Rosemary Thorne counted the minutes the noble stayed at her door, and tonight he gave her four. She knew because she watched the candle on the sill. Damien Ashford came at moonrise, as he had for eleven nights. He stood on the stone step of her ivy-wrapped cottage, accepted the mug she pressed into his scarred hand, and drank it standing. His white shirt hung open at the collar. His dark curls caught the porch light. He never sat. He never crossed the threshold. When the moon cleared the pines, he set the mug down and walked back into the trees. Rosemary wanted him to stay. She wanted it plainly, the way she wanted rain in August. She had moved to these woods to be alone with her books and her three cats and her garden, and instead she had grown attached to a man who would not sit down. Tonight she tried a new plan. She did not meet him at the door. She let him knock twice. Then she called through the wood, "I need help. Something's in the garden." He came around the side of the cottage fast. Rosemary stood by the bean rows with her satchel over her shoulder and a lantern in her hand. At her feet, tail lashing across the cabbages, sat a purple alligator the size of a hound. It was chewing one of her apples. It looked up at Damien with bright, interested eyes. Damien stopped. "That is not from these woods." "I know," Rosemary said. "It walked out of the hedge an hour ago. It won't leave. I've tried." The three cats watched from the porch rail, unbothered, as if they had already decided the creature was staying. Damien knelt. He held out his scarred hand. The alligator sniffed it, then bumped its snout against his palm. He almost smiled. Rosemary saw it and held very still. "It likes apples," she said. "I have a bushel inside. I can't carry them and hold the lantern." He looked up at her. He looked at the moon, already halfway above the pines. She watched him weigh it. "Show me the bushel," he said. He followed her through the door. Inside, he set the basket by the hearth. He sat on the floor beside it. He fed the alligator apples one at a time, and the cats came down from the rail and settled against his knee. Rosemary sat across from him with her satchel in her lap and did not speak, because speaking felt like it might break something. The moon rose. The moon crossed. Damien did not leave. At the hour he should have been gone, he pressed his scarred hand flat to the floorboards. His breath caught. Something under his skin moved that should not have moved. He looked at her, and his eyes were not the eyes she knew. "Rosemary," he said. "Lock the door."

Rosemary locked the door. The bolt slid home with a small, final sound. She turned back to Damien and saw his shoulders shaking. His scarred hand pressed flat to the boards. Whatever was under his skin had stopped moving, but he was breathing like a man who had run a long way. "Tell me what it is," she said. "I can't help you if I don't know." "You can't help me." He didn't look up. "Sit far away." She did not sit far away. She sat close enough to touch him and did not touch him. The purple alligator had wedged itself under the table and gone still, watching. Her three cats sat in a row on the hearthrug, tails wrapped tight, staring at Damien the way they stared at storms. "Water?" she asked. "Bread? Something cold?" "Don't feed me. Don't put anything in my mouth. It makes it worse." She filed that away. First fact. She stood, went to the kitchen, and came back with the crocheted blanket from the back of her reading chair. It was the softest thing she owned. She laid it over his shoulders slowly, giving him time to refuse. He didn't. He gripped the edge with his good hand and pulled it tighter. "What makes it better?" she asked. He was quiet a long time. "Being outside. Being alone. Not being touched." "You're inside. You're not alone. I haven't touched you." "I know." His voice cracked. "That's why I'm still here." She sat back on her heels. She had been about to fetch him lemonade from the cold cupboard, the blue kind he had refused eleven nights in a row. She had been about to stroke his hair. She had been about to do every warm thing she knew, and every one of them would have hurt him. "Damien." She kept her hands in her lap. "I don't know your curse. I was going to guess. I would have guessed wrong." He finally looked at her. His eyes were his own again, tired and dark. "Yes. You would have." "Then tell me the rules. Not the story. Just the rules. What hurts you. What helps. I'll write them down and I won't ask why." He studied her. She saw him decide. "No food from another hand," he said. "No skin on skin. No pity. No promises. Cold helps. Weight helps." He touched the blanket. "This helps." She pulled her satchel over, took out a notebook, and wrote each one down in pencil. Five rules. Not a cure. Not a name for the thing under his skin. But a map. He watched her write. His breathing slowed. "Stay till morning," she said, not looking up. "On the floor. Under the blanket. I won't come near." "All right," he said. It was the first thing he had ever agreed to.

