Page 4 of The Silversmith

Gemma had matured over the past year. Her mahogany skin was more worn from the sun, which made me think she had been in the south. The sun was scared to show its face too often this far north, especially with winter looming.

I remembered her ebony curls, disheveled from the wind. Now, they were longer and pulled into a loose, messy bun with stray strands framing her high cheekbones and striking caramel eyes. She towered over me with long legs. Dirt blemished her otherwise bright and alert face, and she bore a crossbow on her back.

A few weeks before my father and Ollie’s deaths, Gemma had left us to seek new “living arrangements.”

She was a filthy-mouthed, relentless force of a woman that my parents had welcomed into our home. I only remembered a few months with her, but it had been enough time to form an attachment even stronger than any I’d formed with either of my parents.

Gemma was four years my senior at twenty-two, and the only friend I’d ever known. She’d shown me the kind of bold fire a woman could brandish with her tongue. Helped me teach Oliver how to read and write, how to practice arithmetic—all things my brain somehow recalled how to do. Gemma had told me stories of our world in great detail. Every story she told felt like a myth, if only because our history was something my parents never spoke about.

“There you are!” She reached inside to use her foot as a doorstop before I could close it on her.

I wasn’t going to close her out. I didn’t plan on allowing her in right away, either. She would have to earn it.

I was still processing her standing on my doorstep when she tried to step over the threshold. To her annoyance, I didn’t budge.

“You’ve got to be shitting me, Ary. I’ll only say it one more time. Let me in.”

“No.”

“No?” she repeated, eyes wide and disbelieving.

“No,” I said, but Gemma shifted forward to lean more of her weight against the door. “I said no. You can’t come in.”

“Ary—”

“What do you want?” I demanded.

She grumbled something unintelligible and with just enough force to thwart my balance, shoved past me into the house. “You’ve become such a gracious host.” She wiped her boots on the bare floor.

Irritation burned in my throat. I had just scrubbed that floor the day before in my desperate need to control… something.

“Thanks for the warm welcome. ‘What do you want?’” she repeated, scoffing as she moved toward my father’s dusty old liquor cabinet. “You don’t seem to be overwhelmed with options here, do you?”

“I could say the same for you.”

Her body was curved, defined, and strong, but I could tell she was tired. She tried and failed to hide the bags under her eyes with a smirk. It was clear she hadn’t bathed in days. She smelled a little, honestly.

“I won’t deny it.” She opened and closed the insulated chest and a few cabinets. “I haven’t had a drink since I stopped in Albertha, and that was two days ago. You can imagine I’m parched.”

I picked up my half-empty glass of water and held it out for her to take, even though I knew water wasn’t what she desired. She took it anyway, eyeing me carefully.

“You haven’t told me why you’re here.”

“Well—”

“Or why you left when I needed you.”

She abruptly paused with my glass to her lips. Her eyes narrowed. “If you think it was my choice to leave you, you never knew me at all.”

My damn mother.

“She forced you out?” I asked, indignance pressing upon my throat.

She nodded, then scoffed. “Said I was getting a little too mouthy. When exactly did she take off?”

“Three months ago.”

“Three months!” Gemma gasped. “Gods.” She went to the sink and used the pump to refill the glass, then leaned against the counter, waiting for me to elaborate.