I lowered my gaze, willing my composure to hold. I had not told him the tether could behave this way, carrying the tides of two souls bound by circumstance. Similar to the sea, great surges of emotion were impossible to ignore when they crested againstone’s consciousness, while the smaller currents required attunement to perceive.
In truth, I found it endearing that he could feel so deeply over a brief moment of awkwardness. Yet guilt seeped beneath my skin. I had thought it noble to spare him this knowledge after his initial overwhelm at our binding—but unless I mastered every flicker of my own heart, he would soon discover the truth for himself.
Mav ate as though to complete a necessary duty, avoiding my gaze in silence as I took smaller bites. The porridge was penitential in its texture, somehow managing to be watery and lumpy, but the fruit, soft and sun-sweetened, nearly made up for it. Mav’s head bent over his bowl, but I could sense his attention as it flickered toward me—small, unmeant glances quickly buried in the scrape of his spoon.
When the last bite had been consumed, I asked, “Where shall we begin?”
His eyes flew to mine, rounded in inquiry.
“Your quest,” I clarified.
A faint, wry smile tugged at his mouth. “Today, my quest is to do enough work to eat again tomorrow. And since this”—he gestured to the invisible connection between us, neither of us had chosen—“keeps us close, looks like you’re coming with me.”
“And if I refuse? If I insist we embark on a proper quest?”
“I don’t think you can refuse,” he said, rising from the stool. “It’d be terribly inconvenient for both of us. Besides, maybe we’ll find a proper quest along the way.”
My lips pressed together as I considered his rebuttal. If he truly had no quest, then there was no harm in seeing which options might make themselves available. “Very well,” I said with a tight nod.
Mav nodded to a few other patrons, murmured thanks toWren, and returned his empty bowl without complaint. He seemed accustomed to being overlooked.
The street beyond the tavern’s door was narrow, its houses lopsided and roofed with moss. Children ran barefoot near the well. Vendors pushed handcarts with bruised apples and stale bread.
It was nothing extraordinary.
But it was achingly human.
And it had been centuries since I had stood in the midst of anything that felt so alive.
Mav led the way down the narrow lane, passing shuttered shopfronts and moss-slick walls until the smell reached me—pungent and inescapable.
It smelled worse than I expected. Hay and sweat and the sharp tang of waste, thick enough to taste if one breathed too deeply. The sun had begun its slow climb, pale gold catching on the stable’s warped roof, but no light could disguise the grime. Flies drifted lazily through the rafters, and the floor was a patchwork of trampled straw, hoofprints, and something too viscous to name.
Mav took up a shovel without a word and began mucking stalls with a practiced rhythm of the scrape of metal against packed earth and the squelch of his boots.
I stood just outside the paddock, skirts lifted from the ground in one hand. I had not dressed for stables. Then again, I had not dressed for anything in particular. I owned precisely one gown, and it had not been made with horse stalls in mind. Still, I found myself watching him. The ease in his movements. The way he neither balked at a stallion’s toss of the head nor faltered when a broom caught on a cracked board. He simply carried on as though labor had been his truest companion.
A pale gray stallion with a faint limp approached, his darkeyes full of inquisition. He stretched his neck and nosed the hem of my gown.
“Oh,” I murmured, caught between amusement and dismay. “Please do not eat that.”
Mav looked up briefly, brushing hair from his brow. “That’s Clove. He likes pretty things.”
“I have nothing for him,” I said, unsure whether to retreat or offer my hand.
“You’re standing right there,” Mav replied, already turning back to his work.
Heat touched my cheeks.
Clove nosed higher, warm breath spilling across my wrist. I stilled, then hesitantly let my fingers glide through his coarse mane. He leaned into the touch, a soft huff escaping him. And I laughed. Not a polite exhale, but a true laugh—bright, brief, and foreign on my tongue. It startled me as much as it startled Clove, who drew back, ears flicking.
Mav paused mid-motion, straightening to look at me as though I had parted the clouds. The sound lingered in my chest, ripples across once still water. Clove resumed nosing my sleeve.
“You all right?” Mav asked, his voice lower now, stripped of teasing.
I smoothed a hand down the gelding’s neck, smiling. “I think I had forgotten what it felt like.”
“To laugh?”
