MARKS - Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

The fact that everyone around me is sleeping indicates it may be before dawn when I wake the next day. Funny that there’s no sunlight in the cave, but my body seems to know what to do without it.

I ease myself up, careful not to disturb Ward. My knee cracks when I stand, the noise seeming to reverberate off the walls. I glance to Ward, but he doesn’t move. He lies flat on his back, a soft rumble sounding with each inhale of breath he takes. The left side of his mouth quirks up, as if he’s smiling knowing his snores are so darn loud. At least I’ve gotten used to them. The first few nights I contemplated either going to sleep outside or finding a knife to kill him with.

The fires are burning just enough to keep me from stepping on elbows as I tiptoe around sleeping bodies to my room of fabric. After two days, they’re finally dark enough. The women will be busy sewing today. Which I suppose means I’ll be, too.

I have most of the fabric folded when footsteps echo down the rock tunnel. Ward emerges with a steaming cup and a slice of bread. He hands me the bread and sets the tea on the worktable.

“There was quite the disagreement from everyone on where you’d gone so early this morning,” he says.

They still don’t trust me? Great skies, if I’d wanted to leave I’d have done it by now. I clear my throat, trying to keep the frustration from my voice. “Oh?”

“Yes, some were convinced you’d poisoned us all and ran away out of guilt and shame when it didn’t work.”

I fold the long length of linen in front of me, his words jarring up along the truth of my past.

“Of course, Liddy was very concerned,” he says. “She thought you went to take care of a personal need and forgot how to get back.”

I peek up at him and he grins, a deep dimple pooling on the left side of his face. I wonder how many girls he’s disarmed with that grin of his.

“Well,” I say, “no alarm if I had. I’m pretty good at wading through crap.”

He casts me a look, and I try not to scowl so he’ll know I’m only joking. I smile and his grin broadens. “And what was your theory?” I ask him.

“I told them you’re really a wood sprite and had returned home to be with your people.”

His face is a carefully arranged expression of seriousness. A laugh bursts out of me, as though it’s been lodged deep inside me for years and wouldn’t let my overthinking squelch its opportunity for freedom.

“Perhaps I am,” I tell him. “And I’m here to recruit you all.”

“Well, you’re wasting your time on me, Sparks,” he says. “I’d get bored in the woods.”

“How come?”

“Because I don’t want to be blind to what’s happening outside of it.”

He says it so casual, and remnants of his grin still linger on his face. But the seriousness behind his words prods me to silence. This cave is a forest to Ward. It cannot contain him. He’d want to know what the King was doing no matter what. Whereas I could stay in this rock prison forever, as long as it meant I was safe.

I sip my tea and nibble on my bread. Not from hunger, more in an attempt to keep myself from speaking. Ward idles at the table as I eat, the pressure of my silence not affecting him at all. When I’ve drained the tea, I start pulling the last of the woolen fabric off the line.

“I’ll need extra wool if you want more than this,” I tell him. “If you plan on going to the city for anything else.”

I turn to fold the cloth in my hand and glimpse Ward’s face, his features not giving anything away. He won’t tell me if they have more planned, even though I’ve been working like crazy to help them.

“This will be enough for now,” Ward says.

I should answer, or at least nod, but I don’t. And by the time I realize I should, I’m too embarrassed to do it. Blast, I’ve got to be better than this. If I don’t watch it, they’ll send me away. And then what?

“It’d be nice if we could go more often,” he says. “Find a way to get more people here.”

In this tiny cave? Move a group of people from the city to here and you might as well light a beacon the whole way. No way the King wouldn’t find out. “That would certainly be an option.” I smooth the fabric and line up the ends.

“You choose your words so carefully.”

My head snaps up. Oh Saints. He knows.

“Like right then,” Ward says, “I bet you wanted to say you thought my idea was dumb, but you didn’t say that.”

I release a breath and study the fabric in my hands. “Words have power.” Careful, Gretta. That was too close to the truth.

“That they do.”

Again silence drapes over us, a thick blanket I wish I could wrestle my way out of.

“What do you do with all your anger?” he asks.

