three
The blood between my fingers runs like shadow. Ransom Black towers over me, broad as an oak tree, his hair glinting honey-blond in the warming sun. His coat hangs in heavy folds about his frame, brass buttons reflecting the light on the water. His face reminds me of delicate porcelain: high cheekbones, an angled jaw, and full lips like a budding rose. Beneath bold, dark brows, his expression lies somewhere between haughty amusement and self-importance.
My mouth gapes like a shored fish. There is specific etiquette one is supposed to follow in the presence of a lord, but I find my mind completely and utterly empty.
Damn the etiquette.
I shove the metal shard into the pocket of my sweater and stand shakily.
“You are Adelaide Thorn, are you not?” His voice drops softer, curling around the edges of my body like fog. There is a glint in his eye, something akin to hunger, while he studies the exposed ankles beneath my skirts.
I wince and adjust the ruined fabric over the toes of my boots. “I’m not sure it matters who I am, my lord,” I say, gritting the last words like iron between my teeth.
There is something on his hand, something like dirt, only darker. He wipes it on his trousers, smirks. “Oh, I think it does.”
We stand there in silence for a moment, no sound but the river whistling through ice, the wind in the trees, and dry grasses susurrating on the banks. Wheels and hooves clack along the bridge—Farmer Whitley’s wagon loaded with straw. He waves a hand to us, merely smudges in his poor eyesight, and Ransom gestures back.
I whet my lips. “Is there a reason you are walking alone along the river?”
He raises his brow and bends to collect a blade of tall grass, splitting the stem with a thumbnail. A small leather pouch swings from a belt around his waist. I wonder at its contents. Herbs, perhaps? A pencil and a small scrap of paper?
What does a lord do with his time?
“That’s rather an intimate question for someone to ask if they are not Adelaide Thorn, the vicar’s infamous daughter.”
I almost laugh at this.Infamous. But another shock of pain sears up my leg, and my knee buckles. Like a willow switch across my skin.
“Would it even matter if I were?” I clench my jaw and sit heavily on a fallen log, lifting my heel over one knee and inspecting the fresh black blood gathering at the edges of the cut.
Ransom steps closer, and annoyance sparks in my stomach. Doesn’t he have other places to be? Dying father and all that?
And then I freeze.
He’ll see my blood. The color all wrong. And there is so much of it. Yet, I dig at the cut with muddied fingers, wincing when the delicate layers of skin rip like lace. I need to stop the bleeding.
“Are you hurt?” Ransom drops beside me, reaching out his hand, but I pull away.
“I’m fine, thanks.” The words are taut on my lips.
He retreats, straightening the lapels on his coat, brushing hair from his eyes. “You remind me of your father.”
My skin flares white-hot, chin jerking up, and I peer at him. I should feel pity, but there is only anger between my lips. “How do you know what my father is like?” I spit.
His smirk sparkles when it widens, teeth so white they might be carved from ivory. He laughs, triumph in his throat. “I knew it! The vicar’s daughter, hardly seen outside her tower anymore these days, locked away—”
“It’s hardly a tower,” I grumble, turning back to my heel, the blood still beading midnight.
“I haven’t seen your father since the day my mother died. He’s at the castle now, you know. I always leave when I find he’s coming.” There is a sadness in his voice, and for a moment, I recognize myself in him. In the way he holds his fists. Always ready for a fight, always ready to lose. But I push it away. Just another soul with dead and dying parents.
“I assumed.” My fingers dig into the crevice on my skin, searching for more metal.
“If you would just let me help—” He extends his hand toward me, but I pull away, hissing like a cat.
“I said I was fine.”
His eyes connect with the color of my blood, and I steel myself for what is coming. A shriek. A sharp inhale. A stumbling backward while he stares at my cursed and gory skin.
But there’s nothing.
