Page 122 of Bittersweet & Strange

“But—”

“Gideon will see that your father is treated properly.” Her tone leaves no room for argument. “You will come with me, and I will deal with him.”

Her finger points directly at my bleeding arm.

I look down at it.

Then at her.

“I don’t require—”

“Don’t.”

The single word stops me more from surprise than obedience.

Her eyes narrow and then, so quietly only Boone and I hear it: “I knew you when you were small enough to hide behind Belle’s skirts, Rhys. Whatever terrifying impression you’ve managed to cultivate since then is entirely wasted on me.”

I stare at her.

A distant memory stirs somewhere inside twelve years of deliberate forgetting, too indistinct for me to catch, but her face suddenly feels less unfamiliar than it did a moment ago.

She gives me no time to search for it.

“You two, come with me.” She turns toward the villagers, raising her voice without needing to shout. “The rest of you, make yourselves useful. Gideon, take care of Boone’s father. Someone find something clean to cover him with, and someone else bring my things from the house.”

People move.

Immediately.

Boone doesn’t.

He stands trapped between my arms, staring at his father when Gideon is handed a white sheet and carefully lays it over the man’s body. Another villager steps forward to help, and Boone makes a broken sound before trying to move again.

I hold him tighter.

“Rhys! Please! Let me go!”

I look toward Mara. She gives me the same severe stare I have the unsettling feeling she gave me when I was a child.

“Apparently,” I murmur, forcing Boone to take a step, “we’re following.”

43

Rhys

We don’t go back to Mara’s cottage. Instead, she leads us down the dirt road toward the far end of the village, and it isn’t until Boone’s cottage comes into view that I understand where she intends to take us. The moment Boone sees the little structure waiting at the edge of the road, he balks so abruptly that I walk into him.

“No.”

“Come along, Boone,” Mara says with enough authority that I suspect death itself would reconsider its position if she spoke to it in that tone.

“I don’t want to go in there.”

“I didn’t ask.”

Boone turns his head toward the road behind us again, searching for his father even though we’ve walked far enough that the villagers gathered around him are no longer visible. He’s been doing it the entire way here, looking back every few steps despite there being nothing left for him to see. I put my hand against the middle of his back and gently guide him forward, but he resists.

“My dad—”