After lunch, Penny watched over my shoulder while I patched a cracked cook pot, pressing so close that I could feel his breath on the back of my neck.
“Where did you learn to be a smith?” he asked. “I know you grew up here, but I realized I don’t really know anything else about you.”
He may not have known much, but he still knew more about me than anyone else. More of therealme, anyway.
“I learned here.” I gestured to the space around us. “First from my father, and when he became Shroud Warden and didn’t have the time to waste on me, from the man who took his place. Garret Lynde.”
When I didn’t offer more, Penny kept digging. “What was it like?”
The first few years of my apprenticeship had been stifling under my father’s instruction, but Garret had been different. I didn’t mind thinking about him.
“My father spent most of every day berating me for never getting anything right, but Garret took my mistakes in stride and taught me how to fix them. He took over when I was ten. We could go entire days without him saying a single word, but I didn’t mind. I never felt like I was an inconvenience to him or a burden. At one point, I think when I was eleven or twelve, I asked him to adopt me.” Iscoffed at the memory and shook my head. “It was a stupid thing to ask, but he didn’t make mefeelstupid for asking. Pretty sure he would have if not for who my father was. He treated me like a son from then on, as much as he could anyway. It was…” I swallowed against a sudden unexpected lump in my throat before finishing. “It was nice while it lasted.”
“Did something happen to him?” Penny asked softly.
“My father happened,” I said.
Garret was yet another one of the things my father took from me, and he hadn’t been afraid to admit as much straight to my face. He explained it away saying that I’d learned all I could from the old man, and it was time for me to stand on my own. And how else could I have taken over the forge without him eliminating the other smith? It didn’t matter that Garret would have stepped down the moment he was asked.
I half expected Penny to ask for clarification on what I meant, but he remained silent behind me, pressing his hand against my lower back. The touch steered my thoughts back to the moment at hand and the work I was neglecting.
The pot had gone cold and the coals needed tending. I reluctantly moved away to poke at the charcoal before glancing at Penny over my shoulder.
“Bellows, Pen,” I said, and he stepped back as I pumped air into the forge and the flames flared.
Before I could move the pot into the glowing coals, Penny’s hacking cough gave me pause. It was getting worse, and when he doubled over and didn’t stop after several seconds, I grabbed his arm and steered him toward the stool by his worktable.
“Sit down before you fall,” I said, trying to push himonto the seat as the coughing subsided and he gasped a breath.
“I’m fine,” he insisted between shuddering inhales.
When I looked unconvinced, he gave a soft smile and switched our positions to push me down onto the stool instead. I couldn’t help but look around to make sure no one was close enough to see when he straddled my lap and leaned in.
“What are you doing?” I asked as his lips grazed the corner of my mouth. My heart hammered as panic took root in my gut and made it hard to enjoy the attention.
“You looked sad,” Penny murmured, sliding his hand up to cup my cheek to encourage me to turn into a second attempted kiss.
Outside the forge’s canopy, I heard someone call out a greeting to Otis, and my mouth went suddenly dry. Without thinking, I lurched to my feet, sending Penny tumbling onto the packed dirt floor. There was no time to apologize before the ghostly figure of the herbalist’s second apprentice appeared in the open doorway just as I took up my previous position beside the anvil.
His icy eyes swept over Penny—who scowled as he pushed to his feet and brushed the dust from his trousers—and landed on me. White-blond hair framed his face within the shadow of his hooded cloak, and he looked as disinterested in my presence as he had the first time we met.
“Afternoon, Otis.” I cleared my throat to try to cover the nervous tremor in my voice. “I wasn’t expecting Isla for another couple of hours, so I still have a final pass to do on the trowel.”
His lip curled and he crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll wait. Harlan is eager to have it back.”
I flicked a glance at Penny, but he’d turned away to fuss with the tools at his worktable, clearly sulking.
“Of course. I’ll get right to it,” I told Otis, then swapped the cracked pot for the nearly complete trowel.
Our visitor leaned against the door frame while I retrieved a whetstone and got to work. The silence under the canopy lasted through several passes of the trowel blade over the stone before I needed to fill it. Otis knew too much about me from his time spent with the herbalist, a close old friend of my father’s, but I knew nothing abouthim, and that couldn’t stand.
“How long have you been here, Otis?”
“Long enough,” he replied, as maddeningly vague as I remembered him from our last interaction.
He hadn’t been in Ashpoint before I left. He and his sister were impossible to miss, and I would have remembered them. But that was thirteen years ago.
“Long enough to have met my father?” I asked. No matter how casual I kept my tone, I knew he would realize I was digging and not simply making small talk.