I crease the fabric again because my hands need to be moving. “I don’t have anything to do with my anger.” I can’t set the King on fire, or burn down his castle. Or steal his power. I wish I could.

Ward places his hand on the fabric. “Well, you need something to do with it. Some way to get it out.”

I stare up at him. Does he know?

“Come on.” He heads to the back tunnel.

What in the world? I put down the cloth and follow him. “Where are we going?”

He spins and walks backwards, not missing a beat, and grins. “To get rid of all that anger of yours.”

He stops at the exit and I pluck my cloak from its place, throwing it around my shoulders as I follow Ward out into the winter sunlight. Cold bites through my cloak and snow flurries dance in the air. Ward leads us through the dormant bits of corn field, the brown stalks lay broken and bent under winter’s grasp. Just like our Kingdom. Like our people. Lyran or not, no one is thriving here. I pull my eyes from the ruin under my boots and run to catch up with Ward.

We move into the woods until the trees protect us from prying eyes up on the bluff. He stops and takes off his cloak. Then he turns to me. “Off with yours, too.”

Heat flames up inside me. “What in the heck are you doing, Ward Green?”

Ward cocks his head to the side and raises his brows, a tiny response to my fiery words. “Just trust me, Gretta.”

I want to stalk back inside, but I’ll not let him think he’s gotten the better of me. I take off my cloak and throw it on top of his.

“All right.” Ward pulls a dagger from his side and wraps his massive hand around it. “Grip it tight, so it doesn’t come free when it meets resistance. Think of it as an extension of your arm.”

Ward turns the dagger over, holds it by the blade and extends it out to me. I blink and stare up at him. “Are you out of your mind?”

“As often as I can be,” he says with a grin. “I’ll teach you.” He looks down to the knife. “Take it.”

I grab the handle and hardly have time to process the texture of it under my fingers before Ward slaps my wrist, hard. The blade flies out of my hand and lands on the ground with a thud. “Ow!”

Ward raises a brow. “Tighter,” he says. “Then someone can’t do that.”

I shake my wrist as pain sings through it. “I want to sock you in the jaw for that!”

“Then do it. It’d help you calm down.”

I dip my head, as though I am no more than a chastised girl standing before a parent. But Ward’s not my parent. And I’m not a crippled girl. I need to stop acting like it. I raise my hand and grip the dagger tightly.

Ward smacks my arm again and the dagger stays in it. “Good,” he says. “Now try to hit me with it.”

 

My feet move and I lunge at him, but he dodges left. This is madness, me trying to learn such a skill as using a knife. Ward calls out tips and instructions and I apply them one by one, like layers of dye to a skein of wool. He stops dodging out of the way and eventually uses his arms to swat at my wrists, preventing my blade from reaching him.

“Good. Now again,” he says.

My lungs heave both with effort and the biting cold of the air. I put the dagger in my left hand and shake my right, letting my muscles relax. Then I grip the dagger and face Ward again.

Over and over we do this. Ward stays crouched low like a cat. He’s so big but moves with such grace. Like a tall thundercloud careening its way across a summer sky.

I put my weight on my right foot, dart left, then swipe at him. Nothing. All this effort for blasted nothing.

"Come on, Sparks, you can do better than that.” His grin is like his body, large and roomy, a place to get lost in.

"I don’t know if I’ll ever get this,” I say as I reach for him again.

 

He darts right. “All things come with practice.”

Something he evidently has done a lot of. “Do you train for the guard?” I ask him.

His grin falls. “Nothing can prepare you for that.”

“Ward, what if the King finds out about us here?”

“I won’t let that happen. I take different routes here all the time.”

“What if he finds out you’re not loyal?”

“He might,” he says. “Which means I need to do as much good as I can while there’s still time.”

Time. I seem stuck in time. Each day bleeding to the next, and my nothingness bleeding away with it.

All because of the King. The stupid, awful, wretched King. With his guards and his Blackfeet and a million other arms of evil, out to do his bidding.

You need to do something with your anger.

