Sidra stepped into the house.
The first thing Torin noticed was that she was barefoot and completely drenched. He could discern every line and curve of her body through the damp chemise. The second thing he noticed was the strange expression on her face, as if she had just woken up and had no idea what had happened while she slumbered.
Seeing him sitting at the table, she closed the door and approached, but stopped a few paces away from him. Her long hair dripped water onto the floor.
“Where were you?” he asked. He sounded angry, but only because he was deeply afraid.
Sidra opened her mouth. Nothing but breath emerged. She was trembling; the sight made Torin ache. He could also see the bruises beginning to bloom on her chest, from where she had been kicked.
His hands curled into fists beneath the table.
“Sidra.”
“I was looking for Maisie,” she said, her gaze dropping to her feet.
He stared at her, wondering what she was withholding from him.
Since the moment he had met her, he had always been able to read Sidra’s face. She was an openhearted woman, honest and genuine and fearless. He remembered the night when he had first held her, skin to skin. When she had invited him to share her bed at last, months after they had wed. The wonder, the pleasure that had been in her eyes when she looked at him.
He regarded her now, standing like a stranger in their house, and he couldn’t read her face. He didn’t know what she was feeling, what she was thinking. It felt like a wall had risen between them.
She lifted her eyes to his, as if she also felt the distance. Her voice was reserved when she asked, “Why are you here, Torin?”
“I came to be with you tonight, Sidra.”
She blinked, surprised. It made him realize how few nights they had spent together. And even then, Maisie had often slept between them in the bed.
“Oh,” Sidra said. “You … you didn’t have to do that.”
He studied her, his pulse throbbing in his temples. Did she want him to leave? “I can go, if you would rather that.”
“No,” she answered. “Stay, Torin. We shouldn’t be alone tonight. And I have something I need to tell you.”
Why did his stomach drop? He braced himself and motioned to the countless dishes, scattered across the kitchen. “We both need to eat. But you should change into some dry clothes first.”
She nodded. While she went to the bedroom, Torin perused the offerings. He eventually brought a bannock, a cauldron of cold stew, and a bottle of wine to the table, careful not to disturb Sidra’s herbs.
She returned a few moments later, dressed in a floor-length chemise. Torin noted that she had laced the collar tight, to conceal the bruises on her chest as if they didn’t exist, and he felt a lance of pain in his stomach. He didn’t want her to feel as if she had to hide things from him.
She looked at the stew he had chosen.
“Should I heat it?” she asked.
Torin should have thought of that. He wordlessly stoked a fire in the hearth, and Sidra set the cauldron over the iron hook. While they waited for the food to warm, he glanced at her.
“You have something to tell me?” he prompted.
“Yes,” Sidra said, rubbing her arms with a shiver. “I know what the Orenna flower does.”
He frowned as she brought the red flower to him. The very one he had once carried to her.
Slowly, she told him everything. The legend she had read in the tattered book. How she had planned to come home today to fetch her herbs and thought otherwise when she saw the crimson flower. How the petals had tasted, and how they had opened her eyes to the spirit realm.
Torin’s shock gave way to anger. “You should have spoken to me first, Sid. Before you ate this. What if it was poison?”
Sidra was quiet. There was something far worse lurking in her eyes. “I think it saved me, Torin.”
He listened as she continued about the reflection in the loch. Torin went cold with dread. He imagined Sidra swimming down into the darkness, only to return after a hundred years had passed. He would be long dead, his bones in a grave. He would have never known what had befallen her. He would have lost his daughter and his wife in the span of a day, and it would have obliterated him.
“At first, I didn’t realize it was a trick,” Sidra whispered. “But then I remembered how my eyes were open, and I could see all the threads … the spirit that wanted to claim me, and the one that wanted me to rise. If not for Orenna, I think I would have kept swimming the deep.” She paused, her gaze on the fire. The stew was bubbling now, but neither of them made to remove it. “I’m sorry, Torin. I didn’t mean to make you or Graeme worry. I just needed to do something to find Maisie. And I didn’t realize so much time had passed. I dove into the loch at midday and returned at dusk, but only because I thought Maisie was in the water. It looked just like her.”
Torin reached out to caress Sidra’s hair. “Don’t go back there, Sidra. Don’t ever return to that loch.”
She met his stare. She was remorseful and sad, but there was also a hint of defiance in her, and he knew he couldn’t command her. Not even to spare his heart.
Sidra turned away to lift the cauldron from the fire, giving him no chance to speak further. She carried the pot to the table and served two bowls.
Torin sat across from her. He tried to eat, but the food was like ash in his mouth. He broke the bannock and offered her a piece, but even Sidra struggled to eat. She pushed the stew around with her spoon.
His stomach felt full of stones by the time they decided to rest.
Sidra banked the fire and crawled into bed, lying on her side. Torin took his time removing his boots and dirty clothes, then eased onto the mattress beside her. He blew out the candle and stared up into the darkness. Sidra’s back was angled to him; he felt the distance between them like a chasm.
He didn’t know how to cross this divide, how to comfort her when his own soul was in anguish. His mind wandered the same tracks it had taken all day. He kept envisioning Maisie, terrified and hurt. Why couldn’t he find her?
Torin went taut as the tension in his body intensified. He couldn’t draw breath. His panic was a winged creature, beating within his rib cage. It wanted to consume him, but he focused on what was tangible around him—the soft mattress, the scent of lavender on the pillow, the rise and fall of Sidra’s breaths.
She sniffed, like she was weeping and trying to hide it from him.
Torin’s thoughts returned to her. He wanted to touch her but didn’t know if she wanted the same. He chose to remain still, fettered by uncertainty, his face marked with pain as he listened to her tears finally ebb.
He remembered the first time he had met Sidra, four years ago.
He had been riding through the Vale of Stonehaven, a rarity, as it was one of the more peaceful places of the isle, inhabited by shepherds and their wandering flocks. He hadn’t patrolled the valley since his first year as a guard, but for some reason he had taken the eastern road on his way home from a shift.
He was thinking about Maisie. She was eight months old, and Graeme was caring for her by day. But the arrangement couldn’t go on forever. Torin knew he could do better by his daughter. That he should do better.
His stallion spooked at a shadow, a play of wind in the oak branches above him. Torin was tossed from the saddle and promptly found himself facedown in the dirt, his left shoulder throbbing. He couldn’t even recall the last time he had been thrown by his horse.