Aurie rolled toward the warmth of the sun on her face. Small grains of dust glistened as they fell across the light like little stars plummeting to their deaths. It had been years since she had been woken by the sun and not Balor’s cough and crackly stretching.

  She rubbed at her eyes and lifted her knees, noting the rough weave of Maud’s cloth mattress bag as she slid her bare feet across it. It was different. Everything was different. She didn’t feel rested at all. Even the pillow filled with cotton from Balian’s farm made her neck feel twisted and her cheekbones sore. The blanket that she had made when Maud had her cycles begin, a gift to celebrate her womanhood as much as prepare for the many growth spurts to follow, felt like gravelly grains of sand on her. She felt every stitch of the quilting, every tiny knot, every change in fabric. And that dream. Or nightmare. She couldn’t get it to disappear, as if it were a memory that had resurfaced rather than a random dream.

  “Where are we? What is this place? How am I here?” She had said when she saw him there, in that cursed forest of thick trees. “This isn’t right. How are you here?...This isn’t right.” She was so confused. And none of them were answered. His words were gutteral and hissing. Urgent.

  “Warum bist du hier? Du solltest nicht hier sein! Laufen! Du wei?t nicht, was sie ist!” The offlander had shouted at her, clad in furs that hardly covered from his groin down, patches of mud and clumpy dried blood smeared across his face. She recognized the words as those from far across the river but not their meaning. “Lauf, verdammt! Sie wird dich umbringen! Sie ist von D?monen besessen, du Narr!”

  He looked different, yet the same. Younger maybe. His beard wasn’t the gray she imagined if it wasn’t cropped short enough to have been shaved recently, perhaps a few days past, with some hints of red peeking through different shades of brown. His hair was longer, thicker. But those green encircled gold eyes were ablaze at her. Hate and fear. She had seen them as if she were standing close enough to him to taste his breath. And the boar that attacked him. She had run from it as it ravaged him with his spear jutting through its back. As it tore him apart. And then she was back in the village but it felt just as foreign as his words. Balor was bashful, following her as she, for some reason, was carrying a basket of flowers. The dream had changed before the frightfully sinister boar noticed she was gone.

  Maud and Alden were active below with pops and scrapes of the ladle against the sides of the pot and hushed whispers. They let her sleep. She stretched with a yawn. Her back cracked and ached. Her eyes were heavy, begging for her to go back to sleep. Back to where she might dream of this morning, the evening before, the fight, never happening. No yelling, no insults. No look of shock and anger on her husband’s otherwise kindly handsome face. But she knew she needed to get up. She had spent most of the night, staring out the window with the dark beyond, thinking of how she could make it end. Make Balor see, make him understand why it must stop, and why she could not and would not ever force her daughter to do anything truly against her will. Marriage was one of those things. She had seen arranged marriages and how bad they go, such as Egan and Theresa’s.

  She climbed down from Maud’s loft. Maud was stirring the pot while Alden went around the table, a tongue sticking out as he looked through the corked jars of herbs, saying over and over under his breath, “Basil.” Finally, louder, he called, “Which one is basil?”

  “The leaves with pointy edges. Dark blue.”

  “Green, they’re dark green,” Aurie grinned as warmly as she could. Poor Maud saw colors the same way Balor did. She had tried to correct her often. Balor had only told her otherwise just as often. Naturally, she listened to her father more than she ever would her mother, something which she seems to have grown out of. And spitefully so. The anger and sorrow in her voice last night made Aurie’s heart burn. The girl needed to speak up about such things. How were they supposed to know that she couldn’t hold the ribbons tight enough?

  “Good morning,” Aurie kissed the back of Maud’s head and peered over her shoulders at the pot of stew. She took a whiff. Her daughter had paid attention. It smelt delicious. “Let me,” she took the ladle from her.

  Maud didn’t look at her. Her eyes drifted away as she went to rotate the browned deer over with a scrape of hooves that smeared lines on the bricks at the back of the hearth.

  “Did your father leave for the fields already? I thought you were done sowing.”

  Maud shrugged. Alden sheepishly shook his head at her.

  Aurie blinked at him. “Did he come home last night?”

  Again, Alden shook his head. Maud lifted the pot of boiling water from the hook in the hearth and carried it to pour into the water barrel, keeping her back to her. Aurie turned away to hide the tears gathering on the corners of her eyes. He was gone. He actually left. Her chin lowered, shame filling her. Did she go too far? Did she overreact? Where could he have gone?

  Balian’s most likely. He would be excited to see him pushed from her. She knew his family despised her. She never did figure out why or what she had done to cause such animosity, but it was always there, no matter how hard she tried. Even Balor’s mother was hard pressed to admit when she was present. She gave up after a while. Why bother trying to please people who were too stubborn to see anything beyond their noses? Balor had always been different, kind and understanding where they were dismissive and cruel. Until last night. Until he put his foot down. An argument she knew she couldn’t win without pushing harder than she ever had before.

  She let out a long sigh of disappointment. He never came back. Never before had she failed to make him see her side. They had been fighting again and again since that man had moved into Sadie’s house. That man he tried to dangle their daughter in front of like a patch of lettuce to a rabbit. Or oranges and potatoes to that plowing horse.

  She went to the far window to look at the garden. No horse. No fresh tramples. Just a broken fence and the tilled field between their house and the offlander’s. It felt as empty as the house despite the budding herbs and few ripe oranges left in the tree she would have to use the ladder to reach. She hated that horse regardless of how adorable it was with Maud.

