“We need to talk about Eli.”

  She spoke the words into Davy’s skin, his chest hair scratchy beneath her cheek. The arm around her waist tightened for a heartbeat and then relaxed. Broad, calloused fingers slid down over her hip and found the hem of her nightgown.

  “I told you, Mara.” His hand slipped beneath the fabric and found bare skin, and tingles of pleasure raced up her spine as he palmed her ass. “I don’t want another man’s name on your lips when you’re in my bed.”

  It physically hurt to do so, but she wiggled backward out of his arms and slipped from beneath the covers.

  Davy propped himself up on an elbow, frowning as she clambered off the bed and stood beside it, arms crossed over her chest. Depths, but he was beautiful. All sharp contrasts. A work of art, really–one she could have made herself for the sheer familiarity of him. She knew the exact feel of his thick raven hair against the sensitive skin between her fingers. She could draw from memory the streaks of burnished gold amidst the shining green of his eyes, the dark outer ring that gave them such striking clarity.

  She knew him so well.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, patting the mattress. “Come back.”

  Mara tightened her arms across her chest. “We need to talk about Eli.”

  Rolling his eyes, Davy flopped back onto the pillows and propped one muscled arm beneath his head.

  “Fine,” he said, glaring at the canopy. “But you know how it is here. These questions you ask usually tear you away from me.”

  She knew. How could she forget? These dreams, in so many ways as solid as reality, were apparently constructed atop a foundation of clouds and willpower. If she breathed wrong, she ran the risk of toppling the whole construction. Nonetheless, she had to try.

  “Why did you send him after me?”

  He lifted his head to look at her as if she was stupid. “So you wouldn’t be tortured to death by the Order’s interrogators?”

  A chill raced down Mara’s spine. Davy had always protected her. To a fault, he had protected her. It wasn’t like him to be so blunt.

  “I mean…” She shook her head, trying to dislodge the sense of wrongness that had settled over her. “I mean why him? You had dozens of men at your disposal. Why him? Why not someone with less responsibility?”

  Davy propped himself up once more, eyes narrow as he studied her.

  “I sent him because he’s the best,” he said plainly, eyes never leaving hers. “I would only trust the best with something as precious as you. And as for responsibility, I was his responsibility. Keeping me alive. As I see it, he had an opening in his schedule. But apparently you’ve forgotten that?”

  Oh, no. Absolutely not. This was jealousy, plain as day, and while she understood his feelings, they were no excuse to strike her there of all places.

  “I hadn’t forgotten,” she said crisply, She would not cry. She would not let this conversation end with him kissing away her tears, soothing away the conversation until nothing was left but his body and their love. For all she sometimes wished it was different, there was more to life than mingled flesh and tangled hearts. “I am the widow here, Davy, not you. I am the one trying to navigate the world as one half of a whole. I am the one left raising our son. I am. Me.” She pressed her fist against her chest and took a step back when he reached for her. “Don’t you dare accuse me of forgetting what I couldn’t forget if I tried and wouldn’t let myself forget even if I could. You’re the one who left me alone, and it’s the least you can do to stow your pride and your wounded ego and help me make sense of the mess you left–”

  “–behind,” Mara mumbled into her pillow, mouth tasting of sleep, cheerful sunlight shining against her closed eyelids. She blinked the fog from her eyes and lifted her head. Nick sat cross-legged beside her, his smile brighter than the light filtering in through the curtains.

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  “Morning, Mama!” he chirped, shifting up onto his knees and bouncing a few times as if to jostle her fully into wakefulness. “I’m hungry! I’m hungry! I’m hungry!”

  “Okay,” she laughed, reaching out to draw him into a cuddle, from which he immediately writhed free.

  “I’m hungry!”

  “Okay, love. Patience. Get your pants on and then we’ll go find breakfast.”

  Nick scrambled to do her bidding, pulling his heavy traveling pants over the soft cotton drawers he wore to sleep. Backwards, but at least he tried.

  Mara hurried to pull herself together, tame her hair, redress her son, and then hiked him up on a hip and let herself out of their room.

  She found the cottage unoccupied. Two covered plates sat atop the stove, and she helped herself to one as she peeked out the kitchen window. She could just see Quint by the side of the house, splitting firewood with an axe that looked like a child’s toy in his hands. Vauntner must be at the falls.

