quiet and grim, as were the villagers who came to their doors to watch them pass. Lizzan felt their wintry gazes on her face and pulled her hood forward, a knot tightening in her chest.
At the inn’s stables, good cheer fully returned to the others as the Parsatheans and Kothans cared for their horses. Lizzan lingered with her mount before making her way to the inn alone. Too early it was for proper supper, so no villagers patronized the place yet. Hood up, she claimed a table in a shadowed corner. The others were gathered together in clusters at the center of the inn, mead already in hand and a barmaid bringing more, their easy laughter echoing through the room.
Aerax was not among them. Likely he’d gone to either buy or hunt Caeb’s supper before he took his own.
The innkeeper came toward Lizzan, and the throbbing in her head returned. She had seen other innkeepers wear that hostile expression before. Always the cause was the same. Always it ended the same.
But she didn’t want to fight. She only wanted a meal and then to sleep.
Stopping beside Lizzan’s seat, the innkeeper bent low and hissed, “I will not serve you here.”
Lizzan was already preparing to go. “Then I will take my meal to the stables—”
“You will take nothing—and you will not stay in the stables. This village knows full well what Vela does to anyone who offers shelter and aid to those who wear her mark.”
Her scars. “I am not cursed—”
“So you said before. And this village has paid the price of believing you.”
Lizzan closed her eyes. So it always was. “What has happened?”
“Livestock slaughtered. Vanishings as we have never seen before. Seven gone. Seven, and two of them children. Do you recall sitting in this inn with the blacksmith and bouncing her son on your knee? She has not forgotten or forgiven herself for trusting what you said.” The innkeeper’s voice thickened with rage and grief, and her scalding gaze swept over Lizzan. “Now you come here in a red cloak, as if you are Vela’s Chosen? We are not fooled. Your cloak is soaked through, and you are not her Chosen but forsaken and cursed. If you wish to see morning, run from this place and never let your shadow darken our village again.”
Her throat a burning ache, Lizzan stood. “Were the vanishings north or south of the village?”
“North.” The innkeeper gave a hard laugh. “If that is the direction you go, then perhaps you will pay for what you’ve done here.”
Lizzan had done nothing. But never would they believe it. They never did.
To Ardyl she went, bending her head near to the other woman’s so that she might be heard over the boisterous conversation around them, and forcing every word past the hot jagged stone in her throat. “There is a bridge a half day’s ride north. I will meet you all there in the morning.”
Ardyl frowned. “Why do you go?”
Lizzan gave no answer to that. Most likely Ardyl would hear the reason later, from a villager who warned them against associating with a forsaken woman. But Lizzan had her own story she was supposed to share. “Will you tell them of Ilris’s mother?”
Though still frowning, Ardyl nodded. Lizzan thanked her and hurried toward the stables, giving apology to her gelding for the brevity of his rest as she saddled him in haste. But she could not linger now. That she knew well.
Yet she still was too late. As she rode into the stableyard, four villagers approached on the path to the road, led by the blacksmith whom Lizzan had shared a meal with the previous year. The woman’s face was a mask of fury and vengeance. No doubt the heavy axe she carried was how she intended to dispense it.
Lizzan dismounted. Once before she’d tried to ride quickly past a mob that had come for her, and a hurled stone had blinded her horse in one eye.
“I am leaving,” Lizzan called to them, though she knew nothing would change. But at least there were only four . . . for now. “You will not see me again.”
“As I will not see my Brin? No.” The blacksmith shook her head. “Before you leave here, I’ll take the knee you bounced him on.”
Her heart ached. She recalled full well the curly haired, laughing boy. But she would not pay for what she hadn’t done. Nor would she hurt the blacksmith and the villagers, if she could help it—and with