Page 147 of The Silversmith

“Where…” I worked my throat through a swallow and looked around. “Where is Papa?”

Oliver nodded toward the house. “Inside.”

“Will he talk to me?” I wasn’t sure what either of us would say, Phillip and I. But I felt the need to tell him how sorry I was for burdening his family. I also needed to demand the truth. Not Simeon’s story or his story—it hurt to think of my teacher’s name—but the untainted truth.

Oliver shook his head. “You can’t go in.”

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t stay here.” As he stood, he pointed toward the trees in the direction I’d gone with my friends on that day that felt so long ago. “You have to go back.” He grabbed my fingers and pulled. “You have to get up.”

“I don’t know if I want to.”

“Why not?”

Ire soured my stomach. “Because all everyone does is lie to me.”

“Yeah,” Oliver sighed. “I remember when they brought you home. Mama said you had been asleep for a very long time and that you were too weak to know where you came from, so I had to pretend you were my sister. Like a game,” he added. “But I think she was wrong. I think you know who you are.”

“I don’t.” His brow furrowed at my denial, so I reiterated, “I don’t know who I am, Ollie.”

“Well, I do.” Oliver threw his arms around my neck and squeezed so tight, there was no doubting that he was indeed real. What plane of existence we were on, I didn’t know. But it was real. “You’re the strongest person I know,” he said, grinning so wide into my shoulder, I could feel the curve of his mouth through the cloth of my dress.

I drew in a ragged breath and held him, knowing this was the chance to say goodbye we’d never been given.

“I love you.” I tearfully pressed a kiss to his temple.

“I love you, too, Ary.” He pulled back, and his responding smile was as bright as the summer sun. Unnatural in the cold and brutal Warrich I had once known. But here, he fit. “You can go now.”

I burst into tearful laughter at his innocent candor and stood. It hurt to walk away, but I found peace in Oliver’s happiness. And despite the unknowns and lies and calamity awaiting me, the pull to return to life was too strong.

“Ary?” Oliver called when I reached the edge of the tree line. I turned to see him hugging his horse to his chest. “Papa and I know you told the man with the scar on his face to be happy.” Oliver’s face brightened into a beaming grin that stretched from ear to ear. A warmth settled in his eyes, too mature, too knowing for a five-year-old boy. As if Phillip—sober and clear-eyed—was speaking through him. “He told me to tell you he’s sorry he didn’t fight for your truth when he should have. He said it’s okay to be angry because of what’s been taken from you, and happiness… you deserve that too.”

Oliver turned toward the house. I watched him disappear through the front door—his beloved stuffed horse in tow—as he spared me a final farewell.

I took a breath, closed my eyes, and stepped into the dense thicket of trees.

Chapter thirty-five

The pain returned when I woke and found myself in the softest bed I’d ever known.

I groaned weakly at the terrible, throbbing ache in my abdomen, from my chest to my navel, radiating in throbbing waves through my rib cage and back. Sweat pricked the back of my neck, but my limbs felt cold. I looked down to see my entire torso wrapped in cloth bandages beneath a white cotton nightgown. Clean, no blood. But my chest…

Thump… thump… thump…

My heartbeat.

I let out a broken, grateful cry at the strong pulse in my ears.

“She’s waking up.” I heard a man’s voice—Damond’s, I thought—and the frantic shuffling of heavy footsteps in the room disappeared to the other side of the door. I was too disoriented to see who was with me or see who had gone.

My eyes darted around the quaint, tiny room. I was in a bed with fluffy, cornflower-blue bedding. In the far left corner sat a humble but well-structured wardrobe crafted from washed oak, and beside that, a matching wooden bench.

A familiar growl rumbled in the hallway.

Damond’s responding voice was hoarse, and he sounded far away. “Let me talk to her first.”

“Get the fuck out of my way—”