Page 8 of The Demon Kept Me

"I was defending your honor at the well." I say it lightly, though I mean every word of it. "Marta thinks you're cursed. I told her she was wrong."

Something crosses his face I don't have the words for yet — surprise, maybe, or something quieter than that. "You didn't need to do that."

"I know." I set my basket down inside the door. "I wanted to."

He's quiet a while after that, watching the yard where a few of the villagers still linger near their carts before heading home. I follow his gaze and understand what he's seeing: two farmers nod warmly toward me as they pass, calling out a friendly goodnight, and then fall silent the moment their attention shifts to him, offering nothing more than the same careful nod they've always given him.

"They smile at you," he says, quiet enough that I almost miss it. "They still don't smile at me. I don't expect that to change simply because you've decided to argue on my behalf."

"It will change." I say it with more certainty than I probably have any right to. "It takes longer to unlearn fear than it does to learn it."

"Perhaps." He doesn't sound convinced, though he doesn't sound bitter about it either, only resigned in the quiet way he's resigned to most things concerning the village's opinion of him. "I've had long enough to grow accustomed to the distance. It costs me less to expect nothing from them."

"Well, I haven't had all that time, and I refuse to expect nothing." I cross my arms, matching his same stubborn posture. "Someone has to hold the higher expectation for you, since you've clearly given up on it yourself."

That earns the faintest huff of something almost like amusement from him, and it's enough to settle the day's tension from my shoulders.

He doesn't respond right away, and in the space where words would normally sit between us, I decide something without needing to say it aloud: if this village won't stand beside the demon who's fed them faithfully year on year, I will stand there myself, for as long as it takes them to understand what I already do.

Inside, while I set the kettle over the fire for tea, I catch him watching me from across the room, something quieter than gratitude in his expression, closer to disbelief that anyone would bother arguing his case at all. I don't comment on it. I've learned by now that some things settle better left unremarked, allowed to simply exist in the space between two people who are slowly learning how to trust each other without needing every feeling spoken aloud.

"Marta will come around eventually," I say instead, mostly to fill the quiet. "She's stubborn, not cruel. There's a difference."

"You seem to believe in a great many differences most people overlook."

"Someone has to." I hand him a cup, watching him accept it with the same careful attention he gives everything fragile enough to break in his hands. "I've found the world's kinder than it looks, if you're patient enough to wait for people to catch up to it."

He doesn't answer that directly, but he doesn't argue it either, and for tonight, I decide that's enough.

7

MALVEK

The merchants come through Ashbrook the way the last geese cross the sky before winter — hurried, loud, and unmistakably the final ones you'll see until the thaw. I hear their wagons in the yard before I've finished the morning's grinding, three of them lined up along the fence, canvas sides painted with the sigils of a trading company out of the eastern valleys.

I don't much care for the noise of them. But farmers need their winter goods, and a mill this close to the road makes a natural stopping point, so I let them water their horses at the trough and pretend the interruption doesn't grate on me.

It's the eldest of the three who finds Wren. I watch it happen from the grinding floor, through the open doors — the man in the fur-trimmed coat catching sight of her hauling a flour sack toward the scale, pausing, then crossing the yard with the easy confidence of someone accustomed to getting what he wants for a fair price.

"You've a strong worker there," he calls to me, though his eyes stay on Wren. "Steady hands. We're bound for Riverhold before the passes close, always short of good help on the winter routes. A woman who works like that would earn her keep and more."

I set down the sack I'm carrying. My tail goes still behind me, and the old, familiar cold settles into my chest.

"She's not mine to sell." The words come out flatter than I mean them. "She works here of her own account now."

The merchant's brows lift. "Does she." He turns fully to Wren, softening his voice into the practiced warmth men like him use to open a purse or close a deal. "Then it's you I should be asking, isn't it, love. Riverhold's a proper town. Warm inns, coin in your pocket, roads that lead somewhere. Better than a winter shut up in a mill with —" his glance flicks toward me, and he has the decency not to finish it aloud.

I busy myself with the ledger so neither of them can see my face. It's the sensible offer. It's the offer I would counsel any thinking person to take — a road out of a valley about to be snowed shut, away from a demon every household crosses the street to avoid, toward a life with actual coin and actual choices in it.

I've been bracing for this from the day I bought her. Nothing this village gave me ever stayed. Why should she be different?

So I keep my eyes on the numbers and I let the silence do the work, and I tell myself the hollow opening up beneath my ribs is only fatigue from the harvest.

"That's kind of you," Wren says.

Here it is, then.

"But no."