Instead, I changed the subject. “They’ll come back, you know. Aldric and the others. They’ll search every house, every barn. They won’t stop just because you scared them off once.”
He nodded, serious. “That’s why we’re not staying.”
The “we” caught me off guard. I had not let myself hope that he would stay, not after my own usefulness wore thin. But I tried not to show it.
“You know these woods,” he said. “Better than I do. You know how to hide, and I know how to fight. I say we stick together, at least until they lose the scent.”
It was more generous than I expected. I considered it, then said, “Agreed.”
He stood, paced to the door, and tested the latch. The wood was splintered from where the men had forced it. He frowned, then went to the corner where the old bench stood. With a few blows of his heel, he broke off a leg, wedged it against the door, and braced it tight with a log from the firewood stack.
“They can get through, but it’ll slow them down,” he said.
I watched him work, the economy of his movements. “You’ve done this before,” I said.
He snorted, a real laugh this time. “More times than I can count.”
I sat up, swinging my legs off the pallet. My foot barely touched the ground, but it was enough to remind me of the pain. I winced, tried to hide it.
He crossed the room in two strides, crouched to check the bandage. “You’ll have a scar,” he said, voice softer. “But you’ll keep the foot.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, and meant it. “I was never meant to be beautiful.”
He looked up, and for the first time, there was something like sorrow in his eyes. “Don’t say that.”
I didn’t know what to do with the kindness, so I looked away. “We should bank the fire,” I said. “Too much smoke will show them we’re here.”
He nodded, and together we pulled ash over the coals, leaving just enough light to see by. The lodge grew cold again, but it was a clean, good cold, the kind that clears the air and sets the mind straight.
The night pressed in, thick with the smell of snow and sap. I could hear, faintly, the distant call of a hound—just a note, then gone. I wondered if it was memory or real, if the world outside was waiting to pounce.
Moab stretched out by the fire, boots crossed, hands laced behind his head. He looked, for all the world, like a soldier after the battle, waiting for the next command.
I joined him, sitting on the edge of the furs, careful to keep a handspan between us.
“Do you miss your world?” I asked, after a long while.
He was quiet, then, “Not as much as I thought I would.” He rolled his head to look at me. “Sometimes you have to leave a place to see what it really was.”
I understood more than I wanted to admit.
I thought of the manor, the garden, the river in summer, where I used to read in secret while the servants slept. I thought of my mother’s hands, the way they smelled of lavender and smoke, the way she would brush the hair from my eyes when no one was looking. I thought of Aldric, and the way he had stared at me, always hungry for something I could never give.
Moab must have sensed my mood, because he shifted closer, just a fraction. “If we make it through this,” he said, “what then?”
I laughed, surprised by the question. “We’ll see,” I said. “Maybe I’ll become a legend. Maybe I’ll grow old in a cottage and tell stories to children who don’t believe a word.”
He smiled, and I saw a future that wasn’t just running, or hiding, or being hunted to ground.
The fire faded, and the lodge went dark, save for the faint pulse of the coals. I drew my knees to my chest, wrapped my arms around them, and let myself be still. Moab lay beside me, a quiet shadow, not touching but close enough that I could feel the heat of him through the night.
Outside, another hound called, answered by a far-off horn. The search would go on, and maybe tomorrow we would have to run again, or fight, or find some new place to make a stand.
Scarlette
Iwoke to a world divided in two, the thin crust of ice rimming the window, and the heat of my own sweat, sticky as sap, running down my back. I coughed once, and the sound startled a murder of crows into flight from the woods beyond the lodge. The sun was just a finger’s width above the hills, yellow and timid, as if ashamed to look too closely at what the storm had left behind.
The fever was gone. The ache in my joints remained, but it was ordinary, familiar, the kind of pain that means you are alive and the body has not yet surrendered. I curled my hand into a fist, found the skin dry and cool, and let myself rest there for a moment, savoring the absence of burning.