Usually I fling it on fabric and on the horrible, snappy judgments I make about everyone. But there is no fabric now, and only Ward here. Anger pulses, churning and nasty inside me, and I imagine it rising up and flowing through my arm down to the tip of the dagger. I circle around the clearing, and Ward matches me step for step. I lunge, willing my anger out with each movement. I push my arms and legs without pause or hesitation. When I take a step right, Ward fumbles. I reach out and press the blade against his arm. Blood appears on his skin as quick as a sharp word does on my tongue.

"Agh.” He takes a step back and covers the wound with his hand. Blood pools around his fingers.

 

"Ward!” I drop my arm and step toward him.

 

"It’s not bad. Just a scratch.” He grins. “You did well.”

I stare at the blood. Ward’s blood. I did that. Horror and shame and a million tears rise up inside me.

"Gretta.” Ward grips my chin and forces my eyes away from the blood. “I’m all right. It hardly even hurts.”

My breath and my words are caught in my throat. I look at his eyes, but all I see is blood. “You let me hurt you?”

“Me hurting will make you better, Sparks. I don’t mind.”

I open my mouth, but Ward presses his finger to my lips. “One doesn’t apologize for pain someone else gives up, Gretta. That doesn’t even make sense.”

He doesn’t even make sense. His words get lost in my brain, crowded out by visions of blood. Ward’s. My mother’s. Lucas’. So much blood.

All I see is blood. And stars that dance across my vision, all tinged in red. My body feels fluid and weightless until it hits something solid and the red stars fade out. I blink, surprised to find myself pressed against Ward, his eyes narrowed at me.

“You all right?” he asks.

I nod. Pale winter sky stretches out above me. Ward’s shirt is pressed against my face. “What happened?”

“You passed out. You started to wobble and I grabbed you before you could hit the ground.”

I’m pressed into Ward’s chest. Is that his heart or mine that’s beating so loud and fast right now? He lowers me to the ground, but I press my hand against his chest. “No, no. I’m all right.”

“Didn’t know the sight of blood would affect you,” he says as he wraps a cloth around his wound. He studies my face. “You all right?”

I nod. “Uh huh. I think that’s enough for one day.”

“I think you’re right.” He grabs the dagger then grips my elbow as we head back.

Ward, of course, is quiet as we walk. No mindless chatter from him. I would prattle on to fill the silence if I didn’t have shame like dead weight in my stomach. Here I’m trying to prove that I’m not always weak and not always angry, and everything I do just shows off who I am more.

What will I do next to show Ward how unworthy I am of his protection?

MARKS - Chapter 16

 Chapter Sixteen

Mason’s hair sticks out like Ward’s does. And, Saints bless him, his ears stick out just as far. Something I pray he grows into. Since he’s only seven, I’m sure he will. He stares out through the forest, a shock of blond hair falling over his left eye.

“Is your basket full?” I ask him, careful to keep my voice light.

Mason casts a guilty look at me as red leaps to his cheeks. “Not yet.”

“Mine neither,” I tell him.

He shoots me a grin, one that makes the freckles on his face seem even bigger. He’s as adorable as his sister when he’s not mad. Which he is, almost as often as I am. So far, out of the three weeks I’ve been here, there have only been two days when Mason hasn’t been in trouble for something. Today his punishment is to help me.

We crouch in the forest under a grove of walnut trees. The leaves are gone, but walnuts lay in abundance on the forest floor. Two of our baskets sit full not far from me. It takes a lot of walnut shell to make a little dye. But at least some of the men are helping me crack the shells. I hammered away on them so much the first day I could feel the vibrations in my shoulder as I laid down that night.

But the fabric is coming along well, morphing from the light brown of fawn’s hide to the rich dark brown of soil before spring planting. When our baskets are full, I lead us back, careful to keep Mason close to me. I take in everything as we walk; the sound of the river close by, the bluffs above us, the patches of blue sky I can see through the trees. We’re not far from the city, and farms surround us. It’s amazing the group has managed to remain hidden for so long.

Mason and Reid both get conscripted to help me crack the walnut shells. I give them a break after a couple of hours, and they whoop and holler as they scamper up the tunnel into the main room.

