With the drawing of the door to the cottage shut by Arin, the kettle sang the last notes of its song. Thom lay still sleeping, and beneath the wool blanket, the sound of breath rasped, steady but shallow. She set down the bucket, wiped her hands on her apron, and let the reminder come. It always came unbidden when wind carried the smell of river water.
That was his saying:"Winter has stolen my wife." "Fire has taken my mill." "My hands cannot make bread; they can only make debts. They will starve faster with me than without me." Those were his words.
Not that day Arin Vale, the miller's wife, but Arin Storm-Banner: Ash-God of the Northern Reaches riding alone in a cutty sleet that cut like wire. The war banners were furled, the treaty parchment signed but still bleeding at the edges, and restless restlessness—the way a drawn sword is restless when there is no more flesh to meet it.
The river had been swollen with spring melt, gray, and loud, where it rumbled in its course. The children came to her first: tiny, cracked voices slicing through the roar like splinters of glass.
"Papa, come back!" "Papa, please!"
She turned the corner by the thicket of Alders, and there they were; three little people, barefoot in the snow-slush. Not older than four winters was the eldest; the smallest one still toddled; her cheeks, blotched with cold and tears, hung by the arms stretched toward the water where a man-wader, coatless, hair plastered to his face-neared each step heavier than the last, as though the river were stacking stones inside his boots.
Arin reined in. Her war-trained eye measured the current, the depth, the distance. A mortal could never reach him in time. So she did what soldiers were forbidden to do in peacetime: she let the old power rise.
Silver runes flared under the skin of her forearms, the same sigils that once blazed on shield-rims at Red Gorge. The world slowed; each raindrop hung like a bead of glass. She stepped onto the river as though it were polished marble. Ice crackled outward in feathered spokes beneath her boots, but the man did not turn.
He was speaking-Arin heard it only because the wind itself bent to carry the words to her.
"...can't feed you, can't keep you warm. The mill's gone, your mother's gone. I'm sorry, little birds. Fly without me."
He drew one breath, as if it were the last coin in his purse, and let the river close over his head.
The children screamed.
Arin moved. One stride-two-she knelt on the surface that suddenly became iron beneath her. Into the black water , she thrust her hand sailing down into fabric and then into flesh. She dragged him up by the scruff of his coat, like a mother cat with one of her kittens, and the river roared its protest at the loss of its prize.
He came up choking, eyes wild, water streaming from his beard. His chest hitched; river-water poured out of him like grief itself. When coughing cleared, he stared at her boots still standing on the water, at the sigils glowing through her sleeves, and finally at her face. No awe, only exhaustion, so complete it looked like peace.
"Why did you, poor man, do this?" she asked.
Not warlord-speak but a voice of a woman used to endings.
He opened his mouth to speak but turned to her with a direct gaze that confirmed he couldn't. Instead, he looked above her head towards the bank, where daughters clung to one another, small fists knotted in one another's sleeves. Fresh tears ran down the oldest while the middle had her thumb in her mouth though far too old for it. The youngest lifted her arms toward him, wordless.
Arin knew beforehand the answer he would give-a place hollow inside his ribs where brunt love and terror had eaten everything else.
"Winter took my wife," he rasped. "Fire took the mill. My hands cannot make bread, only debts. They'll starve faster with me than without me."
The sigils on her arms dimmed. She stepped onto the bank; the ice dissolved behind her, leaving only ripples. She set him down in the slush and knelt so their eyes were level.
"My name is Arin," she said. "Once I made widows. Today I'd rather make bread. Will you let me try?"
He blinked; rain dripped from his lashes. "You're... her. The Ash-God."
"I was," she answered. "Today I'm just someone who hates funerals."
She took the littlest girl onto her hip-so light, as if sorrow itself had already hollowed the child out-and then held out her other hand to the man. After a moment, he took it. His fingers were numb, caloused, shaking.
Behind them, the river kept rushing, carrying away the last of the ice. But on the bank five of them stood in a small, imperfect circle and Arin felt something crack open inside her chest that had been iron for years.
A nostalgic memory freed itself back to the cottage. Thom turned about, coughed once twice, and into the room Arin crossed, kneeled beside the bed, and rested her palm against his stubbly-cheek. His eyelids opened, managed to produce only a crooked smile.
"You're cold," he whispered. "Been outside long?"
"Only long enough to remember why I stay," she said.
She slipped under the blanket beside him, fitting her body to his as though they were two halves of a scabbard. Outside, the wind worried the shutters while, somewhere far south, the warring drums were already beating; but here, within the house, the kettle sang again, and the children now asleep in the loft dreamt flour-dust and warm loaves, not river water.
Arin closed her eyes now. The Ash-God's sigils had long since faded to faint silver scars, but she felt them tingle now, not with war-magic but with something quieter: a promise to the man in her arms and to the three small shadows she had once pulled from the edges of despair.
Let the elders send their riders, she thought. They will find me here, where the bread is rising, and where the river cannot reach