Page 43 of Feralheart

Silvie slowly pulled her hands from the water and dried them on her apron, the purple stains staying. “You’re asking me to watch them grieve you.”

I could not suck in a breath.

“That’s what you’re asking, isn’t it?” she said, sharper, louder. “You want me to cook meals and do laundry and sit with Tolross while he watches the door for a sister who won’t come back.”

“I might come back.”

“You might.” She stared at me with pale blue eyes that had seen too much. “But you’re asking me to be there if you don’t. To be the one who tells your brother his sister died for him. To watch your father stop talking altogether.”

“I have to do this. There’s no other way.”

“You’re right about that.” Her shoulders dropped. “Which is why I’ll do this for you. I’ll do it because I love you like you’re mine.” She reached for my marked hand. “But don’t pretend this is a small thing you’re asking.”

I pulled the coins from my pocket and held them out. “For food. For⁠—”

“No.” She pushed my hand back. “If I take them, that means I think you won’t be back.”

A hard knot formed low in my throat.

“I’ll bring an evening meal with enough for the next day’s lunch,” she said. “A roll for breakfast. Laundry on rest days. I’ll sit with Tolross when I’m not at the market.” She paused. “He’ll complain, but he’ll like the company.”

“He will.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a braided cord made from various strands of red thread. Her own dyes. “For luck.”

I held out the arm with the mark, and she knotted it around my wrist. “Thank you.”

She tugged me up from the crate and pulled me into her arms. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had held me like this. Not Father, who’d lost too much already. Not Tolross, who was too fragile to squeeze back. No one since my dead mother.

Silvie smelled like dye and woodsmoke. Her arms were thin but steady.

“Come back, little bird,” she whispered into my hair.

I didn’t cry. But I held her for longer than most people would.

My feet moved much slower as I took the final steps home and stepped inside.

Father sat at the table, sharpening his knife on a whetstone in a steady rhythm. Tolross lay on his pallet, his journal open, a stub of charcoal in his hand.

The coal bin held four pieces. Father had bought some the day before. I’d bought candles, and they shivered in the air, the light almost looking festive.

I set the token on the table beside where my father worked. “I entered the trial.”

Father’s hands stopped. The knife hovered above the stone until he carefully placed it on the table and picked up the token.

He set it back down. Lifted it again. Set it down.

“The man across town,” he said. “The one I couldn’t stop. I told him his daughter needed him alive. That courage and stupidity looked the same from a distance but only one of them came home.” He traced the edge of the token. “He said the same thing you’re about to say.”

I waited.

“That it wasn’t courage or stupidity. It was the only choice that mattered. I watched them carry what was left of him back in a cart. His daughter was five.”

My stomach turned over.

“I can’t stop you either.” He nudged the token away, his movement controlled. “But I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life. Whether you come back or not.”

The hurt bit deep. He breathed like he stood in the castle cold again.