Page 21 of Of Iron and Moonlight

She reached beneath her collar and drew out the pendant he had glimpsed in Marrowgate: a chain with a green stone set in a shallow oval of worn copper, its rim bisected by a single vertical score. “This is a brumi stone,” she said. “My father brought it back from a journey to the fae lands. He said it serves as a protective charm that should suffice in place of iron.”

Duncan considered this. “Then I’ll trust your father’s judgment,” he said, though the absence of iron lingered in his thoughts. It was odd Albrecht had not mentioned it. “Is it jade?”

“I do not know,” she said, slipping the amulet back beneath her collar.

He might have asked more, but the carriage slowed abruptly.

“Herdsman,” Isander said when Duncan leaned out the window. “Blocking the road.”

Duncan stepped outside to handle it. After a few curt words and the exchange of several coins, the cattle cleared. When he returned, his wife was looking out the window, brow drawn.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Too much coin,” she murmured, her displeasure directed at the herdsman.

“Oh?”

“Two coppers would have been fair,” she said. “Not five. Now every herdsman along this road will think to bar a duke for profit.”

Duncan studied her a moment, then tipped his head back and laughed. His eyes flicked to the book in her lap: Metal and Merit: A Study of Copper Commerce.

A peculiar woman.

“Next time,” he said, still amused, “I’ll send you to bargain.”

Chapter 12

Elara

Like a prayer to the moons, whispers drifted through the mountain village of Jarovina: Lorrain Deboep was missing. The Amethyst of the North had vanished.

The words slid along streets slick with last night’s rain, rose from crooked chimneys into a pewter sky, and by the time the market square stirred with the day’s first errands, they were rumors exchanged like coins.

“Slipped off in the night with some sweetheart, I’ll wager,” declared old Miri, clutching her tattered shawl. “A golden-haired beauty like that was never meant to stay in a place like this. And those eyes of hers…”

“Bah,” the butcher spat, cleaver flashing. “Fae who took her. They fancy the pretty ones.”

“Fae?”

A farmer barked a laugh. “Fool’s talk. Stories to keep children from wandering the trees.”

“No,” another voice cut in. “Some man took her… The Ashfell Quiett took her!”

“Hush!” cried the innkeeper’s wife. “Mind your tongue about Merrick’s men. They’re on our side. They wouldn’t lay a hand on a penniless girl.”

Then they carried on about their day, the burden of enduring their own lives rendering them indifferent to one another’s suffering.

In the Deboep household, there was panic. Lorrain’s mother had prayed a daughter so beautiful might marry well enough to lift the family from its narrow fortunes. Now she wept by the window, her distress bound as much to the loss of that hope as to the girl herself. Lorrain’s father wore a path into the floorboards, muttering questions the moons did not answer. What would become of them if she returned in scandal? How could she bring upon them such shame?

Leonid, her brother and the family’s only son, sought refuge, as he always did, in drink. His sorrow hung like a borrowed cloak: ill-fitting, worn for display rather than warmth.

While Jarovina met the news with weary resignation and Lorrain’s kin unraveled in their own ways, the only soul doing anything about it was Elara Schrewsk.

If Lorrain was the Amethyst of the North, radiant and sought after, Elara had always been the setting that kept the stone from slipping loose. Overlooked by many, yet essential all the same. Their devotion was absolute, and the absence of one left a void both vast and unbearable.

“You must do something!” Elara demanded, marching into the guardhouse with clenched fists. “Send riders. Organize a search.”

The guard captain, gone soft with age, answered with unabashed disinterest, as though her urgency were merely a child’s tantrum. “We cannot spare men. She’s likely just run off.”