a random bed next to a stranger who could mean them harm?
Part of me wanted to believe. Not in spells spun through fate or any of that holy rot.
Inher.
Three hundred years under a spell that slumbered her for a century at a time, only to wake to serve another. Never in my thirty years of life had I ever heard of such magic. I’d expect to hear such things in a song, right after the verse with the enchanted ring and the invisible thief.
I turned my head to look at her. Her hair had begun to dry,curling where it met her collar. Streetlamps carved her in ethereal shadows. I had to remind myself she was real. In my chambers. In my bed.
If the neighbors heard she’d come home with me—and they would—there’d be no shortage of commentary. I’d never seen a wall thick enough to stop gossip. I could hear their voices now.What in all the Saints’ broken halos did that washed-up bastard do to convince her to breathe the same air as him, let alone darken his doorstep?
They’d say I’d gone mad. Speculations would swirl that she’d been bought or conjured.
Or worse, they’d say nothing at all.
Because how do you explain a woman like her being with a man like me?
And what could I possibly say?
That she’d arrived strange, sodden, and striking? That she told me I was bound to her, magically and physically, for fourteen days because I’d accepted help I hadn’t known to ask for?
I rolled to my side, studying the bent cot leg I had kicked far too many times by accident.
Maybe I’d wake to find the bed empty, her presence nothing more than a ghost of warmth on threadbare linens and a rogue silver thread. Another night I could blame on ale.
Maybe Iwasdreaming, but luck hadn’t been able to find me yet.
My throat thickened as a sobering thought took hold. I wanted her to be real, for all of this to be real.
There was something about her that quieted the storm in me. She was strange, yes. Beautiful, surely. More than that, she felt like a ballad half-written. And for the first time in longer than I could name…I didn’t hate the idea of joining the melody.
The dream came slowly. Smoke curling through a keyhole, thin and uncertain until it was all that remained. My feet were planted in a place I hadn’t seen in years.
Verdelune, or what was left of it.
Once, it had been the heart of everything. Morning drills. Shouted commands. The iron-sour taste of blood behind my teeth. I’d broken my arm here and had to learn how to fence left-handed. I’d split my knuckles on a squire who thought noise was a suitable stand-in for skill. He learned to brag from farther away.
A sycamore stood near the edge of the meandering path. Initials were carved into the bark the year the drought nearly starved us—J.H. and S.T., with all the grace of a drunk’s stagger. I used to sit beneath it, binding my wrists after training, and wonder what it might be like to experience something gentle, a life that didn’t require violence to be meaningful. It had been years since I’d thought of it, the tree or the ponderings of a young knight with a penchant for poetry under the shade of its boughs.
The courtyard was half-lit, dusk bleeding through. The old stones lay cracked and tufted with weeds. The fountain at the center stood dry, its basin a cradle of dead leaves. My nostrils filled with the phantom scents of polish on my gauntlets and the scorched air of summer. My ears waited for the clash of steel at the call of drillmasters, but the quiet remained.
A breeze wrapped around me as an unseen rope pulled at my ribs, drawing me toward a newly familiar warmth. I turned to find Quinn standing across from me. My heart gave a double-beat. Yes, I recognized her from having met her today, but there was something deeper, a stirring of memory I couldn’t quite place.
This place of grime and ghosts didn’t suit her, and yet, she seemed so right. My hands curled. In another life, I’d have reached for my sword, but she was no threat in the typical sense.She was dangerous in the way the cliffs of Balforte were; falling is a choice—until it’s not.
Quinn.
Barefoot still, standing where the captain once paced. The silver gown was whole here, shimmering, moonlight made cloth, shifting with every breath of the wind. Her hair spilled in dark waves over her shoulders, and when she turned, her bright blue eyes found me with unerring clarity. I’d dreamed of blood and drill yards before, but I was always alone. Maybe the tether tied more than just bodies. Perhaps our minds now shared a connection.