Damien slept an hour, maybe less. Rosemary sat in the reading chair and watched him from across the room. The blanket rose and fell on his back. Then his shoulder jerked. Something rolled under his shirt, from ribs to spine, like a fist pushing from the inside. He made a sound she had never heard a person make. "Cold," she said out loud, to remind herself. "Cold and weight." She went to the kitchen. The icebox held butter, half a jug of milk, and one tall bottle of blue lemonade she had kept for eleven nights in case he ever said yes. No ice. The block had melted by supper. She pressed her palm to the bottle. Cool, not cold. Not enough. She looked at the blanket she'd already given him. Soft, but light. She needed weight. She needed something that took the heat out of a body. She grabbed her satchel and dumped it on the table. Six books thudded out. Heavy ones. Herbals, a bound atlas, her grandmother's recipe ledger. She stacked them in her arms. Damien's back arched. He bit the blanket to keep quiet. Rosemary knelt beside him and laid the books along his spine, one by one. The atlas at his shoulders. The herbals at his ribs. The ledger at the small of his back. He gasped when the weight settled, then went still under it. "Don't move," she said. "I'm getting the cold." She ran to the garden door and unbolted it. The night air hit her face. She meant to fetch the lemonade bottle and press it to his neck, but a small shape was already crouched on her step. A gnome. Purple hat, white beard, boots too big for him. He had one of her cats tucked under his arm. The gray one. The cat looked resigned. "Put her down," Rosemary said. "What melts in the hand but mends the back?" the gnome asked. He tilted his head. "What's colder than a kept promise?" "I don't have time." She stepped past him. Behind her ivy-covered wall, at the north side of the cottage, was the stone well. Well water in autumn ran close to freezing. She hauled the bucket up hand over hand, water sloshing her skirt, and lugged it inside. She soaked a dish towel, wrung it, and folded it across the back of Damien's neck. He shuddered once. Then his breathing slowed. The thing under his skin quieted. The books held him down. The wet cloth held him cool. He turned his face toward her on the floor. His eyes were his own. "You didn't run," she said. "I couldn't," he said. "You put a library on me." She laughed before she could stop it. He almost smiled. Outside, the gnome was still on her step, still holding her cat. The door stood open behind her. She had forgotten to lock it.

Damien was quiet under the books. The gnome was not. He rocked on his heels on her step, her gray cat still tucked under one arm, and grinned like he had all night. "You forgot the door," Damien said from the floor. His voice was low, careful. "Rosemary. Shut it." She moved to shut it. The gnome slid one boot across the threshold. Not inside. Not out. "A guest unanswered is a guest unpaid," he said. "Answer one and I go. Answer none and the cat comes with me." He lifted the gray cat an inch. The cat blinked at Rosemary like this was her problem now. "Ask," Rosemary said. "What melts in the hand but mends the back?" She already knew. She had used it ten minutes ago. "Ice." The gnome's grin dropped a notch. "What's colder than a kept promise?" She thought of Damien on the floor. No promises. That was one of his rules. "A broken one," she said. "Cheap," the gnome muttered. He shifted the cat higher. "Last. Who sent me?" Rosemary went still. That wasn't a riddle. That was a slip. Behind her, Damien said, "Don't." She looked at him. His face had gone the color of the cloth on his neck. He knew. He had known since the gnome opened his mouth. Rosemary turned back. "A witch," she said. "An old one. Black cloak. A crow." The gnome's beard twitched. "Names, girl. Names pay." "Morgana Blackthorn." The gray cat dropped from his arm and bolted past Rosemary's skirt into the cottage. The gnome's boots scuffed backward off her step. He bowed, too low, mocking. "Paid in full," he said. "She'll want to see what you've hidden. She sends her regards to the sleeping one." He tipped his purple hat at Damien on the floor. Then he was gone into the dark past the ivy on her wall. Rosemary shut the door. She threw the bolt. She leaned her forehead against the wood. "You gave her my address," Damien said. Not angry. Worse. Tired. "I gave her a name I already knew." She turned. "You didn't tell me it was hers." "I was going to." "When." He didn't answer. The books still weighed his back. The cloth on his neck had gone warm. Two of her other cats had come to sit near his hands, not touching, watching the door. Rosemary knelt and lifted the ledger off the small of his back. She wrung the cloth out cold again in the bucket and folded it fresh across his neck. "She's coming," Rosemary said. "Tonight?" "Soon." He closed his eyes. "She always knew where I slept. Now she knows who lets me sleep." Rosemary stood. She looked at her locked door. It wasn't going to be enough.

Rosemary stood with her forehead against the bolted door. The wood was solid. It wouldn't matter. A lock stopped a man. It didn't stop a witch. Behind her, Damien lay quiet under the cold cloth, the cats close but not touching him. She had eleven nights of trust in her cottage and no wards on a single window. She went to the shelf above the hearth and pulled down the old book she had bought at a market three summers back. Green cover. Yellow star. She had never opened it past the first page. The seller had called it a curiosity. She had called it pretty and paid too much. "Damien." She knelt beside him and laid the book on the floor. "Can you read this." He turned his head. His eyes moved over the cover and something in his jaw tightened. "Where did you get that." "A market. Years ago." "It's hers. Or it was." He pushed up on one elbow. The books on his spine slid. "She lost three of them once. She was furious for a month." "Can you use it." "I can read some of it." He reached with his scarred hand, then stopped short of the cover. "No skin. You turn the pages." She opened it. The paper smelled of iron. He read down a column, lips moving, and pointed. "Salt. A line across every threshold. Iron at the sills. And this one. A binding on the door. It needs blood." "Whose." "Mine. She cursed me. My blood answers to hers." He met her eyes. "It will hold her outside for one night. Maybe two." Rosemary went to the kitchen. She came back with the salt crock, a paring knife, and the iron nails she used for the garden trellis. She poured a white line along the base of the door, then under each window. She pressed a nail into every sill. The gray cat watched from the table. The other two sat by Damien's feet. He held out his palm. She gave him the knife. He cut the pad of his thumb and pressed it to the wood above the bolt. He spoke three words she didn't know. The blood soaked into the grain and vanished. The air in the cottage changed. It felt heavier, like the moment before rain. Outside, a crow landed on the ivy. Rosemary saw its shadow cross the window. Then a second shape stepped into the garden, tall in a black cloak, white hair loose at her shoulders. The witch stopped at the stone path. She lifted one hand toward the door and drew it back like she'd touched a stove. Her voice came through the wood, calm and close. "Clever girl. One night, then. We'll talk in the morning." Rosemary slid down the door beside Damien. The salt held. The witch was still in her garden.

