Dear, God! NO!

The Weight Carried

Victor turned to me, and the look on his face was something between fury and fascination. His mouth opened, then closed. He shook his head once, sharply, the way a wolf shakes off rain, and turned back to the forest. A gesture, blunt and impatient: follow.

I followed.

We walked for another hour in silence before Victor stopped at the base of a massive oak, its roots forming a natural shelter. He pointed at the hollow, then at me. Rest. Then he was gone, melting into the undergrowth with a silence that should have been impossible for a man his size.

I sat in the cradle of roots and pulled the tattered remnants of my gown around my shoulders. The adrenaline was fading, and in its place came the weight of what I had done. I had walked away from Carlin. I had made a bargain with a creature in a river. I was alone in a forest that ate Wolf-Hunters for sport.

And my family did not know any of it.

The thought hit me like a fist.

Mother. Father. Vivienne .

My younger sister had laced this gown. I remembered her fingers, quick and sure, pulling the ribbons tight while she chattered about the flowers and the guests and whether the northern lord with the red beard would ask her to dance. She had been so proud of me. So certain that this marriage would lift us all out of the genteel poverty that had stalked our house since our grandfather lost his seat on the High Council.

They would be devastated. Worse, they would be exposed. In this realm, a bride who fled the altar brought shame not on herself alone but on every soul who shared her blood. Carlin would make sure of that. He would twist the story, paint me as mad or bewitched, and my family would bear the cost.

I could not let that happen.

When Victor returned carrying a brace of rabbits and a skin of water, I was standing.

"I have to go home," I said.

His amber eyes narrowed. He set the rabbits down slowly, deliberately, the way you set down a weapon when you want your hands free for a different kind of fight.

"The town," he said. Two words, scraped and rough.

"My family's estate. The east edge of Halfordshire. I know the back paths. I can be there and gone before dawn."

A low rumble. Disapproval.

"I am not asking permission."

Something flickered in those predator's eyes. Not anger, exactly. Something closer to recognition, as though my defiance was a language he understood better than courtesy. He held my gaze for a long moment, then inclined his head a single, fractional degree.

He walked me to the forest's edge.

The Nightwillow estate sat behind a low stone wall choked with ivy, its windows dark except for the parlor on the ground floor, where a single lamp burned amber through the curtains. I climbed the wall the way I had as a girl, finding the loose stone with my toe, swinging my leg over the top, dropping into the garden. The rosebushes scratched my already-ruined gown. I did not care.

I let myself in through the kitchen door. The hinges squealed, and before I had taken three steps, the parlor door flew open, and my mother filled the hallway like a storm front.

"Lila Margaux Nightwillow."

Her full name for me. The one that meant I was already convicted and she was merely deciding the sentence. Behind her, my father sat in his armchair, his face the color of old plaster. And beside the fireplace, her arms wrapped around herself, stood Vivienne. Nineteen, red-eyed, her hair still pinned with the tiny silver flowers she had worn for the wedding.

"Do you have any idea," my mother began, her voice held so tight it trembled, "what you have done to this family?"

"I know exactly what I've done."

"He will ruin us." My father spoke without looking up. His voice was flat, exhausted, the voice of a man who has been doing arithmetic and the numbers will not lie. "Carlin holds the lease on our eastern fields. He holds the note on this house. He will call them in by morning, Lila. By morning."

"He was going to destroy us anyway, Father."

"You don't know that." My mother stepped closer, and I saw the fear beneath the fury, the way her hands shook at her sides. "You were going to be a lord's wife. We were going to be safe."

The word hit me like a slap. Safe. I had believed that once, in a life that ended on a frozen stone floor while my husband poured champagne.

Vivienne 's voice came small and cracked from the fireplace. "Why, Lila? Just tell us why."

I looked at my sister. I wanted to tell her everything, the death, the rebirth, the cold that I could still feel in my marrow like a splinter of ice that would never melt. I wanted to say 'I have lived this before and it ends in a dungeon.' But I saw the fragile hope in her eyes, the desperate need for an explanation that made sense, and I knew the truth would not give her that. Not yet. The truth would make me sound mad, and madness was exactly the weapon Carlin would use.

So I chose a smaller truth.

"Because he is not what he seems," I said carefully. "I learned something about Carlin. Something I cannot share yet, not because I don't trust you, but because knowing it would put you in danger. More danger than his debts and leases."

My mother's mouth opened. I raised my hand.

"I am going to fix this. I am going to protect this family. But I need you to trust me, and I need you to let me disappear for a while."

"Disappear, where?" My father's gaze finally lifted, and I saw the old sharpness there, the political mind that had once navigated the High Council before his enemies stripped him of his seat. He was studying me the way he used to study letters from rival lords, searching for the angle.

"Somewhere Carlin cannot reach me. Somewhere I can build a case against him that will make his debts and leases mean nothing."

Silence. The fire cracked. Vivienne wiped her eyes.

"You sound like a different person," my mother whispered.

I almost laughed.

I am a different person. I am the version of your daughter who has already died.

"I sound like someone who woke up," I said instead. I crossed the room and took my mother's hands. They were cold. Not the killing cold, not the prison cold, but the cold of a woman terrified for her children. I pressed them between my own and held tight. "Give me time. That is all I ask."

My father rose from his chair. He crossed to the writing desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a small leather purse heavy with coin. He held it out to me without a word.

"Father."

"Take it. If you are going to war with a lord, you will need more than conviction." His jaw tightened. "I do not understand what you are doing, Lila. But I have watched you sleepwalk through life since the betrothal was announced, and tonight, for the first time, you are awake."

I took the purse. I kissed his cheek. I held Vivienne until she stopped shaking. And then I left through the kitchen door and climbed the ivy-choked wall and crossed the dark field to where the forest waited.

Victor materialized from the shadows as though he had grown from them. His amber eyes dropped to the leather purse, then to my face. He said nothing, but one massive hand settled on the small of my back, claws resting lightly against my spine, and guided me into the trees.

Behind us, the lamp in the parlor went out. Ahead, the river murmured in the dark, patient and hungry, waiting for my first secret.