The bell jingles. The door shuts.
And then the shop is quiet again.
And I'm alone.
I gather the teacups. I sweep up the thread ends and the scraps of leather. I'm crouched by the little footstool Torgan dragged into the corner, wiping it down, when I see it.
One strand of dark thread. Dark and twisted, sitting on top of the armrest of the chair where he sat. I recognize the color as being from his vest, the 120-thread-count vest he wore today.
I pick it up with two fingers and stand there like a fool, holding it up to the candlelight. It's just thread.
It means nothing.
I carry it to the wastebasket, holding it over the mouth of the bin.
I don't let go.
I actually can't let go.
"Lissy," I chide myself out loud, to no one, to my empty shop. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Am I turning into some strange, obsessive, heartsick person? Torgan doesn't see me as anyone but the person dressing his sister for her wedding. Nothing more than that. And I should really, really not be clinging to a single piece of thread like this.
But I still can't get rid of it.
Fuck it, then.
I open the little drawer in my work desk where I keep the things I can't bear to throw out — a scrap of my mother's ribbon, a thimble that isn't mine, the first crooked cross-stitch I ever sewed, which Grammy saved and gave to me when I was old enough to be sentimental, not embarrassed.
And I lay the single dark strand inside.
Then I shut the drawer, blow out the candles, and go up to bed before I can think too hard about why.
6
TORGAN
There is no place like Oakenshade Hall on family dinner night, and some nights I mean that as a compliment.
Tonight is not one of them.
"The dress is absolutely stunning, Ma," Ysolde says for the third time. "Duran is going to lose his mind."
"Duran lost his mind when he proposed to you," Saskia says around a mouthful of venison. "That's how proposals work."
"Chew, then insult," Ma says mildly. "In that order."
Our hall is nothing like the dining room at Valeforth. No servants hover at our elbows, and there are no forks so flimsy they snap if you think too hard while holding one. Just the long oak table my great-grandfather cut and planed himself, a fire large enough to roast a boar, and my family talking over each other.
They get louder the longer they talk.
Like always, I sit at Pa's right and say nothing. That's my job at these dinners, and I'm very good at it.
The vial of anti-love potion is tucked inside my coat, which hangs on a hook by the door with everyone else's. Ten strides away.
I would feel better if it were on me.
That is an insane thing to think about a coat. I know it. I keep thinking it anyway.
