Chapter Fifteen
LUCAS ROSE EARLY, STIFF and bleary-headed from the night’s broken sleep. He set the morning fire, taking a small pleasure at the sight of the flame’s flickering tongue curling about the freshly split wood.
It was a fine way to begin a morning.
He frowned at the rapidly emptying wood box. Tamsen burned too much as of late, building high fires and refueling them constantly. She rarely stirred from the cabin’s interior, preferring to sit and gaze at the fire she kept burning, and the bucket of water that she had asked him to place beside her. Both fire and bucket were constant companions of her. Sometimes he saw her talking to them, sometimes sitting quietly in the attitude of one who listens.
She must be mad, he decided. She must have broken beneath the strain of their a
