Chapter 97

Malachi

Cressida didn’t bother pretending.

“If she wanted to stay,” she said, “an open door wouldn’t have mattered.”

I stood in the doorway of her room at the back of the cabin and looked at her. She was sitting at the table with her burned hand resting on a folded cloth, the other turning a small stone over and over between her fingers. Dried herbs hung from the rafters above her. The whole place smelled of smoke and bitter roots.

“She has a broken leg.”

“She had a stick. You made sure of that.”

“She could have died out there.”

Cressida looked up. Her eyes were very calm. “Yes.”

The word sat between us.

Thirteen years. Thirteen years she had been at my side