Page 31 of The Silversmith

My stomach tightened and tingled at his praise.

Keep talking, I told myself. Keep talking, stop thinking, or you might pass out.

“So.” I cleared my strained voice. “How did you go from being a blacksmith to one of the prophesied queen’s escorts?” I emphasized the latter with a roll of my eyes and as much sarcasm as I could muster.

Gavin stared at me in sudden brooding silence, arms full of firewood. “Is that what I am to you, Aryella?” He dropped the wood in a pile with irritated force. “An escort?”

Panic choked me. “I—I don’t—”

“Did it ever occur to you that you might mean more to someone than some bullshit prophecy?”

My mouth fell open. “I take it you don’t believe in my Aunt Christabel’s future-telling abilities.”

“Your aunt—” He cut himself off with a clenched fist, shook his head, and released a joyless laugh. “When you’re with me, let’s focus on you learning to take care of you. Forget the rest. Can we do that?”

Nodding, I gulped down my nerves and compulsively steered the conversation in a direction that was less confusing.

“It sounds like you all have been anticipating me and my power for quite some time,” I rushed out, my voice brimming with anxiety. “Has Molochai really cursed our world with four hundred years of death and suffering all because of one woman?”

He released his tension with a heavy sigh, answering, “There is no limit to what a determined man will do for one remarkable woman.”

“More like an unhinged, obsessed man,” I grumbled.

His mouth twitched upward. I’d never been so relieved to see the faintest traces of a grin. “That too,” he answered.

It was an effort to avoid his gaze—if only to give my pulse a rest—as we sat for a long while—a half hour at least—listening only to the early-winter wind, rustling woods around us, and crackling fire.

Until a gold coin landed in the dirt before me.

“A coin for your thoughts?”

I looked up at him sitting casually with his large, clasped hands resting over his bent knees.

“I can feel your discontent from here,” he explained, noting my suspicion, “and you wear your thoughts on your face far, far too much for your own good.”

Something I would need to work on to be queen.

I sighed, defeated. “Molochai… that part is terrifying, but straightforward. He wants to kill me. He’ll either succeed or he won’t. It’s the rest of it that doesn’t… sit right.”

He waited for me to elaborate. I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it. Again and again. Like an idiot.

“I will not judge you, Aryella,” he finally said, his deep voice steady, soft, like a warm breeze relaxing my muscles. “And everything you say to me belongs to us. No one else.”

I fidgeted with my thumbs and stood to my feet, pacing. “I am trying to be happy and brave about all of this.” He watched me, glued to my every movement, as I walked back and forth, back and forth… “I am trying to not pity myself, to be grateful for being chosen and wanted and revered when I know there are hundreds—thousands, likely, if not more—far, far worse off than I was or ever will be, but I—” My fists clenched, knuckles cracking. “I’m not even nineteen years old and supposed to save the world with some kind of mysterious power from the Selvaren.”

I picked up, studied, and then thrust a frozen, rotten berry back into the bushes.

“The man I’m supposed to marry is already picked out for me. I don’t know him, don’t know if I want him, and hate myself for being selfish enough to think about what I want—at least in that way—when lives are at stake.” I threw my hands in the air. “And come to think of it, I don’t even know my own middle name.” Not that it mattered. It just felt like something I should know. “If I’m bound to die sooner than later, I’d at least like to have a say in who I am and how I lived.”

“Jay.”

“What?” My hands fell to my side. I released an exasperated breath and sat down on the withered tree stump he’d used to chop wood. “What are you—”

“Your middle name.” He stood up this time. “It’s Jay. Your mother loved blue jays.”

“Elowen?” I laughed. “She hates birds.” It was true. She’d always left the hens to me.

Smyth’s eyebrows furrowed. His closed mouth was a tight barrier, holding something back.