The salt held through the small hours. Rosemary sat against the door with the green book open on her lap. Damien lay on his side, breath even now, the cold cloth gone warm on his neck. She had wards for one night. Maybe two. After that, she needed to know what the witch had actually done to him, or none of this mattered. She turned a page. The writing changed halfway down — a slanted hand in brown ink, notes crammed in the margins. A name at the top of the column. Morgana. Then a list. Bindings. Vessels. Second skins. "Damien." She kept her voice low. "Wake up. I need you to look at something." He opened his eyes. The scar on his hand caught the candlelight as he pushed up. She turned the book toward him and pointed at the margin notes. "Is that her writing." He read for a long moment. His jaw worked. "Yes." "Then this is her working book. Not just a spellbook. Her notes." Rosemary tapped the word second skins. "Is this you." He didn't answer. She waited. One of the cats climbed into her lap and settled on the page. She lifted the animal gently aside. "I can't help you if I don't know what she put in you," Rosemary said. "I've watched it move under your skin for eleven nights. I need a name for it." Damien touched the ink with one finger, not the page. "She called it a passenger. She wanted a body she could wear when hers wore out. She started the working on me two years ago. It isn't finished. That's why cold and weight slow it down — it isn't rooted yet." Rosemary's hands went cold. "She's coming back to finish it." "Yes." "Can it be cut out." "Not by me." He turned another page. Diagrams. A spine drawn in red. Anchor points marked with small crosses. He stopped at one drawing and pressed his thumb beside it. "Here. She wrote a reversal. For herself, in case a subject turned. She never thought anyone else would read this book." "Can we do it." "It needs her blood, not mine. And a place she's already stood." His eyes moved to the door. To the stone path beyond it, where the witch had drawn her hand back from the wards. Rosemary looked at the salt line. At the garden past it. The purple alligator was asleep under the bean rows, one eye slit open toward the path. The three cats sat in a row on the table, watching the door. "She told us morning," Rosemary said. "So we have until morning to be ready." She closed the book with her hand flat on the cover. She knew the curse now. She knew its name and its shape and the woman who wrote it. The man beneath it was still on her floor, awake, looking at her like someone who had decided to be helped.

Rosemary set the green book aside. The reversal needed the witch's blood, and the witch would arrive at first light with hands that had already broken stronger doors than hers. Rosemary had no weapon. She had a kitchen, a garden, and a man on her floor who could not touch her. "I need something sharp," she said. "Sharp and hidden. She won't stand still while I cut her." Damien sat up. The scar on his hand flexed as he thought. "She'll expect a knife. She won't expect the ground." "Meaning what." "A trap. Iron, under the salt line. Something she steps on before she sees it." Rosemary went to the garden shed and came back with a fistful of long iron nails and a garden claw with three curved tines. She wrapped the tines in wire until they stood up like teeth. Damien watched from the doorway, careful of the threshold. "Bury it," he said. "Points up. Cover it with the salt. She'll cross where she crossed before. They always do." Rosemary knelt on the stone path and dug a shallow pit. Her hands shook. She set the claw in the dirt and packed soil around the base. She sprinkled salt over the top until the metal disappeared. Something moved in the bean rows. The purple alligator crawled out, blinking, and settled beside her knee. It sniffed the salt and sneezed. "Not now," Rosemary whispered. She nudged the animal aside. A small cough came from the fence post. The gnome sat there in his purple hat, holding one of her cats under his arm. The cat did not seem to mind. "What walks on iron and bleeds on salt," he said, "and buys a morning with a morning's price?" "Get off my fence," Rosemary said. He tilted his head. "The old woman pays in what she spills. The young woman pays in what she keeps. Mind which purse you open, cottage-girl." He set the cat down and vanished behind the post. Rosemary went cold. She looked at the buried claw. She looked at her own hands. She finished the salt line and went back inside. She washed the dirt from her fingers. She took a clean glass jar from the shelf and set it on the table where the light would catch it. "When she bleeds," Rosemary said, "I catch it in this. Not a drop wasted." Damien nodded once. He did not thank her. He had rules about that. Outside, the sky above the garden began to gray. The cats came down from the table and lined up at the door. The alligator crawled under the bench and closed both eyes. Rosemary stood at the window with the jar in her hand. The trap was set. The blood, if it came, would come from the ground up.

