Page 78 of This Haunted Heart

Three times I nearly turned the gelding back. Leaving Lochlan hurt me so. The wound went as deep as it had that first time all those years ago. I was tired and hungry and parched. My eyes hurt from crying. There was some water in a canteen in the saddlebag, and a moderate amount of cash as well. It would see me to the bank at Salt Rock comfortably.

I could sell the horse. Purchase some equipment to hunt down the ring with. Pay a few extra hands to help me . . .

Or I could claim my emergency funds and begin again. I knew how to start over. I’d perfected that art in the last twodecades.

I pushed the latter thought away. It had come to me out of an instinct built from years of surviving alone. I wouldn’t do that to Lochlan now. Not again. I had one mission here: save him. Whatever remained of him, he was still mine. I’d search for that damn ring I’d stolen, even if it took me twenty years.

If I thought the ghosts would leave me alone now that I was away from Lochlan and that house, I was wrong. A part of me had guessed that already. I’d been running from my past, hiding from the darkness all my life. I just didn’t realize there were spirits in it. But now I did, and they haunted me still.

They were attracted to my grief. The wayward ghosts that traveled the road passed by me and left me sad and cold and sent a prickle down my spine, because my heart was just as haunted as Lochlan’s and always had been.

“I don’t want to do the wrong thing,” I told no one particular. The horse or the spirits perhaps. Or the weaver women if they could hear me from their woods still. “Why does everything I do always feel like the wrong thing?”

Should I go back and reassure him more? Stay the course? Both seemed like the incorrect answer.

I followed the road, unfamiliar with my surroundings. I was faster on my own, and because I didn’t need to stop at a station to drop off mail like Mr. Mazibuko did, I made good time back to the inn that I knew.

I was nervous as I spotted the Drasland orchard. We hadn’t left our room in good shape. Perhaps the owners would turn me away, but I was hungry. My thighs were sore. It was nearing the lunch hour, which meant there wasn’t enough daylight for me to try to make it all the way back to the city, and the horse would need to rest. I didn’t know the animaland didn’t dare push him too hard.

I could still make it back to the house, though . . .

Maybe I just needed to sleep on it. Needed a night away to form a stronger plan. Lochlan was right. My chances of finding that tiny ring were slim, and I hadn’t buried it very deep. Runoff could have carried it anywhere.

The owner, Eva, was less friendly than before when I pulled up, and she handed the reins off to her boys, but she didn’t turn me away. In fact, she also didn’t seem surprised I was there as she guided me inside to a sitting room, promising tea while I waited on a meal.

“Rest here,” she said just outside the archway, then she departed.

The room was not empty. Lochlan sat in a wingback near the fireplace.

“How?” I demanded, voice rising.

“I knew you’d stick to the road,” he said calmly enough, but his fingers told a different story, digging so hard into the leather of his seat that his nails went white. “I cut through the woods on horseback and halved the travel time. I know the mire well.”

He knew the mire well because he’d spent years searching the swamps for whatever remained of me. He hadn’t said it, but I heard that in his words anyway. The monster on my back sunk its talons into my gut. With great restraint, I resisted doubling over.

I was tired and thirsty and guilty and sad. I stomped over to the sofa seat and collapsed onto it. He poured me a cup of tea, and it steamed invitingly. I didn’t hesitate to bring it to my lips and drink, I was so desperate for comfort. The flow of warmth down my throat soothed my nerves.

Lochlanremoved a leather pouch from his pocket and tossed it onto the table. “I thought about being a pirate and putting weaver-wood in the kettle.”

I set my cup down hastily, and he smirked at me.

“I didn’t do it,” he said, lifting the saucer and handing it back.

“That’s an improvement, I suppose,” I murmured, reclaiming the cup. The warmth between my fingers loosened the tension in my belly.

“And I didn’t bring a carriage or a wagon,” he said. “There wasn’t time. It’d be difficult to get you home in a stupor without one.”

I glared at him through the steam. “That’slessof an improvement, Loch.”

His grin went crooked. “I’m unreasonable around you, Rynn, but I am trying to be less of a pirate. Give me that, at least.”

I drank more of my tea, gathering strength from its heat between my fingers. “I need you to try much harder.”

He rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. “What you saw earlier, what happened with Utrecht . . . that had to be frightening. But that would never happen to you, Rynn. You aren’t like him. You’re safe in my house.”

“I think we both know I didn’t leave because of the spirits,” I said, avoiding his eyes. I could hardly stand the weight of them. “I told you what I planned to accomplish.”

“I don’t think that’s why you left.”

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