Page 43

“He has read reports.”

“How intimate.”

“Apparently enough for marriage.”

Nessa steps around the counter and grips my arms. “Do not go.”

“The supplies will arrive before I do.”

“We will find another way.”

“You told me the same thing about your debt.”

Her hands loosen.

The merchant’s offer remains between us, dangerous and unresolved.

“I am sorry,” I say.

“You should not be comforting me.”

“I have years of bad habits.”

Her eyes shine. She pulls me into a fierce embrace. I hold her until the guards at Sarveth’s carriage begin fastening weather covers over the equus.

“Come with me to pack.”

Nessa closes the stall without counting the day’s coins.

Back at the clinic, we select two dresses, wool stockings, my healer’s knife, a packet of rirzed, and the treatment notes I do not leave for Lissa. Nessa folds every garment twice because her hands need a task.

My carved wooden comb rests on the shelf beside my bed.

My father made it before his hands became too stiff for fine work. My mother used it to untangle my hair when I was a child. After they died, I began securing my chestnut braid with it every morning.

The comb is worn smooth where our fingers held it.

I lift it from the shelf.

“You are taking that,” Nessa says.

“Yes.”

“They cannot have everything.”

I place it in my hair and finish the braid.

Everything else can be replaced, though the thought feels false.

Outside, a shout rises near the lane.

The first supply wagons descend the stronghold road. Human residents gather around them as the Lowtown storekeeper breaks the Morwen’thir seals. Sacks of grain fill one wagon. Dry tiphe fills another. The third carries locked medical chests.

The promise is real.

So is its price.

When I step outside, Bran and Nessa wait beside Sarveth’s carriage. More humans gather along the lane. No one cheers for their new connection to House Morwen’thir.