Chapter Text
The fields shimmered in a humid August dusk, and the dust, recently stirred from the ground, floated, hazy, at our ankles. I wiped sweat from my forehead, but my sleeve was soaked through. My ribs ached from a recent whack with the broad side of a wooden sword, and I spat dirt into the dry grass to my right, just outside of the sparring ring.
Clipper Wilkinson was not much better. His face glowed red, shiny with a sheen of sweat that seemed to only get worse as he wiped at his face, and he was breathing heavily. But exhaustion did not hold him back; Clipper was a determined young man, the same age as Connor and unmatched when it came to his skills with a rifle, which was why I was training with him today - for all of his long-distance skills, his physical combat prowess needed honing.
We had been at this for what felt like hours, and everything ached. I was sweating in places I dared not name, and it stung the blister that was forming at the juncture of my thumb.
I enjoyed swordplay. It was a dance to me, once I found the rhythm and the music in it. The sighing trees provided a pleasant background noise to our waltz of death, our own danse macabre.
Ordinarily we used the sparring ring in the basement, but with the days so hot, we took our training outside, and the sun swiftly proved to be my biggest adversary.
In the long shadow of the manor, Achilles and Connor watched in analytical silence, the old man from the comfort of a kitchen chair placed in a patch of reflected light, and Connor from his place against the red stone wall.
He was my second-biggest adversary of late. I had watched from afar as he withdrew, as the deep wells of gentleness in him dried up, as his warmth became cold. From July to August I had sought him out, and from July to August he had evaded me. I did not remember the last time that we kissed, or shared a word of affection outside of our work. In fact, now that I thought of it, I could not recall the last proper conversation we had had, either.
But every morning, without fail, we met at dawn to run through the frontier. He put us through a cruel pace, pushing faster and longer every time, and by the time we got home I was dizzy and ready to collapse, and he was looking at me with thinly-veiled scorn.
Sniffing, Clipper swung his wooden sword at the ground and lowered himself into a defensive stance, waiting for me to mirror him before advancing. He lunged low first, and I blocked with my own sword before he could smack my shins, and leapt sideways to counter his attack with a jab at his exposed back - but he twisted around, a writhing, airborne worm, and blocked me just before I could hit home.
I followed just as swiftly, and on we fought, gritting our teeth in the blistering heat. Poise and perfection were lost arts - we fought dirty, and fought to kill. Connor had taught us that.
But Connor was not impressed. "Raise your guard."
Our wooden swords clashed and the blunt edges dented as we cut at each other, blocked, evaded, danced. My arms ached with the satisfying burn of hard work. Connor and Achilles faded into background blur, into nothing - all that existed was me, and the sword in my hand, and my opponent bobbing and weaving before me.
The illusion shattered when the flat of his sword hit my leg.
A light tap is all it was, but the shapes shifted into place. "You can hit harder than that," I said, circling, taunting. I knew he could. I knew his capabilities.
But Clipper looked doubtful, and opened his mouth, but thought better of what he meant to say, and closed it. This time it was him who shrank back as I lunged at him, missing him only by a hair.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said, full of caution.
I had taken worse than a whack from a wooden sword. "Do you think me so fragile?"
His feet were almost at the edge of the ring. "I– well, no. Not ordinarily. But–"
"But what?" I sliced the space at his hip, forcing him left, and I must have moved too quickly, for a burst of stars across my vision stopped me short. It was the heat, I told myself. This obtrusive heat was making me weak.
Had Clipper seen it too? He was looking at me like I was an injured dog on the road. My next swing was blocked by him with relative ease. "Are you well, Cassandra?" he asked.
"Why wouldn't I be?" The ache in my arms was getting worse, and travelling down to my legs. My hand started to shake, so I gripped my weapon harder and swung. This time, my hit landed, but I had the sudden, uneasy realisation that Clipper had allowed it to happen.
