She didn’t have time to process that particular development. A child was crying somewhere, and Wynne was calling for more clean water, and someone had apparently lost track of the goat, which was now eating one of the tapestries?—
Gareth foundher two hours later. She was directing a group of servants in setting up a makeshift infirmary in the corner of the hall, her hair escaping its braid in wild tendrils, her face streaked with soot and sweat and something that might have been dried blood. Her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, her voice hoarse from giving orders, and she was gesturing emphatically at a bewildered cook’s assistant who clearly couldn’t understand why the lady wanted the brothwithoutsalt for the sick children. She looked, Gareth thought, like a general commanding a siege.
He’d come down from the walls expecting chaos. What he found was... this. Order emerging from disaster. Frightened peasants calming under her steady voice. His household—servants who’d once whispered about the faerie witch, followed her commands without question.
Miles appeared at his shoulder. “The refugees’ stories confirm the pattern, my lord,” he said quietly. “Three villages hit in the past se’nnight. All in our territory. All burned to the ground.”
Gareth nodded, but his eyes never left Elodie. She’d spotted him now. Her face changed—relief and worry flickering in quicksuccession—and she handed the ladle she’d been holding to the nearest servant before crossing the hall toward him.
“You’re back.” Her voice was breathless. “The riders—are there more coming? Is it?—”
Just refugees,he signed.Alaric’s work, but no soldiers. Not yet.
“The villages they came from—three of them. All strategic points, Gareth. He’s cutting off your supply lines, isolating you.” She said it like she’d been thinking about it for hours, like she’d mapped the attacks in her head while bandaging wounds and soothing children. “He’s planning something.”
He knew. He’d drawn the same conclusions. But hearing her say it—watching her mind work, quick and sharp as any commander’s—something twisted in his chest.
You should have stayed in the solar,he signed.
“Yes, well.” She pushed a strand of hair out of her face, leaving another smudge of soot on her cheek. “I’m rubbish at following instructions. Ask anyone who’s ever supervised my fieldwork.”
He didn’t know what fieldwork meant. He didn’t care. She was covered in ash and exhaustion and other people’s blood, her fancy gown ruined beyond repair, her hands rough from work that should have been beneath a lady’s notice. And she was looking at him with those fierce green eyes, daring him to scold her, daring him to tell her she’d done wrong. He had never wanted to kiss anyone more in his life.
You did well,he signed instead.
Her shoulders dropped slightly. “They needed help. I helped. That’s all.”
That is not all.He gestured at the hall—at the organised chaos, the sleeping children, the grateful faces.You did this. My people will remember.
“Your people needed?—”
Our people, he corrected.
She went still.
The words hung between them, heavy with implications neither was ready to examine. Elodie opened her mouth—to argue, probably, or to deflect with one of her jokes—but before she could speak, Marian appeared at her elbow.
“My lady, the mother with the colicky babe is asking for you again. And Old Wynne says the man with the leg wound needs the bandage changed, and Cook wants to know about breakfast portions for tomorrow, and?—”
Elodie closed her eyes briefly. “Right. Yes. Tell them I’m coming.”
She looked back at Gareth, something complicated moving behind her expression. “We need to talk,” she said quietly. “About Alaric, what he’s planning. About—” She gestured vaguely at the hall full of displaced villagers. “All of this.”
Tomorrow,he signed.Tonight you rest.
“I’m not tired.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Fine. I’m exhausted. But there’s too much to do.”
The servants can manage. You have given them a purpose.He reached out, almost unconsciously, and brushed the soot from her cheek. His calloused thumb traced her cheekbone, gentle as a whisper.Rest. I will keep watch.
For a moment, she leaned into his touch.
Then Marian was tugging at her sleeve again, and the moment shattered, and Elodie was swept back into the tide of demands and decisions. But she looked back at him once—just once—before disappearing into the crowd.
Gareth stood in the doorway of his great hall, watching his household work under the direction of a woman who’d fallen from the sky three months ago, and wondered how he’d ever survived without her.
