Sylvia Anna Henrietta
1253
The Crooked Pike, Dregsdon, Angren
Time returned all at once, like a door slamming open.
Voices rose again in the tavern. Laughter restarted mid-breath. A chair scraped behind me. Someone lifted a tankard as if they had never stopped.
But I didn't feel part of the world anymore.
My body felt stiff. Cold. Heavy in the limbs. My hands were curled in my lap without me remembering curling them.
My pulse thudded in my ears. My skin prickled as if spiders crawled along my arms.
The spot where that demon had stood felt colder than the rest of the room.
Matthias sat across from me with the ring in his hand. His fingers were curled around it like he was afraid it might fall, or maybe like he was afraid I might.
He didn't say anything. He only watched me, waiting for me to speak first.
The light from the candle between us caught on the metal of his stolen armor and sent a small glint across the table.
It felt too bright for the way my stomach twisted.
I tried to swallow but my throat tightened painfully. My tongue felt thick.
My mouth was dry. My hands trembled on my lap, and I pressed them against my thighs to keep them still.
The room seemed too close, filled with heat and the smell of sweat, ale and woodsmoke. Chairs scraped.
Boots thumped. None of it felt real.
Someone at the next table frowned, scratching his head.
"Weren't she… uh… standin' just now?"
Another voice, slow and unsure, muttered,
"Was she? I… I dunno, can't rightly say."
A third grumbled,
"Me neither… reckon she was?"
Their words drifted around me, light but sharp enough to cut. People shouldn't forget a thing that just happened.
Not unless something made them.
The thought made my skin crawl.
I looked at Matthias again. His jaw was tight. His shoulders stiff. He held that ring like it might cause him to burst into flames, lost in some internal struggle
My chest ached at the sight it. A simple ring. A simple gesture. But nothing about what had just happened was simple.
O'Dimm's words pushed into my skull, heavy and cold, as if they were settling into the spaces my breath used to fill.
"You have done nothing but lie since the moment you met him."
"That tale you spun of unjust exile, of a world that wronged you."
"You think yourself the victim, when in truth you are the cause."
I shut my eyes for a heartbeat. It didn't help. I could still hear him. I could still feel the way his gaze pinned me to the chair.
The secrets I had buried. The shame I carried. The fear I tried not to acknowledge. He dragged all of it into the open like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.
The revelation that Matthias had known all this time who I was…the implication that my parents had been right to shun and fear me…that I was truly cursed to bring destruction and ruin…that I was born wrong, twisted, evil—
It pressed on every part of me at once. It felt like being shoved back into a memory I had clawed my way out of years ago.
My fingers curled into fists against my legs. My breath shook. My chest felt too tight for air. I opened my eyes again, and Matthias was still there.
Still waiting. Still holding the ring. Not saying anything.
And embarrassingly, I felt the tears. Not falling neatly but streaming, hot and steady, down my face.
I didn't know if I wanted to speak. I didn't know if I could.
He saw the tears. His expression changed — not enough to read, but enough to notice. He slipped the ring into the coin pouch at his hip and leaned a little forward.
"Are you alrig—"
My fingers twitched at the sound of his voice. The pity in it. The softness. Like I was fragile. Like I was someone who needed handling gently because they might break.
My vision blurred at the corners. The chair felt too small. The room felt too tight.
I needed to leave.
My legs pushed the chair back. It scraped hard across the floorboards, loud enough to cut through the tavern hum. Faces turned. Not many, but enough.
The sight of all those faces — dirty, tired, curious — pitying me —It made my stomach twist. Heat climbed up my neck.
My jaw trembled. Not anger. Shame. Thick and heavy. The kind that presses on your ribs until you cannot breathe right.
I turned before anyone else could look at me. My legs moved on their own. I pushed through the narrow gap between tables, past men with dirt under their nails and faces that blurred together.
Mira stepped aside quickly when she saw me coming. Her eyes widened, worried, but she did not speak.
I kept moving.
The door came too slow. The air inside felt stale. My lungs strained against the tightness in my ribs. I shoved the door open, and the cold night air hit my face like a slap.
The sun had set while we were inside. The sky above Dregsdon was a dull, starless gray. The street was a stretch of mud and uneven stone.
My boots splashed through the filth as I ran. I passed the tanner's shack with its warped roof. I passed the cobbler's stall and the shuttered dye house.
I ran past the crooked well that leaned too far to one side. I passed a butcher's hut that smelled of old blood and smoke even with the windows closed.
