"I need twenty next time."
I stop. "We've had this conversation."
"We're having it again." He tucks the bundle under his arm. "The buyers are ready to move. They need volume."
"I'm one person working a forge I share with my father." I cross my arms. "Twenty blades in two weeks is not possible without drawing attention."
"Then take three weeks."
"Velis." I lower my voice, even though the forest is empty around us. "Who are these buyers? Because last time it was nervous that people arming themselves, and now you want double the volume on a rushed timeline."
"They're in the Ardenmere region." He says it like distance makes it cleaner. "Far enough that it doesn't touch Oxwood."
"Far enough" means they're organized. Far enough means they have money and a plan and someone sourcing weapons for them with enough coordination to reach across regions. I know what that looks like. I grew up in a border village and I've spent years listening to what moves through the forest at night.
"These are not nervous farmers," I say.
"No." He meets my eyes without apology. "They're not."
The coin in my pocket is already spent three times over in my head—medicine, grain, the roof section above Finn's room that leaks when it rains hard. "If this comes back on Oxwood?—"
"It won't."
"If it does," I say, "I'm done. Permanently."
He nods, easy and unbothered, which means he doesn't believe me. Maybe he's right not to. I take the payment and go.
I'm mutteringto myself on the path back, which is a habit I've never managed to break. Running through the numbers, the timeline, the excuse I'll give Papa for the late hours. I'm so caught up in it that I don't hear Finn until he steps out from behind the fence post at the edge of our yard and nearly stops my heart.
"You have got to stop doing that," I hiss.
"You have to stop sneaking in at midnight." He crosses his arms—a gesture so much like Papa's that it's briefly unsettling on his fourteen-year-old frame. "I heard you talking to someone in the forest last week. I heard the wordblades."
I look at him. He looks back, messy auburn hair and steady hazel eyes, chin set with a stubbornness I recognize because I invented it.
"Finn—"
"Don't tell me it's nothing."
I glance toward the house. The window above the kitchen is dark. "Come here." I pull him around the side of the building, out of the lane's sightline. "Keep your voice down."
"Tell me what you're doing."
"I'm making sure we eat." I hiss. "And that you have medicine. That's what I'm doing."
His expression doesn't soften. "Illegally."
"Yes."
He's quiet, jaw working. He's not a child—hasn't been one in a while, if I'm honest. He's been watching me carry things I won't talk about for years now, and he's not stupid.
"How dangerous is it?" he asks.
"I'm careful."
"That's not what I asked."
I watch my brother—the thin set of his shoulders, the concern pulling at his face, the way he's trying to stand straightdespite the cold and the hour. He's trying very hard to look like he's not scared.
