Page 3 of When the Sky Breaks

“You still didn’t eat,” he noted before continuing. “Nokona said to bring this to you. She said you liked it—sagebrush and honey. She told me it would calm your nerves.”

“Thank you,” I said, accepting the tea. “Sit. Please.”

I was already warming up to him.

And I’d been a skeptic.

Glen had been with us since before I was born. He’d been there when my mother’s pregnancy made her so ill that my father moved us from the traditional Outer Court posting in Edinburgh to New Mexico in hopes that dry air might ease her suffering. He’d been there when she and my baby brother died, and my father retreated from reality so completely he’d stopped even caring for me. It was Glen who’d hired Nokona to look after me in my father’s stead. It was Glen who’d bought Chuckles when I outgrew my childhood pony. He’d been there for everything. And while my father had been beaming with irrational confidence and encouraging Glen to go enjoy his retirement, I was summarily unconvinced that someone new could fill the gap.

“What can I do for you, Sorcha?” Neal asked, taking a seat across the desk.

“I’ve been fielding questions and complaints all evening,” I replied. “And then trying to make sense of this journal. You’re the qualified professional, tell me what I missed.”

“I sent word to Ansel O’Faelan,” Neal said, “your father’s . . . sorry . . . your Martial Envoy. He’s up at the dunes north of Taos right now. But he should be back in no more than a fortnight. I also got your father’s will and final instructions. He seems to have kept them at the cathedral.”

I snorted.

Since my mother died, my father attended Mass every morning and entrusted our priest with every bit of grief, confusion, and self-doubt he couldn’t bear to put on anyone else, couldn’t reconcile. I’d gone with him daily as a child and hated it. There were days he didn’t even check to see if I’d eaten, but he’d still dragged me to Mass at dawn. That cathedral was tainted—the last place I’d seen my mother’s face, the only place I’d seen my stillborn brother.

But, once Glen and Nokona decided I’d sufficient sense of direction not to wander off, I started riding out into the woods to pray. At first it was once or twice a week, eventually near daily. A handful of years later, I started going to morning service again with my father, hating it less week by week as I slowly divorced my own spirituality from the crippling grief of seeing my mother in a casket in front of an altar, and as I slowly grew old enough that his distance and neglect became nuisances rather than existential threats.

The cathedral still gave me chills though.

“That sounds like him.” I held out a hand for the documents and Neal passed them across the desk. “What’s a Martial Envoy? O’Faelan doesn’t sound familiar.”

“Stewards ensure the security of the Court itself,” Neal explained. “The Martial Envoy is, so to speak, the Outer Court’s Outer Court. He handles diplomacy, espionage, and does, or at the very least coordinates, the dirty work if there’s any monsters that need tending to. I’ve met Ansel a dozen times over the years. He’s good at his work, but not the most civilized. I don’t blame your father for keeping him at arm’s length.”

“I see,” I replied absently, eyes scanning the document in front of me. “Neal, would you just read this section for me? I’m slightly worried I might be concussed and not understanding it properly.”

I beckoned him around the desk and spread the pages on the stained wooden surface. Neal bent over my shoulder and I tried to ignore the closeness. He was warm, his breath soft. He smelled like clean wool and gun smoke and pine. The candles caught on his dark hair and brought out hints of red.

I was not falling in love with my new Steward.

No. I wasn’t falling in love with him. I was just touch starved, scared, and desperate.

If I had been though? It’d certainly be convenient. Considering.

“Just here,” I said, gesturing at the page.

Upon my death full control of the Outer Court will pass directly to my daughter, Sorcha Veronica Wilson. Any necessary details or instruction for her can be found in my journals or provided by my Martial Envoy Ansel O’Faelan. Additionally: Should she be of marriageable age, please find attached the appropriate contracts for the union of Sorcha Wilson and Neal MacCairn, son of Outer Court Steward Glen MacCairn, to be completed as soon as possible upon my death.

“Does that mean what I think it means?” I asked, looking up at him.

Half my mind begged that I was misreading, that this couldn’t possibly be what my father intended. I couldn’t quite accept that he’d ignore me for decades then marry me off the second he was gone. The other half was ready to curl into Neal’s arms then and there if only to have someone to hold me when I cried the inevitable tears and spent nights choking on grief.

“Sorcha, how old are you?” Neal asked urgently.

“Twenty-seven,” I replied. “What does that mean?”

Neal stepped back, leaning against the whitewashed adobe wall of the office and rubbing his temples.

“That means that you’ve been of marriageable age for six years,” he said. “And that your father wanted us to wed—immediately.”

I looked down to hide the immediate flush in my cheeks and shuffled through the papers in my lap, looking anywhere except at him.

“And I believe that is a conversation best had in daylight,” I said, somehow composing myself. “So I’ll bid you good night.”

“Of course,” Neal said. “And if you need anything at all, I’ll be just next door.”