I did not stop.
No one paid attention. A woman carrying buckets looked up briefly but then kept walking. A drunk slumped against a wall muttered something I could not hear.
My breath kept breaking in short, painful pulls. My hands shook so hard I pressed them against my sides to hide it, even though no one was watching.
I reached the edge of the town where the buildings grew thinner and the ground turned to patchy grass.
A stack of old wooden crates sat beside an abandoned shed with a half-collapsed roof. No windows. No voices. No eyes on me.
My legs gave out. I dropped to my knees in the grass. My palms hit the cold earth and stayed there.
The sob tore out of me before I could stop it.
Another followed. Then another.
I pressed my forehead to the backs of my hands. My shoulders shook. My breath stuttered and caught, and for a moment I could not tell if the pain in my chest was from O'Dimm's words or the truth behind them.
I stayed there in the dark, alone with the sound of my own crying, and the certainty that everything he said might be true.
The sobs did not stop. They broke out of me in hard, shaking bursts that scraped my throat. I tried to swallow them down, but they kept coming. It was not a silent cry or a composed one. It was ugly.
My face twisted. My breath hitched in short, choking pulls. Snot ran from my nose. My eyes burned. I did not care.
Not even when they tormented me had I cried like this. Not when they locked me away. Not when they starved me. Not when they spat on me or called me cursed.
I learned to cry quietly back then, with my teeth clenched and my hands over my mouth, because crying loudly only made things worse.
But now the sound ripped out of me with nothing to hold it back. The last time I had cried like this, I had been a child.
I had been small enough to believe that someone might come when they heard me. Someone who would hush me and pull me close and say that it would be alright.
Back then, no one came.
And now there was no one to come either.
My chest hurt with every breath. It felt like something inside me was splitting. My thoughts spun and tangled. Every memory I had pushed down clawed its way up again.
Every sharp word I had heard as a child. Every look of disappointment. Every whisper of fear. Every moment I had wondered if something inside me was already broken.
O'Dimm's voice circled in my head, steady and cold.
"Rot in the shadow of your sister."
"Cursed."
"Ruinous."
The words stuck to my skin like dirt I could not wash off. I felt myself unraveling, piece by piece, like there was nothing solid left to hold on to. My breath kept catching.
I tried to steady it, but the air would not come right. The ground under my knees felt unsteady, as if it might tilt and throw me down completely.
I pressed my fingers into the earth until the dirt packed under my nails. It did nothing. My hands still shook.
My ribcage still clenched. I could feel panic rising in my throat, sharp and metallic, the same way it had when I was small and trapped in that cold room with the dark pressing in.
I curled forward until my forehead touched the ground. My hair fell around my face, clinging to my cheeks with tears. My breath came in harsh, uneven gasps.
I felt pathetic. I felt exposed. I felt like every part of me had been split open and left raw.
It was all unraveling. Every lie I had told myself. Every explanation I had used to make my past bearable.
Every hope I had built these last few weeks. All of it felt thin now, fragile, like a flimsy cover over something rotten underneath.
I do not know how long I stayed like that. My sense of time blurred between the shaking in my chest and the raw heat around my eyes.
The tears slowed, then started again, as if my body could not decide whether it was finished or not.
My breath came in small, uneven pulls. My knees ached from the ground pressing into them. My fingers had gone numb from gripping the dirt.
It must have been five minutes before the sound reached me.
A distant crunch of grass. Then another.
Then the steady rhythm of footsteps on uneven ground.
Heavy. Solid. Familiar.
The clank of metal plates shifting with each step. A knight's boots striking the earth with weight and certainty.
Matthias.
My stomach tightened. My breath stalled halfway in my throat. I did not lift my head. I did not move. I stayed low, hunched over, hair hanging in front of my face, tears still drying on my skin.
Another step. Then another.
Closer now. Too close for me to pretend I did not hear him. Too close for me to hide the sounds I had made.
The shame crawled up my spine again, tighter than before. I wiped at my face with the sleeve of my dress, smearing dirt across my cheek. It changed nothing.
I still felt wrecked. Raw. Open in ways I never wanted anyone to see.
"Go away." The words came out rough, barely a voice at all. It was the only thing I could manage. The only shield I had left.
He did not go.
His footsteps kept coming. Slow. Steady. I could hear the familiar weight of his armor shifting with each movement.
