The Grace Year(63)

“Why?” I try to wet my lips, but they only seem to crack open with the effort.

“Without our shrouds,” he replies, glancing up at me through his dark lashes, “we’d have no protection from your magic.”

“I told you, I have no magic.” Once again, I reach for the gauzy fabric.

“You’re wrong,” he says, folding my outstretched fingers back into my sweaty palm. “You have more than you know.”

There’s something about his words, the way he says them, that makes me flustered; an unfamiliar heat rises to my cheeks. I want to argue, tell him the magic isn’t real, but I don’t have the energy.

“Please,” I whisper. “I don’t want to die without seeing the face of the person who tried to save me.”

He stares at me intently. He’s so quiet, I wonder if he even heard me.

With only the sound of the snow shifting from the eaves, the heavy hiss and crackle of the fire, he begins to unwrap the charcoal shroud. With each new sliver of exposed skin, my heart picks up speed. The sharp angle of his nose, his chin. Thin lips pressed together, dark hair curled up haphazardly around his shoulders. Is he handsome? Maybe not by the standards of the county, but I can’t stop staring at him.





I wake to Ryker singing softly, his bare back to me, muscles rising beneath his skin as he stokes the fire. It’s a song I recognize from the county. A real heartbreaker. His sisters must’ve taught it to him.

My hair is wet, my whole body is damp, but my lips and tongue are so dry they feel like the bark of a sycamore tree. I try to say something, eke out even the tiniest word, but nothing comes out. I’m so hot that it feels like I’m slowly roasting on a pyre. Using all my strength, I fling the pelts off of me.

Ryker startles when they hit the floor with a dull thud, but he doesn’t reach for his shrouds.

Kneeling beside me, his brow knotted up in worry, he presses his inner wrist to my forehead. I swear I can feel his heart beating against my skull, or maybe it’s my own, but as he looks down at me, his face softens, the faintest smile easing into the corners of his mouth.

“Your fever broke.”

“Water,” I manage to get out.

Scooping up the water from a bucket, he holds it to my lips. “Take it slow.”

The first sip is so good, so cool against my throat, that I can’t help grabbing his hands, gulping it down. Half of it runs down my chest, but I don’t care. I’m alive. I pull the chemise away from my skin. My chemise. The crude stitches, the uneven hems. He’s sewn it back together for me.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he says as he leans over me to unwrap the bandage from my shoulder. “You haven’t seen my handiwork.”

“Is this also your work?” I ask, skimming my thumb over the muted thick pink scar on the lower side of his abdomen.

He takes in a tight inhalation of breath, his skin prickling beneath my touch.

“Did I do this?” I ask, remembering lashing out at him with the blade when I tried to escape.

“I guess we both have something to remember each other by.”

Looking over at my arm, what’s left of the muscle on my shoulder, the jagged scars, the puckered skin, all I can feel is grateful. He saved my life more times than I can count, but I need to remember that he’s still a poacher and I’m still a grace year girl.

“Is it daylight?” I ask, looking off toward the pelt covering the doorway.

“Would you like to see?”

“Even if I could move, isn’t it too dangerous?” I ask.

Reaching up to the ceiling, he pushes open a hatch. I hear slushy snow slide to the forest floor.

The sunlight blinds me for a moment, but I don’t care. The rush of cold air blowing in off the water seems to revive me a bit. I smell melting snow, lake water, river clay, and fresh-cut cedar.

When I can see clearly again, he’s rolling up birch bark, placing it on the roof. “What’s that for?”

“It’s finally starting to thaw. This will keep the water from settling.”

I’m still trying to get used to seeing him without the shroud, but I like it.

“Hungry?” he asks.

I think about it for a good minute. “Famished.”

Ryker tosses a sack of walnuts onto the bed; they spill out, startling me.

“You need to start building muscle,” he says, placing a steel cracker in my left hand.

“I can’t.”

“If you had enough strength to go for that knife hidden beneath the mattress, you have enough strength for this.”

“That was self-preservation.”

“So is this. Do you want to starve again? Eating whatever chunks of meat I decide to toss over the barrier?”

“That was you?” I ask.

“Who else?”

I thought it was Hans, but I keep it to myself.

“You need to start pitching in,” Ryker says. “Take care of yourself.”

Propping myself up, I reach out to grab a walnut. I’m try ing to work the cracker, squeezing as hard as I can, but I’m not even making a dent.

“Like this,” he says, cracking one wide open without the slightest effort, tipping the meat inside his mouth, grinning widely.