I take a step back, my eyes bouncing around her face without getting near her eyes. “Crescent moon…”
“Are you well enough?” The girl comes in and puts the tray on the table. “You are very pale. Here, sit, sit—”
I don’t mean to. But I throw my arms around her and hug her.
“Mistress?” The embrace is tentatively returned. “Do you need a healer? Lena has just given birth, but—”
Easing back, I find myself double-checking that the maid is real. But I still don’t look into her eyes. The answer I need was given to me last night by what Merc did, and I don’t want to know anything else.
“M-mistress?”
“You’re alive,” I choke out. “You’re okay.”
Her head lowers. “Forgive me for the way I behaved yesterday. I—”
“There’s no need to apologize. I shouldn’t have gone in there in the first place. I just… I’ve been worried over you.”
The maid lifts a hand to her bruised temple. “I am well enough. This morning has been… very quiet. It has been a blessed change.”
“I think things are going to get better from now on for you.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “You don’t deserve to be under a man like that.”
As her eyes tear up, she shuffles away and makes a show of going over to the tray. “I know it is but bread and cheese, yet I made both with my own hands.”
“It is a feast for me before I go, and well timed indeed. Thank you.”
She glances back at me. “You are leaving then?”
The image of her in her traditional dress, her pale hands twisting in front of her, the bruising on her face still so painfully obvious, burns into me. In posing the question, I feel as though she’s a culmination of something that has been coming ever since Mr. Lewis sat me down, something I have been trying to shut out and deny.
I wish Merc were here.
But he’s not. So I answer for myself: “Yes, I’m going.”
Fates, am I really doing this? Am I really heading south? And how will I travel, especially if Merc took our horse…
“Soon, or today?” When I don’t answer, she takes a deep breath. “I shall pack some provisions for you and your husband.”
“Just for me.”
In the periphery of my vision, I note that her brows rise. “You will be returning home then?”
“No, I go to the Kingdom of the South.”
There’s notable relief in the way her shoulders ease of their tension. “Oh, you cannot go south. The flooding will stop you at the valley pass for at least as long as the rain fell.”
Dimly, I recall her saying something about all that. “There’s another way, though. Isn’t there? The barrier, you referred to it as?”
“Oh, no, no one goes through the Crystal Gate. It’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“It’s a barrier impenetrable. For centuries, people have tried, to no avail.”
I go over and look out the window. “Can you show me the direction of the pass?”
The maid comes over and points down the lane. “You follow this all the way out to the travel roading. It will take you to the pass, but there is no reason to go. Three days, at least, for the runoff to clear.”
“What about the—Crystal Gate, is it?”
