Page 135 of Reap & Sow

Kit put her back down. His eyes were suspiciously misty. “You’ve been my only friend these twenty years, Robin. I owe you more than I can say.”

“Your only friend, eh? You need to get out more.” They shared a wry smile. “Come. Let it be done.”

Eda watched in morbid fascination as Robin used a claw to slice her palm. She bid Kit do the same. They clasped hands.

Robin said, “I ask for fifty years, given freely to you by the one named Eda Shaw.”

With her instruction, Kit said, “I agree.”

There was no long-winded recitation. No convoluted incantation or mystifying chant. Intention, Kit once said, was the key to forging a Pact. And so it was that blood and intention alone passed Eda’s fifty precious years between the two, where their magic flowed into the other.

Kit shuddered. Robin gasped. Her eyes dilated, huge and black as onyx stones.

“Now,” she whispered. “Do it now.”

Eda took the sword. She stood before Robin, held it to her heart. Her own felt flayed open. Her tears could make a river, an ocean, a great flood. “I don’t know if I can.”

Silently, Kit braced her from behind. He wrapped his fingers around hers.

Robin placed her own atop of his. “Do not be sad, lamb. I am not. I will be with my love again, wherever that might be. Only promise me that you’ll look after Old Bastard, won’t you? And my boat—it’s yours, if you want it.”

“Robin.”

She smiled. “Live well for me.”

Behind her, the sun was finally starting to set. The rain had burned off, leaving shining puddles among the cobbles like dappled light in a forest. With the autumn breeze stirring her hair and buttery light about her shoulders, Robin was suddenly more divine to Eda than any saint.

She pulled, encouraging. Eda squeezed her eyes shut. Kit lent her his strength, and together they pressed Eda’s whole weight into the blade. Tears ran down her face.

The sword slid home.

Robin made a shocked gasp, far gentler than Eda expected. She could not bear to look. A tremor ran through her—a nearly imperceptible sensation of warmth. My years. They’ve come back.

Eda stood like that for what felt like hours. It was surely mere seconds. Kit stood behind her, around her, his hands steady where hers were not. He pressed his cheek to hers, also wet.

Then the weight upon the sword fell away.

Eda blinked through her tears.

At their feet, pale ash piled high. It resembled a figure—crumpled, sunken, as though someone sleeping might be found curled beneath. Tangled in it was Robin’s russet dress. Her earrings. Her bracelets.

Another breeze swept through the templehouse. The dust scattered in all directions, eddying and twirling through the air. They stood and watched. As golden light filled the nave and shone upon the dancing ashes, Eda thought it felt like a fond goodbye.

Thirty-five

It was a crisp autumn morning, and for the first time in years, the Shaws stood together over their parents’ graves.

The harvest season had taken root at last. Leaves of copper and gold fell in a gentle turbulence, whipping through the headstones and about their feet. The sky was overcast, but the air smelled sweet—fallen fruit and honey brittle.

A time of dying. Or simply one of change.

“I’m surprised you managed to find any,” Lawrie said, nodding at the damp water lilies in her arms. “Thought they’d die off in this cold.” It had been little over a week, and he was still frail, but Lawrie grew stronger every day. The infection had passed. It remained to be seen whether he’d one day lose the stick that kept weight off his bad leg.

“They’re persistent little buggers,” Eda said.

On her other side, Ben snorted. “Like us, then.”

Crowgate’s templehouse was unchanged from her last visit all those weeks ago, when Florian Fane had first arrived. The same discolored limestone and leering gargoyle, the same iron gate and gravel path. But it seemed smaller, somehow. Unless it’s just my world growing larger.