First light came gray through the kitchen window. Rosemary stood at the door with the jar in one hand and the green book open on the table behind her. She had read the reversal spell six times. She had never cast anything. The words felt like stones in a stream she couldn't cross. Damien sat on the floor with his back against the wall. The scar on his hand was pale. His white shirt hung open and his breath came shallow. "She won't announce herself," he said. "She'll just be there." "I know." "If you stumble on a word, stop. Start again. Don't finish it wrong." He looked at the jar. "Wrong finishes me." Rosemary nodded. Her hands would not stop shaking. She set the jar down and pressed her palms flat on the wood until they steadied. A shadow crossed the salt line. The witch came in her black cloak, hood back, white hair loose. The crow was not with her. She stepped onto the stone path and her boot came down where the salt was thickest. The claw took her through the sole. She made no sound. She looked down at her foot like it belonged to someone else, then lifted it clear. Blood ran off the iron and beaded on the salt. Rosemary was already moving. She knelt with the jar and caught what fell. Three fat drops. Four. The witch's hand came up. "Girl." A small voice piped from the fence. "What she spills is not what she gives. Pour before the poured runs cold." The gnome sat there in his purple hat, a cat in his lap. He did not stay to watch. Rosemary ran back inside. She set the jar on the book. Damien had dragged himself to the salt circle they'd drawn on the floor last night — the spot where the witch had stood the night she was repelled at the threshold. He lay inside it now, shirt open, chest bare. Rosemary read. Her voice broke on the second line. She stopped. She started again. She poured the blood along the line of his sternum, one careful stripe, and spoke the closing word. Damien arched off the floor. Something under his ribs pushed outward, then folded, then went still. He gasped once and dropped flat. The scar on his hand darkened, then faded to a thin white seam. Rosemary touched his shoulder. He was warm. He was only warm. Outside, the witch was gone from the path. A smear of blood led away through the beans. The trap was empty. The alligator crawled out from under the bench and licked salt off a stone. Damien opened his eyes. "It's out of me." "Yes." He looked at her hand on his shoulder. He did not move it away. But past the door, the blood trail bent into the trees, and whatever the witch was now, she was still walking.

Damien lay on the floor inside the salt circle, warm and only warm. Rosemary's hand was still on his shoulder. He had not pulled away. The curse was out of him, but she did not know what that meant for the rules he'd made to survive it. Five rules. No skin. No promises. She had one hand on him already and did not know if she had just broken something else. She lifted her hand. She sat back on her heels. "Tell me if I did wrong." Damien looked at his own palm. The scar was a thin white line now. He flexed his fingers. "I don't know yet," he said. "The rules were for it. Not for me. I don't know which were which." "Then we find out," Rosemary said. "Carefully." She got up and put the kettle on. The three cats came out from under the table and pressed against her ankles in a tight knot, tails up, following her step for step. She filled a bowl of water and set it on the floor. The orange tabby drank. The two smaller ones watched Damien. She cut an apple in halves. The purple alligator waddled in from the garden and thumped its tail once against the doorframe. She dropped a half on the flagstones and it crunched happily. Then she cut a slice thin and clean. She held it out on her palm, not between fingers. She did not step toward Damien. She only held her hand flat where he could see it. "First rule," she said. "No food from another hand. Test it." He looked at the apple. He looked at her face. He pushed himself upright against the wall. He reached, slow, and took the slice off her palm. His fingertips brushed her skin. Neither of them flinched. He ate it. He waited. Nothing moved under his ribs. Nothing crawled. He breathed out. "One," he said. Rosemary sat down across from him, close enough that their knees touched through her skirt. She unclasped the chain at her throat and lifted off the amethyst pendant her mother had left her. She set it in his open hand and closed his fingers around it. "Keep this until morning," she said. "That is not a promise. That is a loan." He almost smiled. "Careful." "I am being careful." He opened his hand and looked at the stone. He looked at her. He reached up and touched her jaw with two fingers, the barest press, testing. He held it a second. He let go. "Two," he said. His voice was rough. "That's two." Rosemary let out a breath she'd been holding since the spell. The rules were falling one at a time, and he was the one knocking them down. She could stop guessing. Outside, the blood trail bent into the trees. The witch was still walking. But inside, for the first time in eleven nights, Damien reached for her hand and kept it.