That low clank of metal that always announced him long before he spoke.
"Leave me be," I said, louder this time. My throat burned. "I do not want your pity."
The footsteps did not stop.
"You have known me all of a week," I forced out. I tried to sound firm, but it cracked halfway through. "Stop pretending you care."
The last step landed right behind me. The sound of his weight settling into place told me he had stopped only when he was close enough to reach out and touch me if he wanted.
"You're a bitch," he said.
My head jerked up just enough to stare, startled, but he had already moved.
He lowered himself to sit beside me, close enough that our knees almost touched, close enough that I felt the heat coming off his skin even through the cold night air.
He set something down in the grass between us. A bowl of stew. My stew. The one I had abandoned on the table without taking a single bite.
He let out a long, tired sigh.
"Though I suppose most people would be in your circumstances," he added, his tone flat but not sharp.
More like he was stating a fact and leaving it there for me to decide what to do with.
He had taken off his helmet at some point. His face was bare in the low light. His hair was mussed from the metal, and there were faint marks on his cheeks from its pressure.
He looked at me, with the tired patience of someone who had already made up his mind to stay whether I wanted him to or not.
"Why are you here, what do you want from me. I don't want your pity. I got what I wanted from you. I am out of that forest," I said.
My voice sounded thinner than I meant it to, stretched around the tightness in my throat.
He did not look at me right away. Instead, he tipped his head back toward the night sky. Clouds moved slow across the dark, and the near full moon cut a pale edge around his jaw. His profile looked carved in stone for a moment.
"My home," he said finally. "My real home before I left it, before I died and found myself here, was called Utqiagvik."
The name felt strange, to my ears, foreign.
He said it with a kind of distance, like he was touching something long gone with the tips of his fingers.
He lowered his gaze again. I could see his eyes more clearly now. Steady. Grounded in something I could not place.
"It sat near the top of the world, the land was flat, mostly snow or ice in the winter, and the sun can hide for months. Then in summer, it never sleeps. The light stretches across the sky for weeks.
His voice softened, quiet as if the memory itself might shatter.
"I wasn't like the people there," he said, his voice low, steadying himself as he looked up at the moon.
"My skin, my hair, my face… I wasn't Iñupiat," he added, almost as if clarifying to himself, "the name for the natural inhabitants. Not even close."
He ran a hand over his face, fingers lingering on his jaw. "I told you earlier my parents had me when they were older. I lost them one after the other when I wasn't much older than you are now."
His eyes lost focus. "My father… to illness. My mother… to heartbreak." He shook his head slightly. "She loved music. Truly loved it. She played the violin whenever she could… even if no one was listening. Just for the joy of it."
He paused, his voice catching slightly. "Her small hands… they danced over the strings, she'd hum along softly at first, then louder, as if she were filling the whole house with it."
He lifted his gaze, staring at the sky again. "After my father died, the music stopped. She didn't touch the violin, didn't hum, didn't sing." His hands tightened into fists on his knees.
"The house felt hollow. The walls… cold, even with the stove burning. And the wind… it sounded sharper somehow, as if it knew exactly what I had lost."
He exhaled slowly, then added, voice barely above a whisper, "She sang again only once, shortly before she passed. I had thought she was getting better, but I think she knew, it was a quiet song almost apologetic..." He shook his head and looked away. "Then she was gone. And the quiet settled back."
"I had thought I would be prepared for it," he said, his voice low, steadying itself. "That I had made peace with the inevitability of losing them. But when it actually happened, it hit me like ice water straight to the chest. I felt betrayed. Angry. Hurt in ways that made my stomach twist and my hands shake."
For the first time since I had met him, he seemed vulnerable, human.
"I took that anger out on the world, on the people around me. Lashing out at anyone who dared exist in my sight."
"I was a little shit who thought he was the only person who knew loss," he added, letting out a humorless chuckle.
"I made sure anyone within shouting distance knew it. I shouted. I sulked. I threw tantrums. I held grudges against the wind, the snow… strangers and neighbors alike. I thought it would make me feel stronger. Or at least less empty."
He paused, letting the words hang. His eyes lifted to the night sky, tracing the pale curve of the moon. "But they… they didn't treat me like an outsider. Not really. Despite everything, despite how rude I was, they helped me."
He leaned back slightly, voice softer now.
