From your husband.
I cringe at that reality. That truth. Iamkeeping secrets from Gabriel. The kind of secrets a wife should never keep.
But I could never admit these things to Malachi.
It’s my truth, and my truth alone.
I make my way to the front of the barn. Malachi follows and holds the door open for me.
“You don’t have to stay here, you know,” he says, his words low and lined with caution.
My fingers tighten around the terracotta jar. “Yes, I do.”
“There’s something…” His gaze shifts to the left, where he studies the far line of trees beyond the cottage I share with Gabriel.
Alarm brushes against my skin as I follow his stare but discover nothing stirring. At least, not anything I can set my eyes on.
Malachi’s expression shifts, his eyes turn hard, his mouth thins as he offers a smile that never moves beyond his mouth. “Good day, Sol.”
“Wait.” I tighten my grip on the jar and stare up at him. “What are you not saying?”
“Nothing.” He nods and walks away, leaving me to the alarm firing along my skin, the trepidation trembling down my back.
Obviously, something bothered him enough that he sought me out. He was here to warn me.
But of what?
What am I failing to see?
Why is Malachi really here?
He married a Bloodstone woman. That means he’s all in just like me. Whatever drew him here, he cannot say, and I cannot ask.
As I walk to my cottage, I focus on that line of trees, wondering what Malachi had seen that shook him. Whatever it was, it kept him from revealing his real reason for visiting me today.
I must discover it.
That evening, I sit near the fireplace, trying to repair one of my surcoats. The hem ripped while I was working in the barn, and I was too embarrassed to go to Kassandra. She gives me such nice things, and I mess them up. This is the third rip in as little as a week.
Gabriel had kept his word about punishing the people who threw rotten food at Kassandra. Two women were paraded through the streets, and they did spend the day locked in a pillory. One of them was Deborah. The woman I followed through the city.
Her eyes had burned with fury as she hunched there pitifully. I felt no empathy for her plight. Neither did most of the people who walked past.
After being released from the pillory, the woman were removed and forced to spend time in a sweat lodge. Maybe the Bloodstone people thought it would purify their sins.
Gabriel sits next to me, staring into the flames, as he often does. Occasionally, I glance up from my task, studying the solemn man. He always seems so forlorn when he’s sitting there, as if the weight of the world rests solely on his shoulders.
When he’s outside of this cottage, he performs with the best of them. He trains daily. Attends his men. And disappears to his forge.
In here, next to me, he’s different. He’s distant. Serious. Morose. If he weren’t, he wouldn’t stare so intently into those flames with his brow pinched and his mouth tight.
“I made you something.” He reaches to the table next to him and grabs a small dagger.
He pulls the blade free of its leather sheath to reveal the Damascus steel.
“For me?” I ask breathlessly. Nobody has ever made me a weapon before.
It’s small—barely larger than my hand. The grip is overlaid with twisted steel wire.