Damien held Rosemary's hand until the fire burned low. Then he let go and stood. "She's still out there," he said. "Bleeding into moss. That doesn't kill a witch." Rosemary knew he was right. The wards would hold Morgana off the threshold. They would not stop her forever. And while Morgana lived, Damien would keep one ear on the trees. He would not stay. He would not sleep here past dawn. She had pulled the curse out of him and still could not keep him. "We finish it tonight," Rosemary said. She pulled the green book from the shelf and turned to the pages she had marked. There was a working there she had skipped past twice. A binding. It needed the witch's blood, which she still had a smear of in the jar, and it needed a thing the witch had touched with intent. The iron trap. The claw was still buried under the salt at the door. Damien dug it up while she boiled water and crushed rosemary and salt in a bowl. The three cats sat in a row on the table and watched her hands. The purple alligator dozed by the hearth. She worked fast. She did not let herself think about the price the gnome had warned her of — what she would pay in what she kept. The amethyst pendant lay on the table where Damien had set it back. She picked it up. Her mother's stone. The chain warm from his pocket. She dropped it into the bowl. Damien watched her. "That was your mother's." "It's a thing I keep," she said. "That's the price." She carried the bowl to the threshold. She poured the witch's blood over the stone and the iron claw. She said the words from the book, plain, the way you'd read a recipe. The amethyst cracked down the middle with a sound like a walnut. A thin dark line went out from the doorstep into the garden, along the flagstones, into the trees. Somewhere in the forest, something screamed once and stopped. Rosemary stayed on her knees at the door a long time. The three cats came and pressed against her side. Damien crouched behind her and put a hand on the back of her neck. He kept it there. "She's done," he said. "She's done," Rosemary said. She lifted the two halves of the pendant out of the bowl and wiped them on her skirt. They did not fit back together. Damien stood and pulled her up. He did not step back to the door. He did not look at the trees. He looked at her. "I can stay," he said. "Past morning. If you want that." Rosemary closed her hand around the broken stone. "I want that," she said. Outside, the blood trail had stopped moving.

Damien slept on the floor by the hearth. Rosemary sat at the table with the two halves of the pendant in her palm. Dawn had come and gone. He had stayed. She kept looking at him to make sure. A knock came at the low pane by the door. Not a fist. A knuckle the size of an acorn. Rosemary knew the sound before she saw him. The gnome stood on the step with his purple hat askew and one of her tabby cats tucked under his arm. He was the one who had come with riddles the night the witch first learned Damien's name. He was the one who had warned her about the price. He was small and old and his eyes were too blue for his face. "Put the cat down, Whisker," Rosemary said. "A debt walks on four feet and asks for cream," Whisker Riddlewick said. He did not put the cat down. "You bound a woman with borrowed rope. Who paid the ropemaker?" "I paid," Rosemary said. "My mother's stone." "You paid the spell." He shifted the cat. "You did not pay the one who pointed you to the page." Rosemary went cold. She thought of the green book. The marked pages. The riddles that had steered her toward blood and iron and the binding at the end. He had been guiding her the whole time. Behind her, Damien stirred. He sat up slow, saw the gnome, and stood. "What does he want?" Damien said. "A cat," Rosemary said. "He always wants a cat." "One cat for a dead witch," Whisker said. "Cheap at twice the price. Say yes and I go. Say no and I sit on your step until the moss grows on me, and your tall friend will hear me every night he tries to sleep here." Damien's jaw set. He stepped toward the door. Rosemary put a hand on his arm. "Not that one," she said. She lifted the tabby out of the gnome's grip. The cat went limp with relief. "You get cream. You get a bowl every moonrise on the step. And you get this." She held out one half of the cracked amethyst. Whisker's blue eyes went round. He took the stone in both hands. He weighed it. "A keepsake from a keeper," he said. "That closes the ledger." He tucked the half-stone into his belt. "Cream on the step. Every moonrise. Miss a night and I come inside." "I won't miss," Rosemary said. He tipped his hat and walked off into the garden. The cat purred against her chest. Rosemary shut the door. Damien was watching her. The other half of the pendant lay on the table between them. "You gave him half of her," he said. "I kept half," Rosemary said. "And I kept you." Damien took the half-stone off the table and closed it into her hand. He did not let go.

Damien's hand stayed closed around hers for a long moment. Then he let go and set the half-pendant on the table. The cats came in from the garden and settled by the hearth in a tight knot of orange fur, three of them watching the door as if they already knew. A boy from the village came up the path before noon. He held his cap in both hands and would not step onto the stone walk. Rosemary met him at the gate. "There's a man at the inn," the boy said. "Tall. City coat. He's asking after somebody called Ashford. Says he'll pay for word of him." Rosemary gave the boy a coin and told him to say nothing. She went back inside. Damien was already standing. "Who would come looking?" she said. "My father's steward." Damien pulled his shirt closed. "They think I'm dead. If he sees me, I go back. There's a marriage waiting. A seat at a table I left." "Then don't be seen," Rosemary said. "He won't leave until he has an answer." Damien looked at the door. "I'll go to him. I'll tell him myself." "He'll drag you into a carriage." "Not if I tell him the man he's looking for died two years ago." Damien picked up his coat. "Come with me to the edge of the village. No further. I need you close but not seen." They walked the path together. The cats followed to the gate and stopped there in their tight little row. Rosemary waited behind the hedgerow at the last bend before the inn. She could see the door. She could see the man in the grey coat standing under the sign, gloves in one hand, watching every face that passed. Damien crossed the square alone. He did not hurry. He spoke to the man for a long time. Rosemary could not hear the words. She saw the steward's face change. She saw him take a folded paper from inside his coat and hold it out. She saw Damien shake his head once. He did not take the paper. The steward put a hand on Damien's sleeve. Damien pulled his arm back. He said something short. He turned and walked away. The steward watched him go. Then he tucked the paper away, mounted his horse, and rode east out of the village. Damien reached the hedgerow. His hands were shaking. Rosemary took one of them. "What did you say?" "That the son he wanted is gone. That I live here now. That if he sends anyone else, I'll deny the name to their face." He breathed out. "He believed me. He'll tell them what I told him." "And the paper?" "A summons. My father is dying." Damien looked at the road east. "I didn't take it. But I heard it." They walked back to the cottage together. The cats were still waiting at the gate.

