Page 6 of The Silversmith

Gemma nodded, apologetic.

I expected to feel more anger than I did, but a part of me may have suspected it. My father—Phillip—had always been a detached fixture in my life. We’d never formed a strong bond. Still, I’d defined myself as my parents’ child and Oliver’s sister.

But now I realized his detachment… I must have reminded him of my mother’s lover.

“What about Ollie?”

“Theirs,” she replied. “He was Phillip’s.”

A frigid numbness coated my throat. At least Ollie and I shared a mother. He was my brother. I could hold onto that.

My mother was right, though. It should have been me that died that day.

That I was theirs had been a thin thread tying me to them both, but that thread had existed. Until now.

In light of this revelation, that measly thread snapped. I recognized myself for the burden I was—a constant reminder of marital betrayal to Phillip.

“I know that look.” Gemma’s sharp, stunning features twisted with pity. “It’s not your fault Phillip drank.”

“That’s not—” I sighed, attempting to steady my voice. “I’m not so worried about that.”

Though I had no control over my birth circumstances, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of my existence and the trail of consequences left in its path. My mother had always justified how we lived in solitude. Conflict bred more conflict, she often said. I took it to mean staying quiet and reclusive would avoid trouble, so that’s what we did. But if I was the product of betrayal, then conflict had probably followed me. It could have followed me here, to Phillip and Ollie.

The deep, dark parts of me—the parts of me that wanted to blame myself just to have answers—wondered if it had.

“Am I the reason they’re dead?” I spoke his name through the nausea. “Am I the reason that… Ollie is dead?”

Gemma’s lips parted, helpless.

Horror as disquieting as the gloomy winter sky minced my stomach to pieces. Nauseous, I turned my back to her. Breathing was difficult, like trying to force wind through a glass window just barely broken. The pressure threatened my composure, which I didn’t have much of to begin with.

“I don’t know,” she admitted softly. “I don’t know who killed them.”

Though I knew Elowen blamed me for their deaths. She’d never said it outright. She didn’t have to. Whoever killed them must have been there to kill me. She and I had been out in the forest collecting berries. Such an innocent, commonplace thing, but it had been me who asked to go that morning.

She blamed me. It was the only explanation for why she would leave me the way she did. Because after they were murdered, she could barely stand to look at me.

My shoulders remained sore and heavy, laden with guilt.

“Ary,” Gemma gently implored. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let her force me out.” Despite her healthy and agile build, the pressure of her boots made the floor creak. “Like you’re forcing me out now. Don’t,” she pleaded from behind me. I felt her touch my hand, and I recoiled. “Listen—”

“I don’t think I can listen to any more right now.” I stepped away with every intention of locking myself in the bedroom I never slept in. It was a room I could hide myself in, and that’s all I cared about. Halfway there, I paused, fists clenched. “But you can stay, if you want.”

Please don’t go, I silently begged, scared of saying the words aloud like I’d fear exposing an open wound.

***

Mercifully, Gemma stayed. Hours later, I finally gave in to thirst and unlocked myself from the bedroom, and for the rest of the day, she and I coexisted in silence. More than once, I tried to speak, desperate to fill the void that solitude had carved inside me, but I couldn’t find the right words. That night, though I’d tried and failed to sleep in bed—it was too cold—I returned to the floor beside the fire. I wanted to be alone, but I wanted to sleep even more. Quiet the hateful voices snarling at my soul.

It took me a while to settle, and I could feel her nervous gaze flickering over me. When she wasn’t peering at me by the light of the fire, I began to watch her, too, and I noticed things I hadn’t before.

The pale, jagged line of a scar—a stark contrast to her mahogany complexion—began behind her ear and disappeared deep into her collarbone. That wasn’t the only scar. There was another one, less noticeable, to the left of her forehead, receding into her hairline. They both faded into places less accessible to the common eye. Marks of the rough and ragged life she’d lived in the last year. Those marks withdrew into her, and I wondered what else she hid. What else she kept hidden. And I realized… I had never thought to ask much about where Gemma came from. She had been orphaned, but from where? For how long?

I frowned, my stomach souring with unease.

Was it possible she’d also been lied to? She had always been tough, honest, often frigid to everything and anyone but me. Had she been given a choice to be anything but, or had she been abandoned, then accepted by strangers Phillip and Elowen Gold, only to truly be forced back out by the closest thing she knew to a family?

Relief and unease warred in response to having her back. She was a cure for my loneliness but brought with her a whole host of mysteries.