Chapter 7

They left before dawn.

Liam kissed my forehead once, then my lips, lingering there as if he wanted the warmth of me to last him through whatever was coming.

Leo did not say much.

He only stood in the yard, adjusting the straps on his weapons, then looked at me once with those bright, restless eyes.

“Don’t do anything stupid while we’re gone,” he muttered.

Then, after a pause, “And don’t let anybody else warm that bed.”

I almost laughed.

Almost.

Instead I reached out and straightened the collar of his dark robe.

“You be careful too.”

His throat moved.

Then he turned so quickly it was almost a flinch and jumped over the wall instead of using the gate.

The gate was open.

Of course it was.

I cried after they were gone.

Hard enough that my chest hurt.

Then I wiped my face and lived.

Because what else was there to do?

I fed the chickens.

I swept the yard.

I cured pork under the eaves and muttered at the weather when it turned damp.

Sometimes I caught myself turning at the sound of footsteps that never reached the door.

Sometimes I heard a low laugh in my memory and looked toward the beam overhead, half expecting to see Leo sprawled there pretending not to listen.

The floating words kept me company in those empty days.

This really is like watching a child wait for her parents to come home.

No, it’s a widow waiting for two husbands this time.

Stop, I’m sad.

Same, but also, why is the bratty one kind of the best?

Time passed strangely that way.

Too slowly by day.

Too quickly at dusk.

One evening, rain started just before dark.

I hurried outside to gather the smoked pork from the window before it got soaked.

That was when the door latch moved.

My breath caught.

Then the door opened.

For one wild, glorious second, my heart flew up into my throat.

But it was not Liam.

Not Leo.

It was a woman.

She was dressed simply, but no village woman had skin that pale or posture that straight. Her face was beautiful in a cold, polished way, and though she wore no jewels, everything about her said money, breeding, power.

Three guards stood behind her.

“Are you Chloe Brooks?” she asked.

I stared.

“I am.”

She looked me up and down.

Not cruelly.

Worse.

Curiously.

“As I thought,” she said softly. “Plain. But not ordinary.”

I did not like her at once.

“And you are?”

She smiled faintly.

“The woman Ethan Walker was supposed to marry.”

The rain outside seemed to turn colder.

I said nothing.

She stepped into the yard without waiting to be invited, then looked around as though measuring the life I lived.

“So this is the place he chose over mine.”

I wanted to tell her he had not chosen me at all in the beginning.

Then I thought of the way he had run to my gate in red wedding robes, all dust and madness.

Maybe in the end, perhaps he had.

But it was too late for that to matter.

“What do you want?” I asked.

She turned to me.

“Only to see you.”

When I did not answer, she went on.

“He is dead.”

The world gave a strange little tilt.

Not because I loved Ethan.

But because no matter how much I had tried to kill that part of myself, there had once been a time when I had called him husband and meant it with my whole heart.

“He was executed at dawn,” she said. “The second prince has taken the throne.”

The floating words burst across my vision.

So it’s done.

The hero is really finished.

No comeback now.

I waited for grief.

For anger.

For something.

What came instead was a tired kind of quiet.

She studied my face carefully.

“You don’t seem heartbroken.”

“I’m not.”

That made something flicker in her eyes.

“Then perhaps you are stronger than I expected.”

I almost laughed.

If only she knew how many nights I had cried over a man who had never deserved it.

“If you came only to tell me that,” I said, “then now you’ve told me.”

She did not move.

Her gaze drifted to the rows of smoked pork hanging beneath the eaves.

“Did you make that?”

“Yes.”

She walked closer to it.

“He used to speak of it.”

I looked at her sharply.

She noticed.

A bitter smile crossed her face.

“Not while he was trying to win me, if that is what you’re thinking. Later. After he ran from the wedding, after he was dragged back, after he realized too late what he had thrown away.” She touched one finger to the edge of the wood beneath the hanging meat. “He talked about a village woman who used to cure pork by the window and draw little pictures on candy wrappers because she could not write.”

My throat tightened.

She turned back to me.

“He should have told you the truth. He should have ended things cleanly before trying to become someone else. For that, I despise him.”

There was no softness in her voice.

Only a deep and exhausted honesty.

“But he was not wrong about one thing,” she said. “He never stopped regretting you.”

I looked away.

The rain came down harder.

“That regret belongs to him,” I said. “Not to me.”

For the first time, she really looked at me.

Not like a curiosity.

Not like a rival.

Like a woman.

Then she nodded.

“I came because I wanted to know what kind of woman could be worth a man ruining his whole life for. Now I know.”

I did not know whether that was praise or pity.

She drew something from her sleeve and held it out.

It was a document sealed in wax.

“What is that?”

“The official dissolution of your marriage,” she said. “After his death, I had enough influence left to see it done cleanly. You are free in every legal sense now.”

My fingers shook a little when I took it.

Not because the paper mattered more than the truth.

But because some part of my life had finally been buried properly.

No more half-open door.

No more ghost of a husband standing at my gate.

No more waiting for the dead to return.

“Thank you,” I said at last.

She inclined her head.

Then her eyes sharpened slightly.

“One more thing.”

My whole body tensed.

“The two men you are waiting for…” she said. “If they are who I think they are, then danger has not ended. Ethan may be dead, but the people he served are not all gone. Some loyalists fled. Some still hunt.”

My fingers tightened around the paper.

“Do you know where they are?”

“No.”

That was the truth.

She seemed to believe me.

“If they come back, tell them the capital is not safe. And neither is staying still too long.”

She turned to leave.

At the gate, she paused and looked back once.

“For what it’s worth, he did love you in the end.”

Rain drummed against the yard.

I stood beneath the eaves holding the paper in one hand.

“For what it’s worth,” I said quietly, “the end came too late.”

She left without another word.

That night, I sat beside the lamp and read the document over and over again, though it took me time and effort to recognize every word.

Legally freed.

Widowed no more.

Wife no more.

When the wind rose after midnight, I tucked the paper into a wooden box beneath my bed and pressed both palms against my eyes.

The floating words had gone strangely quiet.

At last one appeared.

She really let him go.

Another followed.

No. He lost her long before this.

I do not know how long I sat that way.

Long enough that the lamp burned low.

Long enough that the rain stopped.

Long enough that my tears dried without my noticing.

Then, just before dawn, I heard something tap lightly against the window.

Once.

Twice.

My heart stopped.

No one I knew used the door when there was a perfectly good window nearby.

I stood so quickly the stool nearly toppled.

Then I ran.