“You’re safe now,” Elodie said, keeping her voice steady. “Can you tell me your name?”
The woman’s lips moved, but no sound came out. Her eyes were fixed on something far away—flames, perhaps, or the faces of people who hadn’t made it.
Elodie had seen that look before. Not in medieval refugees, obviously, but in her grandmother after the Blitz stories, in the documentary footage she’d watched for her research on displacement patterns. Shock didn’t care what century you lived in.
“Right,” she murmured, mostly to herself. “Water first. Questions later.”
The next hour blurred into organised chaos. Elodie commandeered the great hall, directing servants to arrange pallets along the walls while others hauled in cauldrons of pottage from the kitchens. Old Wynne appeared with her basket of herbs and salves, her sharp eyes assessing the wounded with practiced efficiency.
“’Tis worse than the northern raids of ’87,” the healer muttered, binding a child’s burned hand with gentle fingers. “These folk have walked nigh on two days without rest.”
“The raiders,” Elodie said, helping a young woman settle onto a pallet. “Did anyone see their colours? Any banners?”
The woman shook her head, her voice coming out as a ragged whisper. “No colours, my lady. They looked like bandits, but...” She trailed off, her hands twisting in her lap. “Bandits take things. These men burned everything. The grain stores. The livestock we couldn’t carry. ’Twas as if they wanted to leave nothing behind.”
A chill ran down Elodie’s spine. Strategic destruction. Scorched earth tactics. This wasn’t random violence—it was calculated.Alaric, she thought.It has to be.
An old man grabbed her sleeve as she passed, his accent thick with the rough burr of the northern moors—not unlike the way Bertram spoke when he forgot himself. His words tumbled out in a rush of grief and confusion, something about his daughter, his grandchildren, a village that no longer existed.
Elodie knelt beside him, taking his weathered hands in hers. She couldn’t understand half of what he said, but she didn’t need to. Some things transcended language.
“I know,” she said softly, squeezing his fingers. “I’m so sorry. You’re safe now. We’ll take care of you.”
The old man’s rheumy eyes searched her face—this strange woman in fine clothes who knelt in the rushes like it was nothing, who looked at him like he mattered. His lip trembled.
“Bless you,” he managed. “Bless you, my lady.”
“My lady!” Marian appeared at her elbow, slightly out of breath. “Cook wants to know if she should slaughter another pig. And there’s a woman asking for you—says her babe won’t stop crying, won’t take milk?—”
“Tell Cook yes on the pig. And bring the woman to me.”
The baby, it turned out, had colic. Elodie remembered her cousin’s nightmare with her firstborn—the endless screaming, the desperate google searches at three in the morning. She showed the exhausted mother how to hold the infant against herchest, belly-down across her forearm, and gently bounce. The crying stopped.
The mother stared at Elodie as if she’d performed a miracle.
“Old family trick,” Elodie said, which was technically true if you counted YouTube tutorials as family wisdom. “Keep her warm, keep her close. She’s scared. She doesn’t understand what’s happening.”
Father Aldric found her bandaging a gash on a young boy’s leg. The priest stood in the doorway of the great hall, his dark robes a stark contrast to the chaos of injured peasants and harried servants. His face was unreadable—that same pinched expression he’d worn in the chapel when he’d tried to drown her in holy water.
Elodie braced herself for another exorcism attempt. But the priest simply watched. His gaze tracked her movements as she cleaned the wound, applied a poultice of herbs Wynne had pressed into her hands, wrapped the leg in clean linen. She spoke softly to the boy the whole time—nonsense, really, stories about brave knights and clever foxes, anything to distract him from the sting.
When she finished, the boy clutched her hand.
“Are you really a faerie?” he whispered.
“No, love. Just a woman who talks too much.” She ruffled his hair. “Rest now. You’re safe.”
She rose, expecting Father Aldric to have retreated. Instead, he stood exactly where he’d been, his expression shifted into something she couldn’t quite fathom.
“You know healing,” he said. Not an accusation. An observation.
“Some. I worked with healers for two summers.”
The priest was silent for a long moment. His fingers moved over his rosary beads, counting prayers or doubts or both.“Perhaps,” he said finally, his voice grudging, “the Lord sends His angels in unexpected forms.”
And then he was gone, robes swirling, leaving Elodie staring after him with her mouth hanging open.
Did the priest who tried to exorcise me just call me an angel?
