Page 36 of Reap & Sow

Eda couldn’t help but ask, “Is that what happened to your broken horn? You gave it to Robin?”

The demon’s expression fell. “No.”

A hundred more questions balanced on the tip of her tongue, but the memory of his violence mired his apparent geniality. Eda held back her queries, and an uncomfortable silence descended.

Kit suddenly rose to his feet. He snatched an apple from Robin’s basket before slipping out the cabin door without a word to either of them.

“Don’t bother,” Robin said. “He might have been playing human these last twenty years, but the facade only goes so deep. Don’t expect much by way of illuminating chitchat.”

Twenty years. Kit had been hiding from Mr. Night as long as she’d been alive.

As long as the Shaws had kept the mirror.

Eda fiddled with her bandaged hand as the weight of the day finally crashed over her. She closed her eyes, seeing nothing but blood and claws and dark, fathomless mirrors. “I’ve no idea what I’m doing.”

A whisper, spilled forth without conscious thought. She’d bartered away so much for this one chance at saving Ben and Lawrie. An entire life—one that had seemed so abstract it hardly felt real. But to look now at the crow’s feet around Robin’s eyes, something inside Eda withered and died. That future had been real: a wizened, white-haired version of herself who would have lived and loved and lost. And she’d given it up.

Robin sipped loudly from her cup. “None of us know what we’re doing, lamb, no matter how old we grow. You just get better at pretending.”

“I told you not to call me that.”

“It’s no insult. You’re a lamb in appearance only.” Robin’s smile turned sharp. Oddly, it reminded Eda of Mr. Night. “You sought out a deal with a demon, after all. You don’t flinch when he looks at you. That tells me there’s something of the wolf beneath your sheep’s clothing.”

By the time night descended, Kit had still not returned.

And bone-tired as she was, Eda could not sleep.

She was given a hearty stew for supper and a thick blanket for bed, but despite the full belly and acceptable sleeping arrangements, Eda’s mind whirred like a spoke on a wheel. She tossed and turned on Robin’s bench for an hour after the old woman retired below deck.

Her calf throbbed where the net had clipped her. Her bandaged hand itched. Even her inside lip—thank you, Gregory—was a constant distraction. Eda thought of the Pact she’d made and dread choked her like bile. She thought of Lich’s dark, shrewd eyes, and that made it worse. How the ever-living saints was she going to get him that mirror? How would she find Mr. Night his remaining years before autumn harvest?

Then there were Ben and Lawrie.

Images played behind her eyes, fragmented by the long years. The way Lawrie used to read to her when she woke crying from bad dreams, a mere child himself, tired and soft-voiced. How Ben taught himself to braid her hair, though it was always sloppy and ill-formed, because Eda had no mother to show her how. Lawrie was the tactile one. He would hug her, chase her squealing around the stacks, tickle her when she needed cheer. Ben was the one to cook her food and tie her shoes, to make sure she always had clothes that fit. He worked his young body hard so that Eda and Lawrie could keep the shop. It must have been crushing, the weight of that burden. Lonely.

She missed them terribly. What she wouldn’t give now to hear Ben berate her or Lawrie ramble on about some obscure antique.

Eda furiously wiped the tears trailing into her hair. If she could not save them, they would die with the memory of an ungrateful, wretched sister who scorned them when they’d only ever tried to protect her. She had long blamed her father for their circumstances, but this failure was entirely hers.

Does this surprise you? that butter-smooth voice crooned. As always, it sounded just like Mr. Night. You’re the reason all of this began. If you hadn’t killed your mother, none of this would have come about. All this suffering…it began with you. You deserve to have those fifty years taken.

Eda pulled the scratchy blanket up to her nose. She’d gone begging a demon for help, sunk to depths she’d sworn far beneath her. The shame of it was devastating. What separated her now from all those marks she’d so reviled?

It’s not the same. I am not my father.

Perhaps she had an ill fate upon her back. Perhaps the shadows she felt imprisoned by were, in truth, her natural home, a nocturnal creature foolishly yearning for the sun. If so, then the hazy, glimmering future she’d imagined for herself beyond Blackbridge was never meant to bear fruit. The best Eda might do now was accept her fate and make amends. While she still could.

Above her, Old Bastard had sequestered himself on an overflowing shelf. Eda watched his dangling tail flick back and forth. Her mind turned to another cat—one black as night and sleek as oil, with eyes the color of fire.

As if she’d conjured him, a low thud sounded from without the cabin. The water sloshed against the boat’s hull. Eda tensed.

She debated for only a moment.

Old Bastard blinked at her lazily, moonlight gleaming in his slitted eyes as she threw off the blanket. Eda crept through the kitchenette and peered out a porthole.

Kit was a dark shape upon the Oriana’s bow. Silhouetted by the silvery, rippling river, he appeared unnaturally still by contrast. No mortal could sit so inert while still drawing breath.

Eda narrowed her eyes.