The tip of his sword was drooping toward the ground. "I don't want to hurt you."
"Why do you think you could hurt me?" A thought occurred to me, with no small amount of bitter irritation, and I demanded, "Did Connor put you up to this?"
Connor stepped off the wall, and his arms uncrossed. "Why would I put him up to it?" he snapped.
"I don't know." I let my sword fall so I could glare at him. "You tell me."
From the comfort of his shady chair, Achilles shook his head and cracked his cane against the ground. "Stop talking, and start again."
"No." Connor stepped into the sunlight, pushing his sleeves to his elbows. "Clipper, give me your sword."
Clipper gave me an apologetic look as he stepped out of the ring and handed the wooden sword over to Connor - who barely gave me a moment to prepare myself before he lunged, forcing me to raise my sword in a clash that shook my bones.
He stepped into my space, pushing me back, and this time he followed, step and slide, strike and step, step and strike, hacking, slashing, faster, faster, faster. "Move, Cassandra. Higher."
My chest was burning, my arms were aflame, the spots in my vision danced to the rhythm of the music we created. Every collision sent jolts through my bones, but there was a dangerous look in Connor's eye, and weakness was forbidden.
This heat was melting all my muscle away, sloughing my skin off my skeleton until all that was left of me was brittle, breakable bone. Perhaps Connor could see this, too, because once he got past my guard and hit me with his sword, he did not stop.
"Faster," he snapped, as he whacked me again. "Faster. Block it. Block."
He was pushing me backwards, I realised, back, back, towards the shaded treeline. My feet passed the ring's perimeter, then his did.
"Connor." I heard how thin my voice sounded, how high and strained. It disgusted me. "Connor, we've passed the ring."
He seemed not to have heard me, and drove me back with vicious intent, using that feral brute strength he only ever showed our enemies. I was blind on both sides; I could not see what was before me for the blazing spots hovering in my eyes, nor what was behind me, and I stumbled on a tree root.
"Connor, stop." I righted myself just in time to block a low jab aimed at my knees.
His sword darted out and smacked my hand hard enough to make me lose my grip, and it clattered to the ground. The tip of his sword was level with my chest.
I hissed and shook my stinging hand. The knuckles would surely bruise. "Ow!"
"You lose." His voice was flat.
A sudden surge of anger welled up in me, deep and dark. "We're out of bounds. "
He ignored me. "You are not doing enough."
"I'm not doing enough?" I snatched my sword off the ground and stepped into his space to glare up at him. He did not move. "Well, I am truly sorry that I can't live up to your standards of perfection, my lord. I'll do better next time, sir."
I shoved the sword against his chest and stomped past him, past a dazed-looking Clipper and unreadable Achilles, to the stone well behind the manor.
I knew Connor was following a few paces behind me, but I ignored him as I hauled the bucket up and scooped up a ladle of water. It was blessedly cold, and soothed my scratchy throat.
He was silent behind me. I could stand it no longer. "What."
He was empty-handed - I assumed he had handed the swords off to Clipper - and he was watching my face. Not my eyes, I realised, but just above. "What is wrong with you lately?"
The anger in me started to bubble at his venomous tone, so quickly that it startled me. "Excuse me?"
A long evening shadow fell over my hand on the well as he approached me, stopping only a foot from my arm. "That was your worst performance yet. If that was a real fight, you would have been dead eight times over."
"You were counting how many times I should have died?"
"Yes," he snapped, "because you were so weak and slow. Clipper was holding back and you were still losing."
I gripped my ladle until my knuckles went white, and scooped up more water just to give myself an excuse not to look at him. "One bad day, and you think I've forgotten everything I know? Is your opinion of me truly so low?"
"It was not just one bad day." He was close enough to look straight down at me, to use his height and size to intimidate me, and I hated that it worked. I was nothing but a mouse; a small, weakened mouse. I became keenly aware of how much bigger than me he was, how much stronger.
