Dorian Ashveil's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

For three winters Dorian Ashveil had let no one through his gate, and now he needed the whole town to open its doors to him. He stood at the market that morning with a single rose in his fist. Its petals shone pale, layered, catching the gray light. He had grown it himself, in the yard where he once trained students. He meant to find the woman he had driven away and give it to her. First he had to learn where she had gone. He asked the baker. The man wiped his hands and looked past Dorian's shoulder. "Don't know her." The lie sat plain on his face. Dorian's scowl had carved itself deep over three empty winters, and the whole town had learned to step around him. His shuttered yard, his silence, his fur-lined coat that smelled of cold steel. He was a stranger here now, and strangers got nothing. He tried the fishwife. She turned to her crates. He tried two men mending nets. They found work for their hands and their eyes. By noon Dorian had asked a dozen people, and a dozen people had given him their backs. The rose hung at his side. One petal had bruised brown from his grip. Then he remembered the one person in town who could not lie. The Fur Trader's Supply Shop smelled of dried herbs and pelts. Behind the counter stood the herbalist, frost-pale braids over her shoulder, ink dark on her fingers. The fae had cursed her to speak only truth. It had cost her three friends this season. She looked up and saw the rose before she saw his face. "Nobody will tell me where she is," Dorian said. His voice came out rough from disuse. "You can't help but tell me the truth. So I'm asking you." The herbalist set down her pestle. She studied him the way she studied a wound. "You frighten them," she said. "You built a wall and now you're angry the town won't climb it. That's why they lie." She did not soften it. She could not. Dorian's jaw tightened. "I didn't come for a lecture." "You came for the truth. That is the truth." She held his eyes. Then, because the curse gave her no choice, she went on. "The woman you grew that rose for left Edgewater after the first thaw. She took the north road. She's staying two valleys over, in the mountain village past the pass." Dorian's breath left him. For three winters no one had given him a single word, and now he had a road. "The pass closes with the next snow," the herbalist added. "If you're going, you go now. Wait a week and you won't reach her until spring." Dorian looked at the bruised rose in his hand. Then he turned for the door. He had his answer, and he had until the snow.