Page 24 of Severe Husband Warning

“So had I.”

Cora returns my smile without hesitation before turning around.

“I’ll prepare everything.”

While Cora disappears into the apothecary, I wait beneath the awning. The guards remain a respectful distance away, yet shoppers quietly choose other stalls rather than pass between us. When Cora presses the parcel into my hands, her fingers linger for the briefest moment.

“They frighten everyone,” she murmurs, her eyes slipping once more toward the guards.

“They’re only here to escort me.”

“I know,” she replies, her voice gentle. “Everyone else knows that too. It doesn’t make them any less afraid.”

My eyes drift across the market without thinking.

Those who had been observing us have already found reasons to busy themselves elsewhere. Watching them now, I realize how easily fear disguises itself. It borrows familiar routines until they become impossible to tell apart.

I thank her, tucking the parcel safely beneath my arm before continuing deeper into the market.

I haven’t gone much farther when an elderly man slips between two produce stalls and falls into step beside me.

Old Man Theron has never possessed the sort of face anyone remembers after a single meeting, which has probably served him well over the years. His patched brown coat hangs loosely from narrow shoulders, and the white beard spilling across his chest looks as though it’s always been trimmed with whatever blade happened to be closest at hand. Beneath heavy brows, his pale eyes remain as alert as ever.

He glances toward the parcel tucked beneath my arm.

“Was just on my way to fetch Adair’s medicine.”

I lift it slightly, smiling at his familiar face. “Already taken care of.”

A hint of relief softens the lines around his eyes. He continues walking beside me without another word at first, his attention lingering on the guards trailing several steps behind us.

When he finally speaks, his voice barely rises above the hum of the market.

“The Jensens disappeared.”

I stop so abruptly that one of the guards looks toward us.

“Disappeared?”

Theron nods once, before continuing, “Their stall was empty this morning.”

On any other day, I might have accepted that explanation without another thought. Families disappear during tithe-season often enough that the market eventually learns to stop asking where they went.

Yet something about Theron's face keeps the question alive.

He’s always carried himself with the restless caution of a man who has lived too long beneath another person’s rule. That caution has sharpened into something I haven’t seen before. He won’t quite meet my eyes, and every few breaths his gaze slips toward the crowd as though expecting someone to overhear us.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he states, eyes darting left and right as if afraid someone was listening. “But they left all their tools behind. What weaver would do that?”

I follow his gaze.

The weaving stall stands empty beneath its patched canvas. Half-finished cloth still stretches. Around us, the market carries on as though nothing has happened. Bargaining continues from one stall to the next, yet every conversation seems to end the moment another stranger draws near.

I’ve always believed this district endured because its people were resilient.

Standing here now, I wonder how much of that resilience has simply been fear carried so long that it learned to resemble endurance.

It settles quietly over a place, changing so little each day that no one notices until an entire family disappears and leaves their lives waiting behind them.