She nodded without speaking. Her hands stayed pressed to her mouth.
I tried to stand. My legs buckled. I caught myself on the edge of the pallet, narrowly avoiding crushing the boy I'd just saved, and for a moment I just knelt there, breathing, waiting for the world to stop spinning.
Dessa's hands were cold where they gripped my elbow—cold and quick, touching me only long enough to guide me to the chair by the hearth before pulling away like I might burn her. Which was funny, really. I was the one still smoldering.
"Sit," she said. Not unkindly, but not warmly either. The voice she might use for a stray dog that had wandered in from the rain. "I'll get you something."
The chair was hard-backed and uncomfortable, positioned too far from the fire to catch any real warmth. I didn't mention it. I didn't mention anything. I just sat and tried to remember how to breathe without the rattle of infected lungs echoing in my chest.
Dessa moved around her small kitchen with the efficiency of a woman who'd rather be doing anything else. She cut bread without looking at it. Sliced cheese the same way. Poured broth from a pot over the fire into a cup she set on the table—not handing it to me, just placing it within reach.
"Thank you," I said.
She nodded once, then retreated to her son's bedside like I was a fire she didn't want to stand too close to.
I ate because I knew I should. The bread tasted like sawdust. The cheese could have been wax for all I registered of it. The broth was good—rich and salty—but my stomach rebelled at the thought of more than a few sips.
I was finishing the bread when the cottage door banged open and the blacksmith filled the frame.
He was a big man, Bram's father. Shoulders like oxen yokes, hands permanently blackened from the forge. The kind of man who could crack another man's skull without meaning to. Right now, those hands were trembling.
"He's well?" His voice came out hoarse. He didn't look at me. "The healer—she said you were coming—he's well?"
"Sleeping." I set down the cup of broth. "He'll recover fully."
The blacksmith's whole body sagged. He crossed to the pallet in three huge strides and knelt beside his son, and the sound that came out of him—something between a sob and a prayer—made me look away.
When I looked back, he was fumbling coins from a pouch at his belt. He counted them onto the table without meeting my eyes, his fingers clumsy with emotion. Twenty pieces of silver, exactly right.
"Thank you," he muttered. The words seemed to cost him something. "We're . . . grateful."
I swept the coins into my palm. "The broth was enough thanks."
It wasn't, of course. But saying so wouldn't change anything.
The blacksmith was already gathering his son into his arms, cradling that small body against his broad chest with such infinite tenderness that something cracked open inside me. His big, rough hands—hands that bent iron and shaped steel—gentle as silk on the boy's fevered hair. Bram stirred, murmured something, settled against his father's shoulder like he'd found the safest place in the world.
I stood up too fast. The room tilted.
"I'll show myself out," I said.
Neither of them looked at me as I left.
The walk back to the inn took forever.
Dusk had settled over Thornhallow like a bruise, purple and gray and thickening toward true dark. The mist that perpetually shrouded this corner of the Eastern Reaches seemed heavier tonight, swallowing the village in cotton-thick silence. My footsteps sounded muffled, distant, like they belonged to someone else.
The villagers were emerging from their homes for evening tasks—fetching water, checking livestock, calling children in for supper. One by one, they noticed me.
One by one, they stepped aside.
It wasn't dramatic. No gasps, no pointing fingers. Just a subtle shifting, the way water parts around a stone. A woman crossing the lane to the well suddenly found a reason to wait until I passed. A group of men outside the tavern fell silent as I approached, their conversations resuming only when I was safely distant.
A young mother pulled her daughter closer to her skirts. I heard the whisper: "Don't look, sweetheart."
An old man made a warding sign against evil—the same gesture my grandmother used to make against storms. He thought I didn't see. I always saw.
I kept walking.