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Two years I’d found her across crowds without trying. And now she’d handed it back to me, making herself the place I could put my eyes on when a village had its eyes on me.

“Hm,” I said.

She kissed my chest.

Gray shaded the window when I surfaced, the frost already loosening on the glass, the cold breaking the way the weather witch had sworn it would.

Rain slept on top of me, her hand curled around the base of my right horn.

The animals stirred in the barn, the rook-a-do screeching at the rising sun. On schedule for once in his life.

I eased out from under Rain carefully, and my side told me exactly what yesterday had cost. I paid the price and stood up, wincing, going to the bathing chamber and then out to the main room, where I built up the fire in the stove.

Boots and jacket on, I went out into the morning, bracing myself for a fair that was going to cost me every scrap of dignity I had but raise a roof while doing it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

RAIN

Iwoke alone in an ogre’s bed.

The fire was fresh. He’d built it back up before he left so the room would be warm when I walked into it.

Ginger had left the bed. That should’ve warned me.

I found Goran in the yard, a lantern hanging off the wagon rail and every one of my tea urns already loaded.

“Goran Brack,” I grumbled.

“Hm.”

“Those urns are copper.”

“They’re empty.”

“Empty, they weigh more than a teapot.”

He checked a strap that didn’t need checking.

“Wagon’s hitched,” he said, the way he does when he thinks he’s winning.

I stood in my shawl and bare feet in the freezing morning and glared at the wagon loaded square, everything lashed. My tins in their crate and the crate wedged so it wouldn’t shift on the Old Bridge. And I realized how long this male with a wound in his side had been out here doing this quietly enough not to wake me.

There is no winning against a male who does something like that.

“We should eat,” I said.

“I’ll buy you something at the fair.”

“Alright. I need to run inside and get ready, then.”

“I’ll wait.”

I bathed quickly and dressed for the chill, stuffed my feet into my boots. With Ginger draped across my shoulders, I went back outside.

Goran boosted me up and handed me the reins, which he’d never done.

Ginger stepped off my shoulders and onto his, where she wrapped herself around his neck and blinked at me.