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Calm.
Breathe.
Despite the panic surging in my chest, I forced my expression to remain blank and turned my gaze back to the hut. Not far now. And once I reached it, what then? Ignoring them would do me no favor. I had to get them to leave. Damnit, how long until Thorsten brought the mule?
I hastened my steps.
Too fast!
I slowed them.
Forced my breath into an even rhythm.
The moment I reached for the door, still many steps away from it, Henry said, “Elisa. A word?”
His low rumble stilled my heart, but I turned and battled a slight curve to my lips. “My father is ill, and I need to look after him. What is it?”
He flashed the smile of a wolf as he pushed the brim of his hat up, giving me a good look at his narrowed brown eyes. “Well, Rose and I reckon you sound just like that woman the priests are looking for. This… Adelaide.”
“Me?” I tried myself at a chortle, saliva pooling beneath my tongue, but I didn’t risk swallowing it. “She sounds nothing like me. My father’s just a fisher, as am I.”
“A lousy one,” Rose said, casting her eyes over my belly. I needed to stop touching it. “She helped me with the baby pain. Knew just where to push and how. Sounds like something a midwife would do.”
The other man sidestepped and slowly walked around me, circling me like prey chased into a trap. “Legs look nice and straight to me.”
Rose snorted a laugh. “Maybe she broke them and they healed. Might’ve twisted an ankle. Her hair isn’t black, either. I saw it. Saw the false color rub off in her wimple.”
The stranger ripped my wimple off faster than I could dodge it, glanced down at it with a faint whistle, then gave Henry a single nod. “Looks like soot rubbed off on the inside.”
“I’m not the woman they want.” My voice trembled. “Now leave me be so I can look after my father.”
“Why hide your hair then, huh?” Rose asked. “You’re a stranger who suddenly showed up here with yourelderlyfather, right after they caught the King.”
Enosh.Internally, I screamed his name, pleaded for him to help me, to protect my baby… to kill them all! Damn them. Damn all of them and how they shoveled their own graves. But they wouldn’t shovel mine!
I lifted my chin and straightened my spine. “I am not that woman!”
“Maybe you are, maybe you’re not.” Henry sighed. “Either way, fifty gold coins buys us better land upstream where there’s still fish. You’ll come with us without a fuss, and we’ll let those priests decide.”
I took a step back. “No.”
Henry took a step toward me, placing his hand on the handle of a knife where it protruded from its sheath by his belt. “Or make a fuss… Preferably alive, they said. I’m no man of fancy words, but I reckon than means dead’s fine, too.”
My eyes flicked between his and how he slowly unsheathed his knife, letting horror freeze my muscles, my stiffening hand shifting to cover my child.
Big mistake.
“Told you she’s pregnant,” Rose said. “Retched behind the bushes more times than I went to piss.”
Hinges creaked.
Pa leaned against the frame and poked his head out, glassy eyes widened with shock. “Wh-what is this? What do you want with—”
“Go inside!” I shouted, and when Pa didn’t move, I turned toward him. “I said go—”
The stranger lurched at me.
I stumbled back a step, pulled my knife from its sheath, and pointed it straight at him. “Come closer and I’ll gut you!”