I’ve grown to love the boys’ company, but I relish the silence as I continue my work. Nolan has a fire for me back here; a small one since there aren’t many places for the smoke to escape. I get the dye boiling hot before throwing in the wool Nolan left with me yesterday. I still don’t know what they’re doing, but I know it’s something the King would kill them for, which means I wholeheartedly support it.

Steam and smoke fill the room, the air hanging sticky and damp. I resist the urge to push my sleeves up and instead twist my hair into a knot on top of my head. I wipe sweat from my brow as I wait for the last pot. While it finishes, I throw the latest batch of dyed fabric, still wet and dripping, over the line.

An itch attacks my face, and I crinkle my nose. Blasted itch, I have no clean finger to scratch you with. I twitch my nose like crazy, and a shiver of unscratched fervor takes over, making my whole body tremble.

“Are you having a fit?”

I spin, and Ward ambles into the room, his brows raised. I hold up my fingers and wiggle them. “I don’t want a brown nose.”

"I thought maybe you were trying to out a demon.”

“Just an itchy one.”

He grins and fingers the dark brown material hanging on the line. “Need any help?”

I nod toward the pot. “I’ve just got the one batch left. Should be done in a few minutes.”

He walks past the rows of brown to the single swatch of pink fabric hanging on the end. He turns to me, his brow arched in unspoken question.

"It’s for Liddy,” I tell him. “She said her favorite color was pink, and I found drakeroot along the river on my way back yesterday.”

My face warms, and I feel like a child standing before her father. As though Ward will pass judgment on my taking time for such frivolousness.

He smiles, though. “She’ll love it.” He turns to face me. “Were your parents dyers?”

I shake my head, ignoring the rise of nausea in my stomach. “No.”

“What made you want to do it?”

I can’t tell him the real reason, so I trace my finger along the pink fabric and tell him the closest thing I can. “I love colors. I love how there are a million different shades of each one. The pink of a sunset is different from the pink at sunrise. Which is different from the color of a baby’s cheek or the underbelly of a fish. It’s like you have a whole world of choice in just one color.”

He doesn’t answer. No surprise, as I have prattled on like an idiot.

“What’s your favorite color?” he asks.

“Blue.”

“No, what kind of blue?”

“What do you mean?”

“All the shades, like you said. What color blue is your favorite?”

There are a dozen shades of blue I love. Blue like Mama’s eyes. Like the dress I used to wear, so worn in and comfortable it felt like second skin. “Blue like the summer sky,” I tell him, “just when evening settles and it stretches end to end.”

He leans against the table in front of us. “Why’s that your favorite?”

I finger the cloth then look at him. His eyes are intense. Serious. “Because it makes me think of freedom.”

He stares at me for a moment then stands over the fire. I stir the pot and hook the corner of the fabric with my wooden spoon. “That’s good enough,”

Ward reaches for the fabric.

I put my hands. “No, no let me. My hands are already covered.”

He bends forward again. “It’s all right.”

“No, Ward, the stain lasts for weeks.” I push his hands away. “Someone will wonder why you have it.”

He snatches his hand back. How many times does that happen? Where he comes too close to doing something that will blow his cover? More often than me, probably. I stretch the fabric across the clothes line. “You can tell Nolan everything should be ready in about two days.”

Ward nods. “Blair’s sewing them into capes. So people can’t see us when we go into the city at night.”

I nod, as if I knew this already. “And what are they getting again?”

“A big load of supplies.” He looks up at me. “We’re not stealing,” he says quickly. “It’s just to help hide us when we come back here.”

“Of course. How do you make money?”

“Some of the men fish or trade pelts. And I have my guard salary.”

Which isn’t much, but he’s sweet to give it up. I glance down at his pants, worn in and not sturdy enough for winter. I bet Ward doesn’t steal cinnamon buns either.

"I could help,” I tell him. “I could work as a dyer at a different guild.”

 

Ward shakes his head. “Absolutely not. You’re not going back.”

Not going back. But not helping here, either. Not really. I wonder whose dress I’m wearing. These people don’t have much to spare. No toys. No furniture. “I’ll stay on the other side of town, or even away from the dyers. But I could get a job. It would help.”

Ward smiles. “That’s a fine offer, but we’re all right with what we have, Sparks.” He settles down on the stool by the worktable.

