We stare at each other for a long, stretched moment, the carriage’s jostle fading into the background, the road noise turning dull and far away. I can feel his heart beneath my palm—steadier, heavier—can feel the faint tremor in his fingers where they rest over mine, as if he’s holding himself in place with that touch.
Then the spell snaps like thread as the carriage slows, the wheels sucking at mud. Vale’s hand lifts from mine, his expression shuttering back into something sharp.
He adjusts his coat with brisk efficiency, eyes already turning toward duty, toward distance. “I believe we have arrived,” he says, as if the last ten seconds never happened at all.
When the door opens, Vale steps down first, boots landing in the mud with that impossible quiet of his, as if the ground itself makes room. He doesn’t look back at me. He simply straightens, cloak settling, posture snapping into that composed, courtly silhouette he wears so well.
I gather my skirt and shift toward the door, bracing one hand on the frame. I’ve hauled corpses heavier than my own body without help. I don’t need a god’s gallantry like?—
A hand appears in the doorway.
Vale’s.
For a beat, I just stare at it, suspicious of the gesture the way one is suspicious of a wolf going still. Then I take it.
His fingers close around mine—firm, steady, warm enough to jolt me—and he doesn’t tug me down so much as anchor me, guiding my weight as the carriage shifts under my feet. When my boot searches for the ground and finds only slick mud, he adjusts without a word, stepping closer, angling my descent so I land where the earth is solid.
“You’re playing well at this travesty,” I murmur low. “For one startling heartbeat, I thought I had a husband.”
His thumb drags once over my knuckle—so small it could be accident, yet it feels deliberate—before he releases my hand. “Start hallucinating virtues in me, and I might be forced to have you committed for hysteria before I demand a divorce from some priest.”
Before I manage a rebuke, a woman emerges from a doorway. Busty. Face flushed pink. Apron stained.
“Your Majesty.” Her low curtsy almost makes her topple over before her eyes dart to Vale. “And…My Lord.”
I look at the orphanage behind her: a low stone building with patched windows and a roof that sags as if it’s tired of holding itself up. The courtyard is damp and bare, nothing but trampled dirt and a few crooked benches. A line of small bodies stands inside the door.
“You’re the matron?”
“Sister Merin, Your Majesty. That’s what they call me. Not a nun, just…someone who stayed. Please…” Her arm opens wide in invitation. “We were not expecting… that is to say, when King Kael—God rest his soul—still visited, he usually sent word weeks in advance so we might…scrub.”
“We didn’t bring judgment, Sister Merin,” I say with a gesture to the driver. “What we did bring is oats. Several sacks of them.”
“And how grateful we are. Come.” She waves us toward the door where the herd of children scramble. “Sister Margo will have the older boys grab the sacks. Now please…this way.”
The air inside is damp and thin, reeking of lye and piss. Straw pallets line the walls, some holding curled children like a question mark. A few older girls stir a pot over a small hearth. They go still when Vale enters, staring at him with an attention that’s not quite rational, but not quite wrong, either.
“They’re quiet today,” Sister Merin says nervously, wringing her hands in her apron. “Usually there’s a din—shouting, playing. But with the weather…and your arrival…”
I approach the nearest pallet, the boy in it maybe five. Wet rattles drudge through his lungs at each breath, the straw near his mouth soiled black.
“He took ill only three weeks past. The winter damp gets into their chests. We’ve given him nettle tea and steam, but…” she trails off, the unspoken ‘we have nothing more’ hanging in the air. “Death will find mercy on him soon.”
Weakness somehow creeps into my legs with such force that I have to lock my knees. For weeks, my sole focus was on Daron. Maybe that’s what happens when you spend years with the dead: you go blind to the sorrows of the living. But standing here, smelling the sickness and the stale straw…
My gaze goes to Vale. I don’t know, maybe I’m hoping that his eyes lock with mine. Maybe I’ll see there’s still something left in that chest of his that can come up with enough love, or even just pity, to end this curse.
My eyes find only his profile.
Because he’s looking at the boy, the shadows beneath his eyes standing out like bruises. His lips are pressed into a thin, white line, not in cruelty, but in restraint.
Then his eyes lock with mine. For a fraction of a second, the misery in his expression is so profound that it knocks the wind out of me.
Then, he breaks contact.
He tears his gaze away from the pallet and turns on his heel, his black coat swirling around his ankles as he strides behind a few healthier-looking children.
I stare at the empty doorway where he vanished. That was not the reaction of a vengeful god. That was not a monster reveling in his curse, clinging to a grudge for the sake of wounded pride.