  “Breakfast is ready,” Maud half-heartedly called from the table. Aurie squinched at the house in the distance. Like the village, she wanted him to go away, back to whatever land he came from. She wanted him gone and her loving husband back.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Silence hung like a thick fog between them as they ate. She knew they were as distraught as she was. They knew she stood by them. They were united in their hopes of Balor seeing reason and abandoning his newfound ambitions. She didn’t know what she had expected but this wasn’t it.

  The silence was broken by the sounds of tools being knocked over in the shed behind the house and Balor’s growling, “Will he ever put things back where they belong? Alden! Alden! Come here, boy.”

  Well, at least he’s back now. She raised her head to their beaming eyes from hesitant faces. With a slight nod, she said to Alden, “Go help your father. This is our fight, not yours.”

  Alden’s chin creased and he rose from the table with a loud scrape of his wooden chair. Maud blinked at her sorrowfully. Aurie barely mustered a reassuring grin. Be strong, girl, this will pass…I hope. The grin faded when she realized that she honestly didn’t know that to be true. And that cut her heart deeper than she had ever felt before.

  She knew when Alden reached him when Balor’s voice softened. It was still loud enough to hear, less angry. “I can’t find the nails. And why the rivers would you put the shovel there? The hammer, you see it? Oh, good.” A rattle of clinking and thumping tools. “Here, put these in the cart. The shovel too. Can you help me with the bales?”

  What was he planning now? Serving his lordship, she was certain, like the loyal slave he had turned himself into. The anger was coming back. The disappointment. The shame.

  “Are you gone for good?” Alden asked.

  “I s’pose that might be a worry,” Balor answered, huffing with strain followed by a thud of something heavy being dropped into the wagon. “This is just a spat. We’ll be back to normal soon, promise you me.” A groan of strain and another thud. Balor’s voice became breathy, “I don’t want you to worry yourself. Just take good care of them while I’m gone. You’re man of the house for now.”

  How long did he plan on staying away? Aurie met Maud’s eyes with expressive features mirroring her own. This is worst than I thought. I hope she doesn’t think this is her fault. Maud’s trembling lips said that she did.

  “He’s a good man, you know, better than I expected.” Aurie’s chest puffed with the fire in her heart being stoked once more. “Someone who would care for Maud far better than any man I can think of. Trust you me, boy, if she can find a place in her heart for him and he for her, she would find happiness beyond our wildest dreams.”

  “Pa, she doesn’t want that.”

  “I know,” there was guilt riding through his words. Not anger or disappointment. Aurie furrowed her brows and Maud paled. “I may have been too hasty on that, I s’pose. No, I was wrong in what I did. Pushed too hard, I see now, and stood too firm. Not worth the fight, yet worth it in a way that surprised me.”

  Still stubborn. Aurie hardened. Maud shook her head and looked to her bowl to scoop a mouthful of stew.

  “You know what he said to me? Well, didn’t say, you know, but you know what I mean,” a thud making his voice breathy again. “He said something that made me think. And I think it is something you should hear for when you’re on that ribbon pole in two years. Your wife is the walls of the house and you’re the roof.”

  Maud and Aurie met gazes of awe.

  “Without her, you have no support, no purpose. And without you, she’ll stand just as firm and strong but rains and snow will fall into her. The wind will eventually knock her down. That’s what I saw when I thought about it. You should always stand by your wife because she stands for you. He told me to stand with her even if it makes him my enemy. What a thought, you know. Truth. And truth is truth.”

  Maud looked thoughtful, confused, and somehow awed all at once. Or perhaps Aurie was seeing her own thoughts in her daughter’s face.

  “That’s the type of man I want you to be, the type of man I want to be, and the type of man I see he is. Maybe in time, our Maud will find that agreeable. But if she doesn’t, then, well, I don’t know what to do, but I’m willing to bet my life he will help me figure it out.”

  That is…wonderfully thoughtful. An unexpected understanding. She could see the color returning to Maud’s face, a hesitant grin growing. A man like that is much better than the fool homesteaders and their bullying natures.

  “Once your maman calms down and will be willing to speak, I’ll tell her that. That I stand by her, though I’d prefer we kept him as a friend.”

  “You want me to tell her?”

  There was hesitation in his voice, “No, you needn’t get yourself in the middle of this. If it goes badly, I don’t want you or Maud to think you’re the cause of it. I’m the jackass in all this and I’ll be the one to make it fixed. Now, if you’re able to without them turning against you, I could use your help. That horse runs wild and Offla has trouble keeping it under his thumb, so I need to build it a stable before it gets into the garden and makes her murder him…and me. The roof shouldn’t take me but till lunch to repair. He’s got a bushel of leaks. Needs help with all that with his wounds. Poor fellow. And I have my suspicions he’s never done thatching or building in his life. A born soldier, I think. Those sorts rarely have skills other than spilling blood and horsing.”

  “I will see.”

  “Thank you, Aldie. I’ll be there, in case anyone wonders. Be along, now, I got to get all this up that hill.” The wagon creaked. “And—if you get the chance—let your ma know I love her and miss her. But brace yourself and remember that her anger is at me and not you. Off with you, now, go on and help them.”

  When Alden slipped through the door and closed it lightly behind him, Aurie and Maud returned to eating as if they hadn’t heard any of it.

  “Is he gone again?” Aurie felt she might have said that a bit too harshly.

  “He’s going to help the offlander make a stable and repair his roof. He said for me to tell you…”

  Harsher, “I don’t care.” Maud looked to her in surprise as she rose from the table with her empty bowl, “Finish your breakfast.” It may have been a lie, but she needed to show them that she wouldn’t be swayed by words alone. He had much more than all that to apologize for before she could fully forgive him.

  It is a good start, though. She smiled once her back was turned to them.