"You are not as strong as you used to be," he said, "nor as fast. For weeks you have been falling more and more behind when we run. I will not always be here to save you, Cassandra - how much longer must I be your protector?"
"I don't ask you to do any of that," I shot back, feeling the heat rising in my cheeks, and set the ladle down before I could throw it. "You make it sound as though I am a burden you never asked for."
"Maybe that is what you are becoming."
It hurt worse than any slap, any wound. I didn't even want to drink my water anymore; it had turned to poison in my hand. "Why are you always so angry?"
He stiffened, and I knew immediately that this was the wrong thing to say, but I could not back down now.
Instead of raising his voice, like I feared he would, he lowered it. "When you have lived the life that I have lived - when you have murdered your longest friend, when you have watched your mother burn, when you have been sired by the man you hate, when you have faced adversity at every turn you have ever taken - then you may have the right to ask me about my anger."
"You're not the only person who has suffered, Connor." I had to create some space between us, and leaned back. "But you are using it as an excuse to push everyone away. You've forgotten how to see anyone outside of yourself."
It silenced him.
For the first time since this conversation started, he looked me in the eye, and for the first time, I could not read his expression. There was something cold in his eyes, and I did not recognise him.
His eyes were dark, and his lowered lids made them look flat and empty. "You have grown soft, Cassandra." He took a step closer, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him. "You have grown comfortable with losing. I suppose that is what happens when you rely on other people to steady you."
"At least I acknowledge that I need others," I fired back, feeling the anger bubble in my chest. "You act like being alone is the only thing that will save you. You're such a martyr to your own cause, it's a wonder that no one worships you."
"Your sarcasm is your weakest defence," he spat. "Possibly weaker than your fighting technique with Clipper."
The heat in my chest sharpened into something cold and barbed. "You always do this. You lash out again and again because you think it's better to hurt others than let them see what's underneath. Let me tell you something, Connor - I think you're running away because you're scared."
"I do not run."
"You run from me."
A muscle in his jaw jumped. He did not step back, as I thought he would - but he didn't move forward, either. "I do not owe you every piece of myself," he said, and while his voice was steady, and quiet, his eyes were not.
That stung. Something in me snapped - not loudly, not dramatically; perhaps more like a bone fissuring under pressure, or a thread being cut.
"Is that what you think?" I said, and my traitorous voice shook. "Fine."
Before he could blink, I flung the ladle of water at his face.
The splash hit him hard - a cold slap that broke the heavy heat between us.
He closed his eyes against the water dripping from his lashes, tracing uneven paths down his cheeks. When they reopened, I could not look at him.
"Congratulations on winning," I said, shoving the ladle back into the bucket so hard that the wooden handle clattered against the rim. My hands shook as I lowered it back into the well. "You always do."
The silence that followed was worse than the one that had been worming its way between us for weeks. It pressed into my chest and crawled in the spaces between my ribs until I could feel it vibrating in my bones. It unnerved me enough that I kept my eyes fixed on the well, clenching my teeth so hard my jaw hurt.
"Cass–" he started.
"Don't talk to me." I had nothing more to give to him. I had fought and I had lost, and he had won as he always did, and I was left to piece myself back together, as I always did.
I could not do that with him watching me like a cornered animal, hackles raised, tail lashing, like the bitterness I was feeling was a threat he needed to fend off instead of something he had helped conceive. He was a blazing fire; it was at once his most-used weapon, his greatest defence, and the black rot eating away at him.
I turned away before I could let him see the way my breath faltered. I could not give him the satisfaction, nor the guilt.
Neither of us tried to speak as I walked away, my boots kicking up dry dust that settled on my legs and ankles and stuck to the sweat drying tacky on my skin. I went around the other side of the manor, where I did not have to pass by Achilles and Clipper, and walked toward the forest that pressed up against the hill, suffocating us in this thick air.
