Another day, as she sliced carrots, he nodded toward the pot. “Less salt,” he advised. “You always reach for it twice. Once is enough.”
She stared at him. “You noticed that?”
He shrugged. “I notice a lot of things. It’s my job.”
“Not here,” she said. “Here you could pretend not to notice if you wanted to.”
“You’re part of ‘here’ now,” he pointed out. “I don’t get to stop noticing you.” The words landed heavier in her chest than he’d probably intended.
Silas made no grand declarations of affection. He just drifted over to her wherever she happened to be and leaned. If she sat on the bench, he flopped down beside her, his head finding her lap as naturally as if it had been made for that spot. If she stood at the stove, he wandered by and looped an arm around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder until she hip-checked him away. If she sat on the floor to mend a tear, he lay down behind her, pillowing his head on her back and sighing like someone who’d carried too much weight for too long. He didn’t ask for much with words. But his body spoke clearly: you are safe.
Even Gage, grudgingly, began to show that he cared in his own twisted way. He snapped at her when she made mistakes. “What are you doing with that knife?” he barked once whenhe caught her trying to pry a stuck lid off a jar with the blade pointed toward her palm. “Trying to lose a thumb?”
“I’m just—”
“Doing it wrong,” he cut in. He snatched the knife, turned it, and popped the lid from the other side with a deft twist. “There. Try not to stab yourself before supper.”
“Thank you,” she said dryly.
He grunted. “Don’t thank me. I’m the one who’d have to bandage you.”
When he walked in on her and Drew playing some silly hand game Harry had taught them, laughing breathlessly as they tried to see who could tap the other’s fingers faster, he stopped in the doorway, jaw tightening. “Don’t you two have work to do?” he snapped. “The wood’s not going to chop itself.”
Drew opened his mouth, clearly about to retort. Snow White squeezed his hand subtly. “We were just going,” she said, smoothing the moment. “Come on, Drew.”
Later, when she found Gage alone in the shed sharpening tools, she leaned against the doorframe. “You know,” she said, “if you’re jealous, you could just say so.”
His head whipped around. “I’m not jealous,” he said at once. “Of what? That fool dropping the basin every time you smile at him?”
Her lips twitched. “So you’ve noticed I smile.”
He scowled harder. “Hard not to. It’s loud.”
She stepped closer. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said softly. “With Drew. Or Harry. Not the way you’re thinking.”
His jaw worked. “I don’t know what it is,” he said. “I know I don’t like watching you laugh with other men when I haven’t finished my shift. That’s all.”
She considered that. “Well,” she said lightly, “you’ll just have to get home earlier, then.”
He stared at her for a long moment, then huffed, the ghost of a reluctant smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “You’re trouble,” he muttered.
“You invited me in,” she replied.
He shook his head and went back to his sharpening, but his movements were less harsh now, as if some tension had uncoiled.
None of the men ever said the word “love.” Not out loud.
Snow White, for her part, was careful not to examine her feelings too closely. What she felt for them was complicated: affection, gratitude, desire, occasional annoyance, a budding sense of belonging. But this was not what the stories had promised her.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care. She did. When they came home late, hearts pounding from a near cave-in story, she clung to them harder than she meant to. When one of them scraped a hand or bruised a rib, she fussed with salve and bandages until they squirmed. When they grumbled and bickered over nothing, she smoothed their ruffled tempers like she smoothed sheets. They had become her people—her allies, her family.
And yet, when she closed her eyes at night, the face that floated up first was still the prince’s. She would lie there with Silas’s arm heavy over her, Dax’s back a solid line of warmth at the other side, and her fingers would creep up to the token at her neck. She’d trace the tiny falcon, wondering where he was now. Whether he’d ever married some noble girl. Whether he ever thought about the ragged stable girl who’d bonded with him over their shared love of horses. Part of her scolded herself for such foolishness. “You have what you need,” she’d remind herself silently. “You’re fed. Safe. Not hunted. Wanted.” Another part whispered,But he saw you when you were no one at all, and he didn’t shy away.She didn’t know which part of her would win inthe end. For now, there was laundry to scrub and bread to knead and men to send off to work with full bellies and clean shirts.
Therewasanewbatch of shirts drying on the rocks by the stream one afternoon, so Harry and Bennett decided to join her. She knelt at the water’s edge, the stream cold and quick around her bare calves, the men’s shirts heavy in her hands as she dunked and scrubbed, dunked and scrubbed. The dirt of the mines leached slowly into the water, turning it cloudy downstream. She didn’t mind the work. It gave her something to do with her body while her mind wandered.
Today, unfortunately, her thoughts had wandered back to a blade at her throat. She could feel it as clearly as if it were there again: the cool metal, the warmth of Hunter’s body behind her, the way his hand had slid from her shoulder to her breast. She shook her head once, sharply, trying to dislodge the memory.
“Want some help?” a voice called. She looked up, startled.
