Page 24 of Dream Reaper

But she didn’t dare move with the chaos going on all around them.

And there was that little matter that they were supposed to be married…apparently. Whatever had given Jerrid such a ridiculous idea?

“Steady on,” a deeper voice bellowed over the melee.

Ava’s head snapped back. This voice sounded male.

Jerrid’s body also stiffened at the arrival of the newcomer. The girls around them began to ease backward, parting to allow a thin figure clothed in a tattered tunic and trousers to make his way down the stone steps to stand in their midst.

The middle-aged man with dark hair and a short beard took his time looking Jerrid and Ava over, a strange smile plastered on his face.

It was a forced sort of smile that didn’t quite go to his eyes.

But at least it was a smile. It was better than shovels and hoes aimed at her head.

“Well, well, we have company.” He rubbed his hands together briskly and allowed his gaze to linger on Ava.

Jerrid’s hand tightened over hers in a silent warning.

“This doesn’t concern you, Finnr,” the blonde girl said as she eased away from Jerrid. “You’re a guest here.”

He laughed dismissively. “Oh, really, Brynja. I’ve been here long enough; that excuse doesn’t work anymore. Besides, with all the hunting I’ve been doing, my voice has surely earned some kind of vote at the table. No?”

“You have contributed to the cooking pots,” Brynja said grudgingly as she lowered her blade, but only fractionally. “But you agreed to our rules when we allowed you to stay here. We can’t take any risks, or everything we’ve built here will fall apart.”

“She’s right,” Ponytail Girl said. “I don’t want to go back. I won’t go back.”

The girl’s expression hardened and somehow grew more fragile at the same time. Where had she come from, and why didn’t she want to go back? Many of the other women and girls nodded their heads in agreement.

Where had they all come from?

Ava took a stabilizing breath. “I don’t want to cause any problems. If we can just have some medical supplies, we’ll leave. And you’ll never see us again.”

Brynja’s head snapped in her direction, her expression contorted in disbelief. “We can’t trust you. If we let you go, you’ll bring the others back.”

Shouts of denial broke out from the others. Jerrid squeezed her hand, but what was he trying to convey? That she should continue, or that she should shut her mouth? If the alternative was him letting his dragon run amok, she had no choice but to keep talking.

“I won’t tell anyone. And no one knows where we are. Jerrid and I are out here alone. There’s no one to tell. We’ll just go back to Eroth, and you’ll never see us again⁠—”

“Back to Eroth?” Ponytail Girl shrieked. “She’ll bring the soldiers!”

“Worse!” someone else snarled. “She’ll bring our husbands.”

Oh flames. Understanding washed through Ava in a sickening flood.

These women weren’t in Gelaira of their own choosing. They weren’t invaders or even the families of invaders. They’d been brought here by force, as part of the peace treaty, in order to wed dark elf citizens and preserve the dying lines of Gelaira.

“You’re peaceweavers,” she whispered without thinking.

Brynja launched toward her, the dagger pointed straight at her face. “We’re survivors. We escaped, and we won’t go back. No one can make us go back. We’d rather die out here in the woods than go back.”

“All of you?” Ava whispered, looking at Ponytail Girl without meaning to.

The girl couldn’t be more than fifteen years old. The same age Ava had been three years ago when she began her apprenticeship with Glamren at the palace. She remembered how small and young she had felt when she stepped into the halls of the palace for the first time.

She couldn’t imagine the horror she would have felt if she had been walking into the home of a husband she hadn’t wanted.

“All of us,” Brynja repeated between gritted teeth.