Page 3 of On Broken Bonds

Directly at my face.

I lurch backward out of pure instinct, the kind that bypasses all rational thought entirely, and my left foot, the one that has been complaining about the rocks since the beginning of this disaster, finally gives up completely. It shoots out to the side. My right foot attempts to compensate and finds nothing solid whatsoever.

I have enough time to think oh no before I exit the reeds entirely, arms windmilling, and crash into the watering hole with a tremendous and completely undignified splash.

The water is freezing. It closes over my knees, my skirts billowing up around me before the wet fabric drags them down again, plastered to my legs. My hair, which I had pinned so carefully this morning, cascades into my face in a damp curtain. A water plant of some kind deposits itself on my shoulder.

Everything is cold and wet and terrible.

There is a very long silence. I push the hair out of my eyes and look up. Three pairs of eyes look back at me.

“My lady,” Edric says, in a voice carefully arranged into an expression of absolute neutrality, the bravest thing I have ever witnessed.

They move toward me immediately, since they’re good men, all three of them, and reach down to help me up, and it is perhaps a measure of exactly how disoriented I am by the cold water and the fall and the complete catastrophic implosion of my dignity that it takes me a full three seconds to realize that I am being helped up by three entirely naked men, and that my situation has not, in fact, improved.

I lurch upright. My foot slides. I reach out for balance and my hand closes around something.

There is a terrible pause.

I look at my hand. Bram looks at my hand. I’m currently clenching his long dick roughly in my hand.

“I—” I say.

I release Bram and stand up. My gown weighs approximately as much as a full grain sack. A reed is sticking out of my hair. I can feel it. The water plant is still on my shoulder. Bram is making a face that could only be described as heroically composed.

I am the lady of this house.

I straighten my spine. I lift my chin. I find a spot above their heads to direct my gaze and I keep it there, with the iron-willed commitment of a woman who has absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about.

“Forgive the intrusion,” I say, in a voice that wavers only slightly. “I was following a trail of grain from the storage house. Looking for our thief.” I gesture vaguely at the reeds. “I had reason to believe the trail led through this area. I see now that all is—” I clear my throat. “—in order here, so I’ll leave you to your—” I gesture again. I don’t know what I gesture at. I gesture at everything and nothing. “Morning.”

I turn. I wade out of the watering hole. Water pours from my gown in rivers. My slippers make a sound like I’m squeezing a sponge with every step.

I walk up the hill and don’t look back, willing myself to be the lady my mother taught me to be.

From behind me, there is a silence so profound and so carefully maintained that it can only mean that the three men are working very, very hard not to make any sound at all.

Reaching the top of the hill, I continue walking, pulling the reed from my hair and dropping it on the path without breaking stride. I remove the water plant from my shoulder. A small fish flops out of the folds of my skirt and lands in the grass, and I choose not to acknowledge it.

I will simply walk home. I will change my clothes. I will say nothing to anyone.

Instead, I will think about the grain thief, who is still out there. I will think about the crops, and the winter, and the stores, and how to keep everyone fed. I will think about my parents, who would probably, I decide, have found this somewhat funny, which is a treacherous thought, soI push it firmly away.

I will absolutely not think about any of what just happened.

Lyra will never, ever find out about this.

The sun rises fully over the hill. Our land stretches out below me in the pale golden light, struggling and beloved and mine to protect. The weight of it settles back over my shoulders the way it always does, familiar as a second skin.

I have a lot of problems to solve. A thief to catch. A winter to survive.

And somewhere, in a watering hole at the bottom of the east field, three very diplomatic men are not laughing.

Probably.

I walk a little faster.

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