The trees rose in a dark, quiet line, and I was grateful for that - they saw all, and asked no questions. They didn't look at me like I was something weak and failing. They didn't look at me at all.
My breath stuttered on my next step, and I forced it back down like a dog with its vomit. Not here. Not yet.
The path into the woods narrowed quickly, half-swallowed by summer overgrowth, but I pushed through anyway, scraped by brambles, snagged by twigs, and the further I went, the cooler the air grew. The shadows thickened, and the manor disappeared from my view when I turned around.
Only then did I slow - but I kept walking until even my anger ran out of places to go, had no choice but to turn on itself, until the sounds of the training ring stopped ringing in my ears, until I knew that Connor could not see nor hear me, and could not follow me even if he suddenly wanted to.
Then I stopped.
The world exhaled without me; the trees quivered, the leaves fluttered in the thick heat, the air pressed cool fingers to the back of my neck, but I was staying still. I was unable to move how the forest wanted me to.
I was waterlogged, heavy, swollen with something stagnant, and when the adrenaline finally faded, I was left empty, hollow where I had once been burning. A potato buried in the ground sprouts new shoots and multiplies; coal under pressure becomes a diamond; but I was somewhere still buried, still a piece of coal.
Dimly it struck me how tired I was of waiting to become something better.
I braced my hand on the nearest tree, a peeling birch whose papery bark crumbled under my fingers. I did not know how far I had walked, but now that I was still, the lightheadedness returned with startling clarity, and I took several slow breaths to calm the ringing in my ears as the world faded away.
When it came back, my breath trembled out of me tightly, painfully. "Damn you," I whispered, to myself, to him, as the first hot tear slipped down my cheek. In fury I wiped it away.
Neither of us had raised our voices at each other, and I felt that that was worse. Our words carried more weight.
He loved me - I knew that. Somewhere under all of his armour and anger, I knew that. And I loved him more than life itself.
Maybe that was why it hurt so much. We knew exactly how and where to strike the other to make it hurt the most, and that is what we had done.
I leaned my forehead against the tree trunk, and it politely turned its face away as another tear fell. "Stop crying," I muttered, but the words fell flat. There was no conviction behind them. "Pathetic, weak."
Though I had meant to intimidate myself into submission, my weak, soft, traitorous eyes disobeyed me, and with a blink the tears were unstoppable. He had hurt me, and I had let him, because love had made a fool of us, and I was the biggest fool of all. He only lashed out like this when he was bleeding inside.
And if he acted this way when he was hurting, how would he react if I told him my father's name? He would see me as a traitor, a liability, and I could not promise myself in this moment that he would not add my portrait to the basement wall.
I truly was my mother's child. Everything I touched was ruined.
Everyone I had ever loved had left me. My mother had abandoned me; my grandparents, my guardians, my beloveds, had died; Ryan was sent away and did not write anymore; Meredith ran away out of hate; Thomas killed himself.
What was wrong with me?
And now, even Connor, the one person I thought I could count on to never leave me nor forsake me, had done both. I was completely, utterly, truly alone.
I dug the heels of my palms into my eyes hard enough to see shoots of light behind my lids, like I could force the tears back into my eyes, but they kept coming, hot, insistent, humiliating, and the more I fought them, the more they burned.
I sat at the roots of the tree and the forest turned to a watery green haze out of pity. I did not want pity. Tipping my head back against the steady trunk, I blew air up at the waving leaves and tried to steady my breathing.
"Why do I do this to myself?" I asked it.
The tree was unyielding.
"Thanks for your help," I muttered, wiping my cheeks.
When I was able to blink without more tears falling, I stood and found a small, shallow creek where I dug in my hands and rinsed my face. As I dried myself on my sweat-damp shirt, I glared at the pink-faced girl looking back at me from the shimmering surface of the creek.
"You're pathetic," I told her. "Do you know that?"