All these years I thought those who survived the King’s wrath were the lucky ones. But even those who are still alive are not really living. Everyone is too busy surviving to actually live. People without a life - that’s what this Kingdom is. Ward’s family and the others here have been cooped up for years. Always hiding. Always ready to run. Hiding isn’t so different from all the running we did when I was a girl. We would chase and chase freedom, and never catch it.

I press my hands over the brown linen stretched across the table. “Ward, let me help.”

"No, Gretta.”

 

"Then at least let me be go with you for supplies.” I can spare a man from pulling double duty. I don’t have a child to watch.

He shakes his head. “You’re not going back to the city. For anything.”

“Let me help!”

“You were being watched by the King’s men, Gretta.” Ward crosses his arms over his chest. “Do you know what happens to people guards find suspicious? They get taken to the dungeons, and their bodies get carted off soon after. The King doesn’t prosecute and punish criminals. He hurts people he thinks might be against him.”

I ball up the fabric in my hands. “I’m not afraid of the King.”

“Well you should be! He’s not a spoiled prince or a dimwit. He’s greedy and moody, and has all the power in the Kingdom to go along with his temper tantrums.”

Blast the King. I step around Ward and start crushing walnut shells again. He comes and stands beside me, and I bite my lip to keep whatever is inside of me from coming out. Anger. Rage. A million unshed tears and so much hatred I could very well die from it. I imagine the walnut is the King’s castle and slam the rock down. My aim is off, and the edge of the rock slices my finger.

I gasp and see the blood pool up on my finger before I even feel the pain. Ward snatches my hand in his. His hands are warm, like lake water on a hot day or a pile of blankets on a cold night. A cocoon of skin. He presses down slightly on the cut, stopping my blood with his own hand. I look up at him.

His eyes aren’t on my finger. They’re on my face. “He’ll hurt you, Gretta. I can’t let him.”

Sweet boy. He doesn’t know the past, and that it still hurts. And nothing can stop it.

 

MARKS- Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

I swear, the rock walls of this cave get closer in every day. The air seems less, and the rock seems more and I may as well be buried alive for all I feel I can breathe. These people have been here for years. I’ve been here only weeks, and already I think I’m losing bits of my sanity. My only relief from the rock prison comes when I need to attend to a personal need. The tunnel Nolan told me to take if guards come is also the one we use to go outside whenever such needs arise.

Or, for me, whenever Liddy has such a need.

I’ve become her favorite companion for the short hike. This is her third time today, and it’s not even lunch. As dangerous as going outside is - for who knows who could spot us - I relish the sunlight and the feel of wind on my face. And I like having Liddy follow me everywhere. It’s like she’s a shadow where Ashtin used to be. Or should have been.

I shiver in the cold air, the ground is cold underneath where I sit waiting for Liddy frozen. But the day is bright and sunny, the sky a blue so pale it’s almost white. The cold bites through my cloak and the air holds the smell of snow in it.

A twig cracks. I spin, ready to run.

Nolan smiles down at me. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

I nod and sit back down. “It’s all right.”  

So much of my childhood has come back to me these past few weeks. The being on edge. The always looking over my shoulder. Just like when I was small. Always running. Always hiding from the King. My body is constantly tight, and I’ve craved my work at Houghman’s so much these past few nights I’ve actually dreamed of Scarlett.

Nolan sits down beside me in the grass. Surprising as he’s more cautious than I am. But we’re hidden enough from view behind the thick laurel bushes. And besides, there are two men on the lookout on the bluff above us.

He smiles at me. “You’re waiting for Liddy, I presume.”

I chuckle and nod my head then crack my knuckles and stare out at the fields. All the land has gone dormant. It’s why I hate this time of year. Nothing seems to be happening. I turn to Nolan, who’s staring at my fingers. I snatch them back and glance up at him. “I worked as a dyer.”

“I can tell.” He stares at my hand, and the black marks on my arm feel like fire on my skin. “Gretta,” he finally says, “do you know how to make black dye?”

Well isn’t that an interesting question. “We didn’t dye much black at Houghman’s,” I tell him. “It takes a lot of dye to get the color that dense, so we didn’t take a lot of orders for it.”