"The neighbors would bring food every night for weeks. The men would take me with them on trips in the boats, hauling nets, checking traps… even when I had nothing to give in return. And this old lady, Aglakti—every day for months, she'd bother me with chores. Shoveling snow, cleaning her home, endless little tasks…'
He smiled faintly, almost bitterly, as if caught between fondness and exasperation. 'I asked her why she bothered. I wanted to know why they didn't just let me be. Instead of giving me an answer she did what all old people love to do.'"
"What?" I asked.
"She told me a story." He paused, as if hearing the old woman's voice again.
"It was about a hunter no one liked. A man who boasted too loud, took too much, and gave nothing back. He killed not for food, not for winter stores, but because he enjoyed watching things die. The elders warned him. The other hunters refused to travel with him. He didn't listen."
Matthias let out a slow breath, the muscles along his jaw tightening.
"One day, during a storm, he came across a polar bear and her cub, like all cruel men, he was a coward. He didn't dare attack the sleeping mother. Instead, he killed the cub for sport. Left its small body, skinned, on the ice and walked away, laughing at his own strength. When the bear woke to its cub's corpse, it did not mourn or cry. It simply began its hunt."
He paused and lifted his gaze toward the dark ceiling of clouds, eyes distant, as if following the bear's invisible path across some inner horizon.
"It tracked him for three days and three nights. Through whiteout winds, over cracking sea ice, following the scent of the cub's blood on his clothes. He thought he was safe. He even bragged to others about what he'd done."
His voice dropped to something close to a whisper.
"On the fourth morning, it found him. They say he never even had time to scream. It tore him apart, piece by piece. And when it was done, it took the cub's skinned pelt back into the storm."
"That's morbid," I said quietly. My voice came out rough, still unsteady from crying.
I wiped the last wetness from beneath my eyes and tried to hide how it made my hands tremble.
"I said the same," he replied. He shifted his weight and steadied his tone before continuing. "But she only laughed, and said 'Siḷam iñuiḷiġaġmigmi, aŋayuqaat qitunŋaich ilitchiġaiñaqtut.'"
The words hung in the air, unfamiliar and heavy. He had to slow down to pronounce them, and by the awkward way he shaped the sounds, I could tell the language wasn't his own.
"What does that mean?" I asked. My voice cracked slightly, though I hoped he didn't notice.
Matthias looked at me then, really looked, his bright crimson eyes locking onto my still-reddened blue.
"It means," he said gently, "even in a world of beasts, it is the duty of the elders to protect the young."
The sincerity in his tone, the absence of any tells of a lie on his face, caught me off guard. So I did what came easiest. I got angry.
"I didn't ask you for your help. I didn't ask you to save me in that forest. I didn't ask you to make that deal with that demon on my behalf!"
My voice cracked, raw from the sobs I'd just let out. My hands trembled, knuckles white, and I wiped at my face, smearing dirt across my cheeks.
Matthias didn't flinch. He let the words hit him and fall away, as though he had expected them.
"You're right," he said softly, voice steady, quiet enough that it cut through the chaos in my chest.
"You didn't ask me to do any of that. You didn't ask me to untie you, or walk you out of the Black Forest, or "waste' a 'favour' with O'Dimm on a girl I've known for… what? A week?"
His eyes met mine, unblinking. I could see the faint marks of the helmet across his cheeks, the way his hair had gone mussed from it, but the fatigue in his posture didn't lessen the weight of him.
He exhaled, not irritated, not dramatic — just stating a truth.
"But tell me," he continued, voice low, deliberate, "what sort of man would I be if I stood by and watched a child sell her soul to the devil simply because I find her annoying?"
My chest tightened, the words hitting where the sobs hadn't fully settled. I wanted to snap at him, push him away, feel anger instead of this ache that had nothing to do with him.
My fists clenched into the wet fabric of my pants. My vision swam at the edges, the tears still brimming, unshaken by his calm.
"I made you a promise," he said, leaning slightly closer without invading my space. His hand rested near the pouch at his hip, not reaching for me, not demanding anything.
"I would see you safely out of Caed Dhu. That I would stay until you chose what comes next. And I don't break my word just because keeping it is inconvenient."
The weight in his words pressed on me, heavier than any of my own guilt or shame. I wanted to curl away, to hide, but I couldn't.
The heat in my cheeks burned with the shame of being seen like this — raw, broken — yet beneath it, something new twisted, strange and fragile, in my chest.
I breathed shallowly, trying to gather myself.
For a heartbeat, I dared to meet his eyes. His crimson gaze held me, steady, patient, unyielding.