The girl looked sad as she mouthed the words back to me. A sudden wave of regret washed over me, and I reached out to touch her face, to tell her something soft, something sweet, but my fingers broke the surface and her face was ruined.
I picked leaves out of my hair, plucked twigs from my clothes, and stood feeling drained and limp. By the fading light of dusk I found my way out of the forest and into the homestead town. The path was flattened by many feet, and dusty. I followed it to Catherine's log house, and as I rounded the bend, I heard voices.
All the ladies of the homestead were sitting in a circle with balls of yarn. Prudence and Diana each held a half-finished scarf, Ellen was stitching flowers into the hem of a pair of gloves, and Myriam was trying in vain to untangle the long, cream-coloured yarn in her lap.
I hesitated too long at the edge of the path, and Catherine looked up. "Cassie!" she called, smiling widely. "How are you, my dear?"
Shyly I stepped closer. "I'm sorry if I am intruding."
Diana looked kindly at me, and that small action was a stab in my chest. "Nonsense. Would you like to join us?"
I took in the needles and yarn that every woman held. "I have nothing to knit with, but I'm happy to watch."
Myriam snapped the end of a knotted line of yarn with her teeth and held it out to me. "Here. You can figure this out for me."
There was a space next to Corinne, and I slipped in, weighing the yarn in my hand. "What on earth have you done to this?"
"Myriam's been keeping a very big secret from Norris," teased Prudence, reaching over to playfully tap Myriam's knee.
I gasped. "Congratulations!"
Myriam grimaced. "I was planning to announce it by presenting him with some knitted baby socks. These ladies offered to teach me how to knit, but I think I am only making it worse."
Max, the old hound, was lying at Diana's feet, and she reached out with one foot to rub his side so his tail thumped heavily on the ground. "Can you knit, Cassie?"
"I used to knit things for my brother when he was a baby," I admitted, untangling the yarn. "But that was many years ago."
Once the yarn was a singular straight thread, I passed it back to Myriam, and sat on my hands while I watched the others knit. The clicking of their needles was a comforting rhythm.
Prudence caught my eye, and gave me a gentle smile. "It is good to see you, dear girl. How have you been?"
"Yes!" said Ellen before I could respond. "It has been so long since we last saw you."
I kept my tone level and measured. "I've been keeping busy. I'm sorry that I haven't had time to come and visit."
A chorus of sympathetic murmurs rose up, and Catherine fixed me with a soft, motherly look. "Are you all right, love?" Panic flashed through me - could she see? - but she continued: "You are awfully thin, dearest. Do you feel well?"
I swallowed down the feelings that were still raw in my throat, and tried to forget Connor's critical look as I said quietly, "I don't know. I've been feeling a little unwell for a few weeks."
Corinne, sitting closest to me, reached out to rub my upper back in a comforting manner. "It's no wonder. You're all skin and bone!"
Diana let her knitting fall into her lap. "Have you seen Doctor White?"
At the same time, Myriam asked, "What does Connor think?"
I chose to answer the latter question first. "He is much too busy for that conversation."
Sympathetic voices turned indignant, and my cheeks started to burn. Perhaps I should not have spoken.
Diana, Lyle White's official nurse, reached across the empty space in the middle of the circle and patted my knee. "Do let me know if you decide to go and see Doctor White, and I'll go with you, if you'd like."
It shamed me that I had never thought to see the doctor for myself. Diana's hand was warm and steady, and it made the twisting, aching thing in my chest writhe in its cage.
"Thank you," I managed, and was surprised at how genuine the words were.
I spent the evening with the ladies, and we all celebrated as Myriam knitted her first row of a baby-sized sock. We decided that this should be a weekly event, this knitting club, and all agreed to bring a project to work on. Afterwards, Catherine treated us all to dinner, and that was how we decided that each week, a different lady would host the club, so all of the pressure of hosting did not fall to one.
