Page 60 of Dishonor Among Thieves
“What will do about the bodies when we leave? Do you think there is any chance harm will come to Valkiva? Or to us for the crimes?”
“There was no crime as far as Gini is concerned. She was trying to kill you, Brex. Would there ever be an investigation, we have both adults and children who would bear witness to what happened here. But… I think I have a plan.” He yawned, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen him look less tortured. Unless I knew nothing about this man, he looked almost relaxed. “Sleep now, my love,” he murmured against my hair.
My love.
I closed my eyes and burrowed my face against his chest. Our hair tangled together like that first night on the settee, but somehow now, falling asleep with Neo satisfied something in me I’d never known I wanted. Never had the imagination to dream of.
“Tomorrow night,” I murmured, my body relaxing against his. “I’d like to sleep in a bed that was actually built to hold two.”
He chuckled. “When we’re in a bigger bed, Brex, I don’t think either of us will get much sleep.”
I lifted my face to his, and he kissed me goodnight, his lips gentle, probing. Then we touched noses, a tender goodnight that promised more. More nights like this. More tenderness. Then, the last night I would ever spend as a foundling, I drifted off into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.
* * *
The next morning,after the children were fed and Flynn’s cart loaded with everything we could salvage from the house, we sent Flynn and Gia ahead with the children piled into the cart. Rain and Neo dug up the body of the traveling merchant and threw his rotting corpse on the dirt floor of the kitchen. Then they dragged Gini back to the kitchen as well and left her remains there.
Rain went to the front yard to clean himself up with a bucket and refill it with fresh well water for Neo to use later. We couldn’t take to the road with the two of them looking like they’d buried something or been buried. Once Rain went into the yard, Neo and I stood together in the kitchen, staring at the wreckage of the last thirteen years of my life.
“Do you wish to be alone?” Neo asked, dirt and sweat streaking his cheeks.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted. Wasn’t sure that what we were about to do was right.
I thought of my mother. Of the day she’d left me in Gini’s care. I lowered my head and closed my eyes. I had no words to say. Nothing but anger and pain for what Gini had done. Had taken from me.
“Stay with me?” I asked.
My husband stood close by while I dropped into a kitchen chair and rested my face in my hands. I thought back to the day I’d arrived. The rats Gini had tried to feed me, believing I needed blood to drink like my mother. The face of my sweet mum in my nightmares. And all the years of not being able to leave here. Of being needed and manipulated and controlled and insulted.
It had taken me years to find a way to leave this place, to strike out on my own and seek my own horizon. But I knew no matter how long I lived, I would carry Gini, her thoughts, her beliefs, with me always. If I’d thought that her death would rid my soul of the stains of her actions, I was wrong. I would carry that woman along with my mother and part of each of the children who had come through this place with me always.
I only hoped the stronger I became, the lighter the weight would be to carry. The softer the sting of memory.
I stood from the chair and took the scrap of embroidered fabric from my leg harness. I tugged the hag stone from around my neck and set both items on Gini’s chest. Then I reached for a candle.
Neo cocked his chin at me, puzzled. “I thought you had an uncommon fondness for that pillow,” he said, sounding genuinely concerned.
“I took those flowers to remind me of you. Of what you are. Of how happy I was with you. I don’t need a reminder anymore, a shred of something small when you’ve offered me you. Your home. Everything. For maybe longer than the time we’re bound to by contract.”
I dared to hope that maybe in time my husband would grow to truly love me and I, him.
I bent to Gini’s hair and touched the candle to the blood-matted strands. Then I dropped the candle on the filthy folds of her dress.
“What are you doing?” Neo asked, his arm protectively around me.
“Things never burn the way people think they will,” I said. “I need to watch. I need to see her burn.”
We stood together watching the flames consume the clothes and hair of Gini and the merchant. The morbid crackling of fabric and skin, the charred stench had Neo dragging me from the house far sooner than I would have left on my own. He quickly washed up in the yard, and we mounted our horses. Rain had already taken off after his wife and Flynn’s cart loaded with foundlings.
Neo prodded Sedda to cantor and took off, his hood covering his head, his short sword sheathed at his side. I covered my hair with my hood and stroked Sara’s neck. But before I could leave, I turned the horse around. I looked at the wildflowers, the vegetable garden, the trees, and all the plants I’d known and tended to for so much of my life.
As the fire spread from the wood and straw structure, the dry fall grasses and plants began to ignite. I watched as they too burned. The last landmarks of where I’d lived. Everything about who I’d been, what this place was would soon be gone, ashes scattered by the wind.
With a prayer on my lips for what was ahead and with gratitude in my heart, I turned Sara and rode my horse home.
ChapterFifteen
Our return home was uneventful, which was a welcome reprieve from the recent turmoil. Neo and I rode side by side behind Gia and Rain, trying to ignore the sounds of Flynn’s stories which he told with so much passion and gusto, I absolutely believed he’d missed his calling. He might have been an apprentice thief, but the boy could have made a good living in any corner of the Realm as a bard.
