Page 8 of Ties of Legacy

Avery gaped at him. Maybe she hadn’t woken up at all, and the whole encounter was a dream. A flush crept up her faceas she remembered that the blue-eyed man had made a brief appearance in one of her dreams the night before as well.

The people and experiences of the day often wove themselves into her dreams—all in fantastical and nonsensical ways, of course—but she didn’t usually dream repeatedly of someone she’d only seen briefly in passing.

She leaned over and picked up the candelabra, still flushing. If she was in a dream, it was time to wake up.

“Do you have…any…others?” Elliot gasped out.

“Other candelabras?” She shook her head as the conversation descended further into farce. “You want me to let you steal a better one now?”

“Not…steal,” he rasped out his protest again.

Avery remembered her determination not to argue with him. “It doesn’t matter because I don’t have any others,” she said. “I only purchased this one on a whim because it was cheap. I usually focus on more unusual items. I can’t carry too much weight in my cart, so I have to choose my wares carefully.”

She stopped herself. She didn’t need to explain her business model to the thief any more than she needed to argue with him.

“If you don’t want this one, fine.” She picked it up, brushing off the dirt. “Just remember what I said about staying away from me in future. I won’t be so understanding next time. If I so much as see you in the same town…” She gave him a stern look. “If you hear the merchant Avery is visiting a village you’re in, turn right around and head back out again.”

“Wait—” Elliot made as if to lunge in her direction and toppled over instead.

She hesitated, looking down at him with another well of sympathy.

“Are you sure?” he whispered. “You don’t have any others? Not even one? You must have one more somewhere.”

Avery closed her eyes and breathed slowly. If she was in a dream, shouldn’t she have woken up by now?

“I’m sorry,” she said firmly, “but I don’t have any others. I know every item in my cart.”

She turned to go, one hand in Nutmeg’s mane. But as she walked away, her conscience gave a pang. She stopped, glancing back to see Elliot struggling back to a sitting position. What if it wasn’t a dream?

“Are you going to be all right?” she asked reluctantly. “You don’t look well.”

Elliot’s shoulders slumped. “If you really don’t have the candelabra I need, you can’t help me.”

Avery frowned, but after another moment’s hesitation, she turned away again. She wasn’t a healer, and she had already done more than obligation demanded. Besides, she was still half-convinced she was going to wake up in her bedroll at any moment.

But as she walked back through the trees with Nutmeg, she didn’t wake. And when she reached the rest stop and her cart, she had to acknowledge that it didn’t seem to be a dream.

She looked back through the trees. Should she go back and find Elliot? Would he still be sitting where she had left him?

But before she did anything, she needed to pack up the mess he had made. The candelabra had been at the bottom of the crate, and he had managed to scatter a number of the other items in his haste to pull it out. As she placed each item safely back in the straw, her ire rose. He had been the one to invade her camp and steal from her. How did she know his sudden illness wasn’t feigned? It had come on conveniently quickly. Maybe it was an act he pulled to escape the consequences of his thievery.

She put the candelabra in last, closing the crate and lashing the canvas back down over everything. The whole situation was odd, but that was only more reason to stay out of it. When shehad told her aunt and uncle that she meant to continue traveling alone, they had warned her against getting involved in anything too big.

“Don’t forget you’re on your own now, Avery,” her uncle had told her.

“Nutmeg will watch my back,” she’d told him with youthful confidence, and the mare had proved herself a faithful companion several times over. But there was still wisdom in her uncle’s words.

Whatever was going on with Elliot, Avery couldn’t be the one to fix it. Ignoring her instinct to go back for him, she climbed into her bedroll and tried to settle for the remainder of the night.

But despite her resolution not to get involved, when she left camp the next morning, she couldn’t help taking a path through the trees that led her past the place where she had left him. Her mind lightened when she saw no sign of a collapsed body. He must not have been as ill as he looked.

Now she just needed to forget the strange young man and his obsession with candelabras.

Chapter 4

Elliot

The symptoms were definitely getting worse. The stabbing pain in Elliot’s head was so bad he could barely see, and talking was difficult.

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