Not because he forced it, not because he had to — it simply was.
I searched his face, every flicker of muscle, every shadow of expression, looking for the slightest crack, the tiniest hint of deceit. I found nothing. No hesitation. No mask. No lie.
It sank in. He was really telling the truth.
Maybe it was the flood of everything — the shame, the fear, the secrets O'Dimm had ripped open — but I moved before I could stop myself.
I pressed into him, arms tightening around his chest. My body shook with sobs I had just gotten under control, raw and ragged.
My face pressed into the curve of his shoulder, hot tears slipping down my face.
My fingers dug into the armor at his side, clutching it as if it were the only thing holding me upright.
He didn't flinch. One hand rested lightly against my shoulder, steady and unyielding, the other stayed relaxed by his side.
My sobs slowed, ragged and uneven. My fingers loosened, curling only slightly against his chest, fingertips brushing instead of gripping.
My forehead pressed closer, inhaling the faint scent of leather and smoke, despite not having bathed for three days, he gave off no smell of a man unwashed.
My knees shifted, seeking balance against the ground. My body was still trembling, but not collapsing. I let myself sink a little, leaning heavier, testing the solidity beneath me.
The tremor in my legs softened. My shoulders loosened. I didn't move away.
I stayed there longer than I realized, clinging without thought, letting the release of years of tension, fear, and grief ripple through me.
Matthias Harlow
Outskirts of Dregsdon, Angren
1253
It took her a while to stop crying, to stop sobbing into my shoulder, she stayed at my side, huddled, a bowl of stew balanced awkwardly in her lap.
She didn't eat; she just stared at it, stewing in the awkward silence that can only come from crying in front of someone,
After a moment, she looked up at me, hesitantly. "How old are you, truly?"
I blinked, surprised by the simplicity of the question. "Twenty-six," I said.
Her eyebrows lifted, faintly incredulous. "And… how long have you been a vampire?"
I let out a low sigh, the weight of the question pressing heavier than she realized. Still, I answered. "As of today… a little under ten days."
Her eyes widened, a flash of surprise crossing her face. I didn't look away. "That day in the clearing… Louis was the first man I've ever killed. The only man, as of now. By the standards of immortals… and men, I'm just a fledgling."
She blinked, absorbing it, the silence stretching around us like a living thing. I could see the wheels turning behind her eyes, a mix of awe, fear, after a bit of her poking at her bowl, taking hesitant spoonfuls she looks to me and says
Finally, she met my gaze, her eyes flicking away and back again, unsure whether she had the right to speak. "I… am," she said, her voice faltering, like the word itself was heavy and strange on her tongue. "Sorry… about what I said on the road here… about you… moping. and for lying about who I was."
Her apology came out small, halting, almost like she was measuring each word against some invisible scale, unsure whether it was enough, whether it could mend the awkward, raw space between us.
Her shoulders hunched slightly, as if she were trying to make herself smaller, as though by shrinking she could make up for all the words she hadn't thought through, the judgments she had thrown carelessly.
She wasn't just apologizing. This was something smaller, quieter, almost fragile. A peace offering, like a scared wolf limping toward a warm fire, carrying the tiniest scrap of food it had managed to find—hesitant, nervous, but trusting enough to approach.
Without thinking, my fingers slipped into my pouch and found the ring O'Dimm had given me. Cold metal. Sharp edges. A reminder of the cost of hubris.
I rolled it between my fingers as I looked at her.
"You were blunt," I said, "and more than a bit insensitive."
A flash of hurt crossed her face — quick, instinctive — a flinch she tried to hide but couldn't.
"But," I continued gently, "you weren't wrong."
Her head lifted a fraction.
"You thought I was a monster," I said. "for longer than I actually was. That I had decades to come to terms with my condition and that misunderstanding? I let you have it. I didn't correct you. I didn't give you the truth."
I exhaled, steady, even. "So I forgive you. Truly."
She blinked, stunned — as if she had prepared herself for anger, dismissal, anything but that.
"And," I added, softer still, "I needed to hear what you said. Even if it stung."
Her gaze drifted downward, drawn not to my face but to my hand — to the ring I'd been turning between my fingers without realizing it.
The thing was small, deceptively simple at a glance: a narrow band of matte-black metal that seemed to swallow light rather than reflect it.
But look closer, and the truth surfaced — faint infernal letters pulsed along its surface, not etched or engraved, but shifting, as though written in a language that refused to stay still long enough to be read.
