The woman slowed him down. She didn’t have supplies. She had to rest, breathe, eat. Worst of all, she asked questions.

  “Where are we going?”

  Harrison stopped, eyes rolling so far back in his head he thought for a moment they might get stuck there. Lowering the cross bow to his side, he turned to face her.

  “Clefton.” He nodded down the road, wagon tracks worn deep into the red clay. It was only the next town over, and he would have been there already and completed his task, if this woman hadn’t attached herself to him.

  “Clefton? But Clefton is a city,” she said, shaking her head. “Where would a monster hide?”

  “I’m assuming in a house,” Harrison said, dry as he turned back to the merchant. He handed over a handful of joins and took the crossbow and a stack of bolts, shoving them into Rebekah’s arms.

  She let out a startled noise and stumbled backward, catching the load and managing not to drop a single bolt. “A house.”

  “He’s a man,” Harrison said, meeting her level gaze. How could she be so blind that she couldn’t see what he was, standing before her? How could she not see the blood on his hands, the gleaming blade at his waist, tucked into his belt. “And he lives in Clefton.”

  Rebekah shook her head, feathers of dark hair falling free from the knot at the base of her skull. “How do you know?”

  “He told me.”

  A knock sounded at the door. Harrison looked up, lantern light flickering across the page of the hand drawn picture book in his left hand. In his right, he held Arabelle against his chest, her tiny body trembling at every chorus of thunder.

  He rose, placing Arabelle gently on the floor atop a rug her mother had woven years before, and made his way to the door.

  “He told you? You spoke to him?”

  Harrison opened the door, rain splattering his bare feet. A man stood before him on the doorstep, black cloak soaked to his frame.

  “I’m looking for a place to stay for the night,” the stranger said, clutching a hand to his side. His voice was strained, but behind it, Harrison could make out the deep timbre of a voice rich with command.

  Harrison glanced inside, looking at Arabelle sitting on the rug, staring up at him.

  He turned back to the stranger. “Come in,” he said, opening the path inside. “What’s your name?”

  “Clyde Slate. Duke Clyde Slate.”

  “Duke Clyde Slate?” Rebekah demanded, voice rising an octave. He looked back at her, frowning.

  “You know that name?” he asked.

  “Everyone knows that name,” Rebekah said, blinking at him. “He’s the seated protector of our land. He’s not… He can’t be?”

  Uncertainty crept into her voice and lingered between them in the muted silence of booted feed on soft, damp earth. Harrison let the uncertainty linger, despite his own discomfort. The disbelief of a hero being the one to kill her child would ideally be enough to keep her suspicion away from him, even if it was a lie.

  Or, both a lie and not at the same time.

  Wood clunked against wood as Harrison dropped a bowl of soup in front of the man, no steam drifting from it. It had been put off the heat long ago enough now it was only a breath away from being truly cold, and the draft from the cottage’s leaking windows wasn’t helping.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Clyde, who’d seemed shocked when Harrison didn’t react to the name, pulled one hand from beneath his long cloak to eat. The other remained hidden in shadows, clutching at his side. When Harrison grabbed the lantern to move to the table, it reflected against something metallic and coated red.

  He placed the lantern on the table quickly and turned aside, hurrying back to his daughter. He crouched on the rug in front of her, blocking her from the man’s view. The Duke’s eyes hadn’t left her since he’d walked through the door, one eye always on the baby, only barely old enough to sit on her own.

  Harrison swung the child up into his arms, holding her close, hair standing taught across his arms as though caught in a chill breeze. It was too cold in this room, he ought to lay her down for bed—

  “What’s her name?”

  Harrison stopped, turning slowly on one heel to face the man once more. His ashen face met the light, something uncanny in the way he stared at Harrison.

  “Arabelle.”

  “Good name,” the Duke murmured, pulling eyes away for the first time and spinning his spoon through the cooling soup. “I have a daughter of my own, not much older. Elisie.”

  “Where is she?” Harrison asked, propriety demanding he respond to the comment against his better judgment.

  “At home,” Clyde Slate said, words growing distant as he stared off through the dark window. “With my wife. I’m trying to get home to them.”

  He pulled the hand from beneath his cloak finally, and dripped dark, ichor blood onto Harrison’s rug.

  Gears clicked into place as Harrison pulled back the trigger on Rebekah’s crossbow, locking a bolt into place for her. She took the weapon and held it up, aiming at Harrison for half a second.

  He dodged out of the way, grabbing the barrel of the crossbow with a growl. “Careful. That thing’s loaded.”

  “I know,” Rebekah said, lifting the weapon once more. She stared down the length of the crossbow, eyes narrow.

  “Don’t aim it at anyone you’re not willing to kill.”

  “I know,” she said again, grip tightening around the wooden grip. “Why didn’t you kill the man when he was inside your home?”

  Harrison grit his teeth together, hand falling to the rough metal hilt of his dagger. “Because I’d never killed before.”

  Cold. Harrison had never felt so cold, feeling himself freeze as he watched the blood seep into the rug. The last piece of weaving his wife had completed before her death.

  “You’re hurt.” It took him a moment to realize he spoke the words, the voice that of another man’s.

  “Had a bit of an accident,” Duke Clyde Slate said, rising from the kitchen chair. The movement pushed his cloak back, revealing his torso and leg soaked with dark blood, a dagger plunged into his side. “The dark fae wanted my soul. Too bad, the knife only nicked it.”

  The adventurer’s bloody hand wrapped around the wrought iron hilt, easing it a touch from his body. Blood oozed around the wound. “I thought killing the fae would stop it, but it’s still licking at my soul.”

  Harrison stepped back. “You should go to a surgeon. Or a priest. I can’t help you.”

  “No, I don’t think you can.”

  Harrison didn’t have time. The adventurer lunged across the room with all the speed an injured man should not have, drawing the blade from his own stomach. It flashed through the air, iron and steel, and caught him across the forehead.

  Pain exploded across his face and he cried out, nearly dropping Arabelle in shock. It should not hurt so much, a tiny cut above his eye, no blood even leaking from it.

  “Not enough…”

  The Duke kicked out, foot catching squarely against Harrison’s knee. He buckled, screaming in pain as he dropped to the floor. A baby’s cry his ears a moment later.

  His baby.

  He opened his eyes, forcing his vision to clear through the pain, just in time to see the blade drive through his daughter’s frail chest.

  Harrison roared a sound no man should make and surged to his feet, shoving Clyde away, blade free from his grasp.

  The cry had stopped.

  “Thank you,” Clyde gasped, stumbling away.

  Blood roared in Harrison’s ears. The pain had stopped, frozen in time by a wound that would never heal.

  Arabelle bled onto the carpet, smaller than he ever remembered seeing her.

  No, no. She couldn’t die like this. She couldn’t be gone.

  Metal slinked against metal. Clyde drew a blade from his sheath, sword poised to strike.

  He grabbed the blade in his daughter’s chest at the same moment as the Duke drove the sword through Harrison’s chest.