“Can you make other dark colors?”

“Sure. Brown is easy. You can make that from walnut shells.”

Nolan studies the trees for a moment then looks back to me. “Would you be willing to help us? I need material dyed dark, as dark as you can get it.”

I let his request settle down inside me. He won’t tell me what the fabric is for. But that doesn’t matter. Because I’m pretty sure he’ll use it to somehow go against the King. And it would give me something to do. “Yes.”

His request must be important, because within an hour Nolan has sent someone with me to collect walnut shells. We bring in five basketfuls, and Nolan has a workspace made for me in the same room Ward and the other men met in the other day. Torches cast a warm glow in the cavern, and a fire burns in the middle of the room. A long oak table is pushed up against one wall, a stool beside it. A few small pots rest on the table, wooden spoons beside them. Stacks of linen lay bunched on one end.

Finally, something I know. The room comes alive as I work, fire poked and licking at the bottom of the pot I have over it. I pound walnut shells - rotten ones we found scattered on the forest floor - and smile as they collapse into tiny pieces. A man comes and runs rope across the room, crisscrossing over my head, then leaves me again in the steady rhythm of work. The pots aren’t as big as the ones at Houghman’s, but by evening I’ve managed to dunk several pieces into the dye enough to transform it from dull cream to a light brown, the color of dirt in summertime.

Footsteps echo on the rock, and I drape another remnant of cloth over the line as Nolan emerges from the tunnel. He runs a studious gaze over the cloth.

“I’ll need to re-dip it,” I tell him. “The dye is weak, so it’ll take several times to get it as dark as you want it.”

Nolan nods. “We’ll need to go out and get more shells.”

I nod, agreeing.

“Ward’s here. He can help. It’d do him good to get outside.”

“Does he come here every day off?” I hope my voice sounds more casual to him than it does to me.

“Goodness no, it’s too dangerous.” Nolan fingers another cloth and holds it up to the light. “All the guards have quarters in the city. He stays there some so no one starts wondering where he is.”

“How long have you all lived here?”

“Our family was the first. We’ve been here three years now, since Ward was taken as guard.”

So he’s seventeen, just like me. And they’ve been living in a cave ever since then. No mention of parents. “Did you ever think of running, so that he wouldn’t have to?”

Nolan drops the cloth and looks at me. “The King has conquered three neighboring kingdoms in just seven years. Where would we run where he couldn’t find us?”

Nowhere. Oh heavens, nowhere. I’m such an idiot. Ward didn’t choose being a guard. He just chose not to die or send his family to death by refusing. And I can’t hate him for that. I’ve done things I wish I hadn’t to stay alive.

Nolan moves up the tunnel, and I follow him, wrapping my arms around my middle as if to keep the shame I carry from exploding across the room. Ward is sprawled out in front of a fire. Liddy snuggles up under the crook of his arm and lays her head on him, as if he were a big pillow made just for her. He’s so different here. Not rough and prickly like I’d imagined him to be.

Or wanted him to be.

He’s not evil just because he’s a guard. What all has the King made him do that he wishes he could forget?

“He hates it,” I say, more statement than question.

“Yes,” Nolan says. “It’s hardened him. He used to be so gentle. But you can’t be gentle and make it as a guard.” He smiles across the room at Liddy. “He’s like laundry that’s gone stiff cause it’s been hung out in the cold. She helps soften him back up.”

Liddy presses up on her elbow and says something to Ward, her tiny body engulfed in his. A rock to hide behind. A sprawling oak tree to climb and watch a sunset in.

He’s her somewhere safe.

Tears prick my eyes before the pain even zings through my heart. Who will keep Ashtin safe? Such a ridiculous thought, Gretta. She has her family. Her father.

She doesn’t need you.

Nolan walks to the fire, and I stand rooted in place, my grief an anchor to the floor. Nolan eases up behind Blair who is bent over a fire, stirring something in a pot. He places his hands on her waist and kisses the back of her neck. She turns her head into his shoulder, and the smile on her face is like a lullaby, soothing and sweet and able to melt the strongest fears into dreams.