The symbols glimmered from deep within the metal, like embers breathing inside volcanic glass. A devil's signature, quiet but unmistakable.
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"Was he telling the truth? About me being… cursed?"
I held the ring still, closing my fingers around it. It was suddenly heavier — or perhaps the conversation made it so.
"I…" I began, then paused. Even for me, the right words weren't immediate. "I don't know."
She tensed, just a little.
"Gaunter O'Dimm does not lie," I continued softly. "Not because he's kind. Not because he respects truth. But because it makes the games he plays more entertaining for him."
Her breath shivered, the smallest tremor.
"He never lies," I repeated, "but he never tells you the truth, either. Not fully. He trades in misunderstandings, in riddles, in omission. Half-truths woven into something that feels whole."
I loosened my grip on the ring, letting the shifting letters glow faintly again.
Her eyes widened at that. I sighed softly, turning the ring once between my fingers.
"I don't know what he meant," I admitted. "But my advice? Take the words of evil incarnate with a grain of salt."
She frowned, head tilting a little. "What does that mean? Take it with a grain of salt?"
"What?" I blinked, then huffed a quiet laugh at myself. "Oh. Right. Sorry. It's an old saying where I'm from. People used to believe a pinch of salt could neutralize certain poisons — either in food, or in… well, people."
She watched me closely, still processing.
"It basically means," I went on, shrugging one shoulder, "don't accept every word someone tells as the truth. Especially not from O'Dimm."
Her eyes drifted to the ring in my hand — a small movement, but sharp, searching. I could feel the question forming before she spoke; I'd been waiting for it since the moment O'Dimm pressed the damned thing into my palm.
"Ever since he showed up," she said quietly, "you've kept warning me about him. How dangerous he is. It's the first time I've ever seen you scared."
She swallowed, as though building up to something. "If he's so dangerous… if he's so evil… then why did you take that ring?"
I let out a slow breath, staring down at the band between my fingers. The infernal lettering caught the firelight, shifting like it was breathing.
"Because the moment I entertained that conversation," I said quietly, "I was already caught."
Her brows knit, but she didn't interrupt.
"You don't say no to O'Dimm." My voice stayed even, but there was a raw edge beneath it. "If I'd refused him, he would've made sure I regretted it. He would have engineered a situation where I lose control, where I would have no choice but to say yes,, he'd do it right before I broke, and then… then he'd offer the ring again, like a lifeline."
I rubbed my thumb along the black metal, the script writhing faintly. "And he would extract far more out of me the second time."
I exhaled, tired. "But that's just me trying to justify my hypocrisy, isn't it?"
Her lips parted slightly — not accusing, just listening.
"The truth is…" I swallowed. "I took the favor because it was easy. Because it was the perfect answer to my lack of control. Don't let my calm demeanor fool you, I've been gorging myself on animal blood, every night on our trip here, so I would be too sated to loose control, I didn't have to face the possibility of loosing myself like a fucking animal. I didn't have to trust myself. All I had to do was say yes and pretend it was a fair trade, that I had won one over the devil."
"I should throw this thing away." I stared at the ring again, hollowly. "Gods know I should. But if I did…" My fingers curled around it "Then it would have all been truly for nothing."
She didn't seem to know what to say to that.
Truth be told, neither did I.
The silence stretched, thin and delicate, like both of us were afraid to breathe wrong and shatter it. She stared down at her bowl, fingers tightening around the rim until her knuckles blanched.
I stared at the dirt between my boots, trying to pretend I hadn't just trauma dumped on a fifteen year old.
Luckily for us, the world intruded before either of us had to speak.
Even from out here, beyond the edge of the village and half-hidden behind the ruined fence posts, I could hear voices carrying from the direction of the inn.
One of them, I recognized, Joran, the blacksmith's gravel-thick voice, low and rough from years of smoke inhalation.
He was talking to someone with a much heavier, strained breathing — the Alderman I surmised, based off of Joran's colorful description.
"Come on, lets go back to the inn, it seems the Alderman seems to want to see us personally, we'll continue this conversation later."
I held out my hand. She hesitated — half a second, maybe less — then took it. Her fingers were cool, her hand still unsteady from crying, but she gripped mine with more steadiness than I expected.
I helped her up, the weight of her slight frame barely pulling at my arm.
And if she noticed me placing the ring back in my pouch, she did not mention it.