Damien slept two hours that night, then sat up in the dark. Rosemary heard the chair scrape. She found him at the table with the half-pendant in his palm. The steward had ridden east, but a rider could turn back. A letter could follow. A second man could come with more coin and sharper questions. Damien would not rest, and neither would she, while anyone at the inn still whispered the name Ashford. "I need to go back," he said. "Once more. To hear what he's saying now that I'm not in front of him." They walked in at dawn. Rosemary carried her satchel and a basket of eggs, so anyone watching would see the girl who sold to the kitchen. Damien stayed at the tree line. The common room was near empty. The innkeeper's wife took the eggs and counted coins onto the boards. Rosemary asked, plain as weather, if the city man had left word. "He paid for two more nights," the woman said. "Left this morning to ride the east road and ask at the farms. Said he wasn't sure the man he met was the one he wanted. Said the face was close but the hands were wrong." Rosemary kept her own hands still on the counter. "The hands." "A scar he was told to look for. He didn't see it." Rosemary bought a loaf she didn't need and walked out slow. At the tree line she told Damien what the woman had said. He looked down at his palm where the scar had faded to nothing after the reversal. The thing that had marked him as his father's son was gone with the curse. "He'll come back," Damien said. "He'll want a second look." "Then give him one he can carry home." They went to the cottage. Rosemary took a knife from the drawer, wiped it with spirit, and set it on the table beside a clean cloth. Damien understood without asking. He laid his hand flat. "Where it was," he said. She cut along the old line. He did not flinch. She pressed the cloth until the bleeding slowed, then bound it with linen. The wound would heal ugly, exactly like the mark the steward had been told to find. At dusk Damien walked to the inn alone and sat in the common room where the innkeeper's wife could see him. He asked for bread and ate with his bandaged hand on the table. He waited an hour. Then he walked home. The purple alligator was in the garden, chewing a fallen apple, watching the path. The cats had come out to sit beside it. Damien latched the gate behind him and let Rosemary take his cut hand in both of hers. "He'll hear about the scar," he said. "He'll write it down. He'll leave." "And after?" "After, I'm only the man who lives here."

Two mornings after Damien showed the fresh scar at the inn, the whispers reached Rosemary at the well. A farmer's wife passed her without a nod. A boy stared at her satchel and ran. By noon she understood: the steward had gone, but the village had kept the story. A strange man was sleeping under her roof. No priest had spoken over it. No family had claimed him. The talk had a shape now, and it was moving. Rosemary found Damien at the table cleaning the bandage on his palm. She set down the loaf she couldn't sell and told him plain. "They think what they'd think of anyone," she said. "Then I should go." He said it fast, like he'd already been holding it. "A room at the inn. A cot at the mill. Anywhere that isn't your door." "You leave and they'll say I drove you off. Or worse." She sat across from him. "We fix it once. Together." She knew who fed the talk. She took a jar of honey from the shelf and walked to the bakery. The baker was elbow-deep in dough when Rosemary came in. Round glasses, floured apron, a smile ready before the bell finished ringing. Mabel Crumb ran the counter and the village's whisper trade in the same breath. She had paid Rosemary once for the name of a midwife's visitor. She would pay again for anything sharper. "Rosemary, love. Sit. I've a blue lemonade cooling for a customer who hasn't come." Rosemary took the glass. Ice knocked the sides. Lemon slices turned. She set the honey jar between them. "I want to buy something for once," Rosemary said. "Not sell." Mabel's eyes brightened behind the glass. "Go on." "The man staying with me is my cousin's boy. From the coast. His mother sent him after a fever took his sister. He sleeps in the loft. I sleep by the hearth. The scar on his hand is from a fishing line." She slid two coins across the boards. "That's the story you heard first. That's the one you tell." Mabel looked at the coins. Then at Rosemary. She wiped her hands on the apron and picked them up. "A cousin's boy," she said, tasting it. "Poor lamb. And the fever?" "Took his sister in the spring." "Terrible thing." Mabel pocketed the coins. "I'll be sure to correct anyone who's got it wrong." Rosemary drank the lemonade to the ice and left the jar of honey on the counter. By evening the farmer's wife nodded at her on the path. The boy who had run waved from a fence. At the cottage Damien was in the garden with the cats. He watched her come through the gate and did not ask. "You're my cousin's boy now," she said. "From the coast." He let out a breath he'd been holding for two days. "And I stay." "You stay."

