“Then I’ll find another way. I’ll go to the other merchants directly. I’ll—I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.” She rose, crossing to where he stood. “But I have to try. I have to at least try.”
His expression was unreadable in the pale morning light. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“Jessa—”
“Someone has to stay with Dani.” She reached up to touch his face, feeling the tension in his jaw. “Someone has to be here if she wakes up, or if she… gets worse. Someone she trusts. That’s you.”
“She trusts you more.”
“She needs you more.” Jessa swallowed hard. “Your herbs are helping, even if they can’t replace the medicine entirely. She needs your knowledge and your care. And she needs to know that she’s not alone if?—”
If I don’t come back.
She didn’t say the words aloud. She didn’t have to.
His eyes blazed. “I won’t let you walk into danger alone.”
“It’s my village. My uncle. My problem to solve.” She rose onto her toes and pressed a kiss to his mouth, brief and desperate. “Take care of my sister. That’s what I need from you. That’s the only thing I need.”
For a long moment, she thought he would refuse. That he would throw her over his shoulder and barricade her in the den, the way his protective instincts clearly wanted him to.
Instead, he pulled her against his chest and held on, his arms like iron bands around her.
“Come back to me,” he growled against her hair. “Whatever happens, whatever he says or does—come back to me.”
“I will.”
“Promise.”
She thought of all the promises she couldn’t keep. All the ways this could go wrong.
“I promise,” she said anyway.
The forest was quiet in the early morning light.
She moved quietly through the trees, the precious bundle of sunvine cloth wrapped in oilskin and tucked into her satchel. The fabric was beautiful—even she could admit that. The threads had taken on a subtle shimmer after the processing Tarek had taught her, and the finished weave glowed with an inner light that seemed to shift depending on the angle.
It was worth a fortune. More than enough to buy medicine, supplies, perhaps even passage to another settlement far from her uncle’s reach.
Ifanyone would trade for it.
The village appeared through the trees, smoke rising from chimneys as the familiar shapes of cottages and workshops emerging from the morning mist. She paused at the tree line, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Home,some distant part of her whispered.
But it didn’t feel like home anymore. The cottage where she’d grown up, where her mother had taught her to weave, where she’d cared for Dani through countless illnesses, felt more like a trap than a home now. A cage she’d only narrowly escaped.
She couldn’t go there. She needed to find someone to bargain with before her uncle found her.
Instead, she circled around the village’s edge, heading for the merchant quarter where the traveling traders set up their stalls.She didn’t think Halwick would be back yet, but she’d find someone else…
The street was empty.
She stopped, confusion giving way to dread. The merchant quarter should have been bustling at this hour, traders setting up their wares, villagers haggling over prices. Instead, the stalls stood dark and deserted, shutters closed, awnings rolled up tight.
Where is everyone?
