Princess Elodi's Arc

Chapter 28 of 55

The ring fit her finger, but the castle still felt like Damon's, not hers. Elodi turned the gold band and looked out at the market beyond the gates. People moved freely there, buying and selling, making their own way. She wanted that. A yes to marriage was not enough. She needed something of her own. "Take me down there," she said. "To the market." Damon grinned. He led her through the open gates, the otter trotting at her heel, its jeweled collar flashing. The market spread before them in noise and color. A juggler tossed painted rings above the crowd. A woman sold flowers by the armful, and their scent filled the air. Farmers stacked bright fruit and greens on wooden tables. Elodi bought a peach, warm from the sun, and ate it standing there. Juice ran down her wrist. No one bowed. No one watched her like a prize. Damon pulled her toward a table and introduced her to the people around it. "This is Elodi," he said. Not princess. Just her name. A baker shook her hand. A boy offered the otter a scrap of fish. They spoke to her plainly, and she loved it. Then the doubt crept in. These people made things. They earned their place. What could she offer? She had spent her whole life behind walls. "I know only one craft," she told Damon. "Knitting. My handmaid taught me. That is all." "Then show them," he said. She found a stall selling wool. She bought yarn the color of the sea and borrowed a pair of needles. She sat on a low stone step and began. Her hands remembered the work. Loop, pull, loop. The otter curled against her boot. A cold wind blew through the market, and a child nearby shivered in a thin shirt. Elodi kept knitting until she held a small scarf. She rose and wrapped it around the child's neck. The mother stared. "You made that? Here?" She pressed a coin into Elodi's palm. "My other one needs mittens. Can you do mittens?" Elodi closed her fingers around the coin. It was the first thing she had ever earned. Not given. Not inherited. Earned. "Yes," she said. "I can." Word spread through the stalls. A farmer wanted socks for winter. The flower woman wanted a shawl. By the time the sun dropped, three coins sat in Elodi's pocket and a list of orders waited in her head. She had customers. She had work. Damon watched her, saying nothing, letting her have it. Elodi looked at the wool, the coins, the people who now knew her name. She was no longer just a guest in his family's home. She had a trade of her own, and money her own hands had made. That night she would need a place to work, wool to store, a corner to call hers. A guest owned nothing. But a woman with a trade needed room to grow it.