The cover story held for six days. On the seventh, Rosemary learned how thin it was. She was pulling carrots when Damien came down the path with a basket of eggs from the farm. He forgot himself at the gate. He set the basket on the post, brushed hair from her cheek, and kissed her forehead. It lasted a breath. Rosemary heard the hedge rustle before she felt the cold in her stomach. A neighbor's boy stood on the other side, mouth open, a stick forgotten in his hand. He ran. "He saw," she said. Damien's hand fell. "How long?" "Long enough. Cousins don't kiss like that." By the time she reached the village, the story was already turning. The baker's window was crowded. A woman she sold jam to would not meet her eye. The boy had told his mother. His mother had told the well. If Mabel Crumb pinned the tale down before dark, Rosemary would be run out by market day. She went home the long way, thinking. The garden gnome she had left a cream bowl for was sitting on the doorstep, cross-legged, beard tucked into his belt. Whisker Riddlewick had been coming each moonrise since the witch fell. He usually took his cream and left. Today he grinned like a man who had been waiting. "What binds a knot no priest has tied," he said, "and cuts the tongue that would untie it?" Rosemary crouched. "I don't have time, Whisker." "A vow," he said, when she did not answer. "Spoken before witnesses. Spoken before the loudest one." She looked at him. He looked at the cats. "One kitten," he said, "and I bring the loudest witness to your door within the hour." "No kittens." "A saucer of cream, then. Every moonrise for a year." "Done." He was gone before she stood. Within the hour Mabel Crumb was on her path, apron still floured, cheeks pink from the walk. She had come, Rosemary knew, because a gnome had whispered something too good to miss. Rosemary met her at the gate with Damien beside her. She spoke loud enough for the hedge, because the hedge was always listening. "The cousin story was mine," she said. "I paid you to spread it. I lied because I was afraid of the village. He isn't my kin. He's the man I mean to marry, and I'll have the banns read this Sunday." Mabel's mouth worked. Damien took Rosemary's hand where anyone could see it. He did not flinch. "Write that down," Rosemary said. "Sell it for what you can." Mabel went. The path emptied. Damien kept hold of her hand. "You've spent your good name," he said. "I've traded it," she said. "For a real one." Inside, the cats circled the empty cream bowl. Sunday was four days away.

The morning after her confession, Rosemary counted what she had left. A cottage. A garden. A man at her table who had no place in the village but her bed. The banns would be read in four days. If Damien stood in the church a stranger, the priest's blessing would sound like a joke. She set a cup of tea in front of him. "You need work by Sunday." Damien looked up. "Any work?" "Honest work. Something a neighbor can name when they're asked what you do." He nodded. He pulled on his boots. He had not argued with her once since the kiss at the gate. They walked to the village together. Rosemary kept her chin up past the well. Two women turned their backs. A third nodded, small and quick, and looked away before anyone saw. Rosemary counted the nod as a coin in her pocket. The smith wouldn't take him. The wheelwright wouldn't either. The miller said his boys did the lifting and closed the door. By noon Damien's jaw was set. Rosemary felt the four days shrinking. She went to the bakery last, because she had sworn she wouldn't. Mabel Crumb was pulling loaves. Flour dusted her forearms. She looked at Rosemary over the counter and did not smile. "I paid you once to lie," Rosemary said. "I'm here to pay you to tell the truth." Mabel set the paddle down. "Go on." "He needs work. Real work, where people see him sweat. You know every man in this village who's short a pair of hands." "I know them," Mabel said. "They also know you stood at your gate and called yourself a liar." "I did." Rosemary set a folded cloth on the counter. Inside was the half-pendant Damien had returned to her, the amethyst catching the oven light. "This was my mother's. It's worth more than what I owe you. Find him a place by Friday and it's yours." Mabel looked at the stone a long time. She did not touch it. "Put that away." Rosemary didn't move. "Put it away, girl." Mabel wiped her hands on her apron. "The carter broke his wrist last week. He's been crying into his ale about the load to market Saturday. I'll send him up your path tonight. He'll pay in coin, not cloth." "Why?" "Because a woman who'll sell her mother for a man might actually mean the vow." Mabel pushed the cloth back across the counter. "Wear that Sunday. Let them see it on your neck." The carter came at dusk. He looked at Damien's shoulders and named a wage. Damien said yes before he finished the sentence. They shook on it at the door. Rosemary watched from the step. Damien had work. The village had a name to attach to him by Sunday. She touched the half-pendant in her pocket and felt the shape of what she had almost spent.

