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“Do you have chalk?”

She did, so I showed her how my mother had taught me to grind it into the grease and leave it before washing. ‘Twas nothing remarkable, merely one of a hundred little things a woman learned because clothing was expensive and husbands apparently believed sleeves existed for wiping things upon, but when I finished explaining, I noticed Issa smiling at me.

“What?”

Her smile merely deepened. “I kenned ‘twould no’ be long afore ye were helping one of us!”

Oh.

Maardok had promised that, hadn’t he? After Ammal had offered us a meal without expectation of repayment, he’d said there’d come a time when I could offer help as well.

I glanced around at the other women, all working together, and realized Issa was right. At some point in the last fortnight I’d cautiously allowed myself to become a part of this village.

Before Issa could tease me, however, Offie asked Ewan something about the carved animal he’d brought with him, and the conversation wandered to names.

“What does Ewan mean?” Ammal asked in her shy way, ducking her chin so her tusks slanted in the light of the hearth. “Why did ye choose it?”

I shook my head as I shaped a loaf. “My husband chose it, and I do not know the meaning to him.”

He’d simply announced the babe’s name, and when I asked him why, he’d gone distant, the way he sometimes did, and told me to mind my own affairs.

The conversation swirled around me—mostly the orc females flabbergasted by the fact that males chose the names in my world—while I considered my dead husband. There’d been times when he’d been firm about what he expected, but it hadn’t occurred to either of us that this tradition might not be the same everywhere.

Maardok hadn’t named Edan. He’d told me I had the right and the responsibility. But when he’d suggested Little Fire, and said ‘twas because of his endearment for me… I shook my head and blew a strand of hair from my face. He’d given me the choice, but his name had been perfect.

By the time the moon began swelling toward full again, my body could no longer provide me with any excuses. The bleeding was gone, my strength had nearly returned, and I could walk anywhere in the village without Matthias or Maardok appearing from behind a cottage to ask whether I needed to sit down. I slept well, ate too much of Jean’s bread and spent my days surrounded by people who seemed to believe I belonged among them without wondering if I felt the same.

I wondered it too, because I was becoming increasingly irritated. Blaming Maardok was convenient, but whenever I snapped at him, he merely grinned and kissed me on my forehead.

I wanted kisses on my lips. I wanted my body to be healed enough to feel his hands on my skin. I wanted to know what my future was. I wanted to understand what this—this—this this was between us!

Our first trip to the hot springs, he’d told me that he loved me. He didn’t say it often, but he’d repeated it a few times in the last month, each time with a vaguely hopeful tone that just increased the itchy, irritable sensation in my chest I couldn’t name.

Because…Because I loved him too. There was little point denying it anymore, at least to myself. Why couldn’t I say the words out loud?

I had loved Richard as well, though, because he was my husband and I’d been young and believed love was something one built a marriage upon through sheer determination. We had not been unhappy every day, but neither had we been happy in the way I was here, sleeping beside a male who had never offered me marriage at all.

That ought to have concerned me.

Instead, I think what concerned me was that no one else seemed concerned.

No one had hinted that marriage was even expected—in this world, no one even spoke of marriage, ‘twas always Mating. As if sex was all that mattered?

No one wondered what I was doing in his home, sleeping in his bed and raising our sons beneath his roof. They spoke of us as though the matter had already been settled, while I couldn’t have explained what the matter was.

Mate.

The word hovered somewhere near the edge of all of it, but every time I tried to grasp what it meant, I found customs and instincts and rules no one had thought to explain because they’d apparently assumed I understood them.

The full moon was only days away, which meant the standing stones on Islay would open and I could go home. Except I had no home there. Edan was still very small, and taking a nursing babe through the veil in winter would be foolish.

Reasonable.

‘Twas bitterly cold, and even if I crossed now, where would I go afterward?

Also reasonable.

Really, waiting another month made far more sense.