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Josephine went rigid. Her expression turned wary and she eyed him up and down. “How do you know Rys?”

Alder glanced down the dark street, through the swirling snow, as two of Harran’s guards stepped into sight, on patrol. “Your questions would be better served in private, if you would be so kind…”

He started to push the door in, but she braced her hand upon it. “I don’t think so, stranger. Tell me who you are first.”

Her gaze held his, so bold and so clear that Alder had the strangest urge to tell her everything.

Rys had always had that effect on him too.

But Alder couldn’t share everything. Not here, not now, especially not after Massie’s little speech in the square. He could already see that Josephine wasn’t the sort to trust easily, if ever, and if she sounded the alarm, he would never get out of Harran.

Or worse: they would never gethimout of Harran.

So Alder settled on, “Suffice it to say that I am a friend.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, stranger. I saw you in the square, and I know you heard what I heard. Your timing is suspect, and I do not believe in coincidences.”

Neither did Alder, but he was running out of time, and patience. He leaned in close and heard her breath hitch. “If you want more from me,Josephine, I’m afraid you’ll have to let me in.”

His use of her name had the intended effect, and her expression opened in shock. “How do you know my?—?”

“Sephie…?” pressed the woman’s voice again.

Josephine stared him down with the fury of a Fate, but Alder stared right back, unflinching. He saw the moment she relented, when her curiosity won out, and she opened the door wider.

A bit.

She glared at him as he strode past, and she closed the door behind him. The home was humble and cramped—not nearly enough space for Rys, his parents, and four siblings. A fire struggled off to one side, but it wasn’t enough to warm the room, small though it was, and an old man slept deeply in a chair before it, his profile only just visible. Alder counted three pails positioned to catch rainwater, one stained workbench decorated by two very sharp blades where Josephine undoubtedly butchered her contraband, and a pile of firewood by the back door.

An image of her splitting those logs this morning flashed at the forefront of his mind.

“Did I hear you say you know my Rys?” the older woman asked. The mother. She stood in the threshold of a small door Alder imagined led to a shared bedchamber, and behind her was the middle sister—Linnea, that was her name. He just remembered.

“Yes,” Alder replied at last.

“Where is he?” the mother pleaded, taking a small step forward as if she’d been adrift at sea and he’d just cast her a line. “Is he well? Did he mention anything about his brother, Levi? Or perhaps his father…Ronan…my husband? It’s been two years since we’ve heard anything?—”

“I don’t know the fate of your husband or Levi. They weren’t with Rys when I met him, though Rys did mention their names. I believe he was separated from them, though…” Alder’s voice trailed off. He could not say more. He had already said too much, and he blamed Josephine’s clear blue eyes for that. “Rys is dead.”

Alder had learned long ago that it was better to give this kind of news straight, no extra verbiage or deliberating. The pain of loss couldn’t be softened, no matter how one tried, and so he didn’t. And yet as he stood there, watching his words root inside of Josephine, watching denial and refusal war upon her face, he felt as thoughhewere going through the loss all over again. He suddenly wished he could take the words back. Let her believe that Rys lived on—just a while longer—that he was at the warfront, that she might see him again.

Anything other than the despair and pain clouding those summer sky eyes and filling them with tears.

Linnea gasped and covered her mouth with both hands. The mother’s face drained of color, her lips moved, but no sounds came out of them. Then she was shaking her head. “No, no…we would have heard. Certainly, they would have told us…”

“I am telling you now,” Alder said in a voice more clipped than he’d intended, but he was struggling to hold the reins on his own emotion. “I fought with him near the front lines. We were surrounded in battle, and it is to him that I owe my life. I was left for dead, and he…came back for me. Unfortunately, a depraved infected him as he was helping me to safety, and there was nothing I could do.”

He caught Josephine’s gaze as a single, huge tear rolled down her cheek, leaving a streak.

Alder glanced away, and added quietly, “His last wish was that I return this to you as a token of his love and memory.” He produced the small kerchief from his inside pocket and let it fall open upon his palm, revealing the thick band of moonstone within.

Rys’s ring.

It was as though the spell of denial evaporated, and the mother collapsed with a wail. Linnea clutched her breast and took a staggering step back, as if he held a corpse and not a ring. Meanwhile, Josephine stared at the ring, unmoving. Like a ghost of herself.

Her bottom lip trembled as she fought to hold her composure amidst their mother’s wailing. She was trying to be strong for them—he’d seen that at the woodpile—but it was slowly tearing her apart.

She had loved Rys very much. They all had.