For the first time since Thomas died, I felt that I had friends. A warm summer night had fallen by the time I walked up the hill to the manor, along the coast path that I knew so well I could have walked it deaf and blind both, and my heart was lighter than I had felt in a very long time.
The house was silent, and all of the front windows were dark as I eased the front door open. The old hinges groaned in a way that made me wince, but the household did not stir.
I closed the door behind me and slipped my shoes off, and that was when I noticed the faint glow of candlelight touching the hallway floor, low and tired, coming from the kitchen.
I walked softly down the hall, my steps softened by the long runner rug, and when I reached the doorway, I paused there, fingers curling into my palms.
Connor was sitting at the table, leaning back in one of the heavy wooden chairs, arms crossed over his chest, one leg tapping restlessly. A candle on the table before him was burning low, its flame throwing uneven shadows across his face, and the melted wax at its base told me it had been burning for a while. Beside it was a plate covered with a clean cloth.
His eyes were open, and fixed on the doorway long before I stepped into it. He had waited up for me, I realised.
I couldn't bring myself to speak and break the fragile silence between us. He did not rise when I entered. He didn't move at all, save for the twitching of that same muscle in his jaw.
"You're late," he said. It was not an accusation, just a statement.
I edged into the room. "I was with the ladies."
He absorbed that with a shift of his eyes as something I could not read flickered between them. "I see."
The silence that choked us both after that was tight and close enough to touch, to break. The candle sputtered, throwing his shadow, tall and crooked and vulnerable, along the wall.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. "Why are you awake?" I asked before I could rein the words in.
His gaze did not waver from mine. "I was waiting." There was no heat behind his words, no pride or bitterness.
It should not have hit me the way it did. It was a stone in the hollow place between my ribs where my heart should be. His arms uncrossed, and one extended to the table, letting his fingers rest by the covered plate.
"I saved you dinner," he said, quietly.
I looked away first. "That wasn't necessary."
"I know," he said.
His evenness made something in me bristle - he was too close to gentleness, and I was not ready for gentleness yet. Not from him. He shifted, just enough for the candle's low glow to catch on the edge of his jaw, and the hollow beneath his high cheekbone. He looked less like the man I loved, and more like the idea of him.
I moved to the washbasin, just to put some space between us, and scrubbed my hands. "You should go to bed," I told the basin.
"I will," he said. "When you do."
I squeezed excess water from my hands and dried the remainder on my shirt. My reflection in the surface of the water was unsteady. "You don't have to wait for me."
"No," he agreed.
"So why are you?"
Behind me, the chair creaked as he shifted, but still he did not stand. "Because you did not come home, and I wanted to be here when you did."
It was the wrong thing to say, or maybe it was the right thing at the wrong time; it scraped at the raw wounds left in me, and I placed my hands flat on the counter.
"You made it very clear earlier that that is not your job," I muttered, "and that you resent doing it."
I forced myself to turn, just a fraction, so I could see him from the corner of my eye. He looked tired, and drawn, like all the substance in him had been scooped out.
"You can go to bed, Connor."
The candle cracked as the wick slipped deeper into its own melted grave, and the light flickered across his face, deepening the bruised darkness beneath his eyes. He looked older in the shifting glow.
The clock in the living room ticked in the silence, loud and arrhythmic. Connor didn't move.
I turned toward the doorway, the tension coiled in my throat like a spring. My shadow stretched long across the floorboards, getting thinner and thinner as I stepped away from the light.
"Cassandra."
My hand froze on the doorframe.
I looked over my shoulder and found that he was watching me with eyes wide and dark. I saw no anger there, no coldness; for the first time in a very long time, they were unguarded, like I had caught him without his armour, without anything to shield him from me.
His lips parted to say something, but nothing came out. Whatever he meant to say died in the space between us before it could take shape.
I felt the ache in my chest anyway, even though neither of us tried to close the distance.
That hurt the most.
"Good night," I whispered, and when he did not respond, I turned away and walked upstairs before either of us could bleed anymore.