Papa used to do that to Mama. Sometimes gentle and sweet like that, or sometimes he’d startle her and she’d shriek, and I’d giggle while she chased him around the room. Papa would snatch me up and hold me in front of him, a weapon against Mama’s playful whacks. “You can’t hurt Gretta!” he’d tell her as Mama came at him with a wooden spoon. Then he’d grab Mama and smoosh me between them and we’d all laugh, all because Papa wanted to steal a kiss.

I close my eyes and picture us together, all six of us, our laughter and love bursting in my mind into a thousand colors, all pink and green and yellow.

When I open my eyes, nothing stares back except the rock walls of the cavern. The colors are still here. Love and laughter and the colors of joy thriving under this brown-grey canopy of stone.

Blair nuzzles her head under Nolan’s chin, and I blink back tears as I look away.

Ward stares up at me from his place on the floor. My cheeks flush red, and I gather my skirts but have no idea where to go. How many years have my feet longed to run somewhere, but have had nowhere to go? I’m no less trapped here than I was in the city.

“Ward,” Nolan says. “Gretta’s been making what we need. You should go look at it.”

Ward glances from his brother-in-law to me. He rises slowly and sets Liddy on the ground. Then he nods to me and heads down the tunnel.

I follow, my arms wrapped around me. I nearly hit him last time, and would’ve if he hadn’t stopped me. I trail behind him, taking a step and a half for his every one, his large frame towering before me. I’m sure on his scale of hatred, I rank somewhere below the King and above the stomach bug.

When we reach the room, I pause, unsure what to say. If I should say anything. Stars, what should I say?  “Nolan says you need dark fabric,” I spit out.

Brilliant, Gretta. You’ve stated the obvious. Now you can be a hateful girl and an idiot at the same time.

Ward’s eyes sweep the room, taking in the yards of brown fabric drying on the lines strung across the room. “You did this?”

“Not all at once,” I tell him, my throat suddenly dry and my voice crackly. I unfold my hands and move to the table. “Brown is made from walnut shells, and you have to crush the shells then steep them to get the dye.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I was a dyer. Houghman’s guild.”

He nods and doesn’t reply. His brows furrow as he fingers the fabric.

“I’ll need to do the process a few times to get them darker,” I tell him. “There may be a way to make brown out of something else, but if there is I don’t know it.”

Again, silence.

Ward looks over my shoulder at the walnuts and shells strewn across the long wooden table. They have no mortar and pestle so I’ve been using rocks to pound out the shells. Hard work, but worth it to be doing something.

I’ve run out of things to say, and it’s as though the silence itself is echoing off the rock walls. I peek up at Ward’s face. His blondish hair is askew as usual, as though it grows out of his head not knowing what it wants to do. Dark circles rim his eyes, and his usual posture has fallen into something more relaxed.

“Long day?” I ask him.

He glances sideways at me. “Long week.”

“It must be hard.”

He looks at me, an eyebrow raised.

“What you do. Working for the King, when he’s…” I need to shut up. “It must be hard.”

“It is.”

Silence again, and I can no longer bear it. I turn and step back toward the main room.

“I don’t enjoy it, Gretta.”

I spin back to him. His eyes are pained, full of longing and regret. I smooth down my skirts, unable to look at him. “I could tell that the first day I met you.”

He doesn’t answer, and the silence squeezes my brain. I grab my skirts and turn again.

“You going to forgive me, Sparks?”

Oh heavens. Here he’s seen my anger so much he’s nicknamed me for it. I swallow and turn, and hope the pink in my cheeks doesn’t show. “For kidnapping me or making me walk through sewage?” I laugh, a fake one that comes out breathy and hollow and dripping in the nervousness I can’t seem to hide.

“For what I said the other day.”

I shrug. “I guess I have to, considering I’m so horrible, too.”

Blast that truth and the fact it slipped out. Ward’s face is expressionless for a moment, and I suppose it’s all he can do not to shout his agreement that yes, I am horrible. Even more so than him.

But the corner of his mouth quirks up into a smile. “Good thing, Sparks. I wouldn’t want you to stay mad at me forever.”