He holds my gaze for a moment. Then he dips his chin once, pushes off the door frame, and walks back out into the lane.
I watch the empty doorway for longer than I should before I turn back to the hinge.
I giveup on the afternoon entirely around the third hour. Nothing I touch comes out right—two fittings filed off-angle, a bolt head I strip trying to rush it. I bank the fire, wash my hands, and head to the tavern.
Sorella has the look on her face before I even sit down. She sets a cup in front of me and leans her elbows on the bar.
"You look different," she says.
"I’m tired."
"You look tired and different." She tilts her head, studying me with the focused attention she normally reserves for travelers who might be lying about who they are. "The elf lord came back."
"He came by the forge. Yes."
"And?"
I wrap my hands around the cup. "And he's left again."
Sorella is quiet for exactly three seconds. "Edria."
"What?"
"Something happened."
I keep my eyes on the cup. My face does something I can't completely control, and Sorella, who has been reading people across this bar for ten years, catches every bit of it. She straightens up and presses both hands flat on the counter, and her whole expression shifts into something warmer.
"Oh," she says.
"We're not talking about it."
"We absolutely are." She refills my cup even though it's still full. "Tell me everything."
"There's nothing to tell."
"The color in your face says otherwise." She leans in. "Is he—I mean—obviously he's—but was it?—"
"Sorella!"
"I need something. Anything." She's grinning now, helplessly, the way she does when she's genuinely pleased about something. "You let a dark elf into your forge after midnight."
"Keep your voice down." I glance toward the two men at the far table, who are deep in their own conversation. "It's not—it’s complicated, or maybe it isn’t. That's the problem."
"Does it have to be something defined right now?"
I open my mouth. I close it. She has a point, which I find irritating.
"He's leaving again," I say. "Regularly. He has a territory to govern and I have a forge to run and nothing about this is simple."
"Nothing worth having is." She rests her chin in her hand. "But you wanted it. That matters."
I drink and don't argue with her, which she correctly reads as agreement. We sit with it for a while, talking around the edges of it more than directly, and when I leave, some of the tightness in my shoulders has loosened.
The letter is on the kitchen table when I get home.
Finn is sitting across from it like it might move on its own. He looks up when I walk in. "Magistrate's seal," he says. “One of his collectors dropped it off.”
I pick it up and break the seal.