  Nick tugged at her pant leg. “Where’s Lili?”

  “I don’t know, love.”

  She set Nick at the table and busied herself about the kitchen, dividing up the contents of one plate–toast and more eggs–to feed herself and her son, and setting a kettle to boil for tea. She’d just sat down to eat when the ladder to the loft creaked.

  “Morning!” she said as Eli’s footsteps approached the kitchen. She looked up when he reached the doorway, offering a smile that she hoped said ‘Let’s pretend all that emotional intensity from yesterday never happened, shall we?” but which she worried actually said ‘I fought with my dead husband last night because he’s jealous of you and I’m not completely sure he’s in the wrong.’

  “Morning.”

  “Morning, Lili!”

  “Morning, Nicky. This kettle fresh, Mara?”

  “Just boiled. The other plate’s for you, I assume.”

  It was odd, being up before him. He was fully dressed, but his hair was mussed on one side, eyes a little heavy as he prepared himself a cup of tea and joined her at the table.

  They ate in the usual fashion–taking turns entertaining Nick. Outside, the rhythmic crack of the axe gave way to the sporadic clack-clack-clack as Quint tossed the fresh-split wood onto the pile. Over their short time here, Mara’s shoulders had begun to relax from around her ears. Her breath came easier.

  If so much wasn’t at stake, she might ask to stay here a few extra days. A few extra weeks.

  If so much wasn’t at stake, Eli would probably agree. He’d relaxed here, too, if the sleeping in was any indication. They could both use the break.

  Unfortunately, the fate of the rebellion was at stake, so she would have to content herself with one more day.

  Determined to make the most of the day, she packed herself and her son off to the sitting room after breakfast. Quint stomped in with an armload of firewood and joined Eli in the kitchen, and she played with Nick and listened with half an ear to the two men exchange barbs.

  Eli joined them after a time, and she left him and Nick to play some nonsense card game with ever-shifting rules that her son had made up. She browsed the bookshelf by the window, idly selected a book on Polandrian myth, and settled into the armchair by the fire to flip through the pages. The clock on the mantle ticked too fast, but Mara felt as peaceful as a woman could feel, she thought, with a jealous undead husband waiting in her dreams and a war on the horizon.

  A crash from the entryway, wood on wood, shocked her out of her distraction. On instinct, she shot to her feet just as Eli shot to his. Within three rapid heartbeats, Nick was in her arms, her back was to the wall, and Eli stood in front of her, dagger in hand. Just in time for Vauntner to round the corner.

  Mara’s mind took in the broad details. Vauntner’s eyes–all she could make out of his face–were wide, a little panicked. He had a small body in his arms. A child, Mara decided, noting the small hand, dangling limply in the air. The round cheek, in profile, head lolling back over Vauntner’s arm.

  Then two more people entered the cabin, and Mara pressed her back harder against the wall in reflexive reaction to the wash of curdled fear emanating off of them. Two men, one around her age, one perhaps ten years older, silver streaks in his hair. Haggard faces matched the bone-deep weariness riding in on their fear. Their rough, dirty traveling clothes hung too loose on their frames.

  Eli moved swiftly past her, and for a moment Mara cringed back, thinking he had seen some threat and was flying to her defense. But the knife had found its way back to its sheath and, to her utter shock, the older of the two men found his way into Eli’s arms.

  The men embraced–a clinging, desperate kind of hug. The newcomer gasped out a sob, burying his face in the crook of Eli’s neck, and Mara was too befuddled, too overwhelmed by all the chaos, to react.

  Quint emerged from the kitchen, and Mara watched his eyes flit from Vauntner to Eli to the child, then back to Vauntner.

  “I’m taking her to my room,” Vauntner said calmly, despite the panic roiling across his face. “Boil water.”

  Eli pulled himself from the stranger’s hug and, with a reassuring squeeze of the man’s shoulder, turned to address Mara. “Everything’s fine. They’re friends,” was all he offered her before following the ragged band down the hall.

  Everything was not fine, obviously. A child’s life was on the line–a situation with which she was actually equipped to assist.

  To the depths with her idle plans for a peaceful day.

  Mara was going to work.