The letter arrived at the inn on Wednesday. The innkeeper's boy brought it up the path at dusk, black wax on the seal, Damien's true name written in a shaking hand. Rosemary took it at the gate. She paid the boy a coin and told him not to speak of it. He ran back down the path before she closed her fingers on the paper. She stood in the garden with it. Damien was inside washing the carter's dust off his arms. Through the window she could see the shape of his shoulders bent over the basin. Four days to Sunday. One letter could unmake all of it. She thought about the stove. She thought about how easy it would be to feed the black seal to the fire and never say the word father in this house. She thought about lying beside him for years with that ash in her mouth. She went inside and set the letter on the table. "This came for you." Damien turned. He saw the seal. His hands went still in the towel. He sat down slowly. He did not open it. He read the front, then the back, then the front again. The scar on his palm caught the lamp. "He's dying," he said. "I know." "You could have burned it." "I almost did." He broke the wax. He read. His jaw worked once. He folded the paper along its creases and set it beside his cup. He did not cry. He looked at the door as if someone he half-remembered stood on the other side. Rosemary sat across from him. Her hands were cold. The witch who had made him a vessel was two months in the ground, and still Rosemary felt like she was pulling him out of another woman's grip. "Damien." She waited until he looked at her. "Is this the life you want?" He didn't answer fast. She was glad of it. A fast answer would have been a lie. "My father sent a steward to drag me home," he said. "He sent Morgana before that, to make me useful past dying. He is sending this letter now because the other two failed." He touched the folded paper with one finger. "He wants a son who signs papers. I am hauling grain for a man with a broken wrist. I sleep on your floor. I am going to stand in a church on Sunday and say your name." "That isn't an answer." "Yes," he said. "This. This is what I want." She breathed out. She hadn't known she was holding it. "I won't write back," he said. "You should." He looked up. "Not to go," she said. "To say goodbye. So it's yours, not his." He nodded. He pulled paper toward him. He wrote three lines and signed a name that was no longer safe to say aloud. He sealed it with candle wax. He set it beside the plate for morning. The letter would go. He would stay.

The letter sat on the table through the night. Rosemary woke before dawn and looked at it in the gray light. Black wax. A name Damien could no longer use. The road to the city was four days by cart, longer by post. Damien's father had weeks at best. The village post rider wouldn't touch a sealed letter bound for a great house, not with a steward already sniffing after Ashfords. Rosemary needed a rider who wouldn't ask questions and wouldn't be believed if he did. Damien came down in his shirt. He saw her looking at the letter and stopped in the doorway. "It has to go today," he said. "Or it won't matter." "I know." "Not the post. Not anyone from the village." "I know," she said again. She poured him tea. Her hands were steady now. She had thought it through in the dark. She went out to the garden with a bowl of cream and set it on the flat stone by the gate. She did not call. She waited. The cats came first, then the small brown shape she wanted, climbing down from the wall with his purple hat lopsided from sleep. Whisker Riddlewick sniffed the cream and did not drink. "A letter," Rosemary said. "To a dying man four days south. Sealed. Fast. No questions at the door." The gnome looked up at her with his blue eyes. "What travels the road but leaves no print, speaks for a man but wears no mouth, and arrives before the crow sits down?" "A letter carried by something that isn't a man." He smiled into his beard. "The price." She had known there would be one. "Name it." "A second bowl at moonrise. For a year past the year I already hold." Two bowls a night. Two years now. She thought of the cats she'd keep feeding, the cream she'd keep skimming, and a young man in the city who would open a letter before he died. "Done." Whisker held out both small hands. Rosemary went inside and took the letter from the table. Damien watched her lift it. "Him?" he said. "Him." "Will it get there?" "He said before the crow sits down." Damien breathed out through his nose. He touched the seal once with his thumb. He handed her the letter. She carried it out to the gate. Whisker tucked it inside his green coat. It vanished as if the coat had swallowed it. He drank the cream in one long pull, wiped his beard, and walked into the hedge. The leaves closed behind him without a sound. Rosemary stood at the gate a long moment. The letter was gone. The debt was heavier. Sunday was three days away, and whatever answer came back from the south, if any came, would come to a house where the banns had already been read.

Rosemary walked back from the gate and saw her reflection in the kitchen window. Curls loose. Apron stained with cream. Sunday was three days away and she had nothing to stand in but the dress she wore to market. The banns would be read to the whole village. Every eye that had watched her lie about a cousin would watch her walk in. She could not do it in an apron. Damien was splitting kindling in the yard. She did not tell him where she was going. She washed her face, put on her cleanest dress, and took the path to the village with the half-pendant in her pocket. It was the only thing of value she had left. The seamstress's door stood open to let in the light. Elara Threadwell sat by the window with a man's shirt across her lap, sewing a cuff. She was small and neat. Her hair was pinned in a bun. A measuring tape hung from her vest pocket. She looked up once at Rosemary and went back to her stitch. She had never spoken to Rosemary in the market. She had never spoken much to anyone. "I need a wedding dress by Saturday night," Rosemary said. "I know what I'm asking." Elara finished the stitch. She set the shirt down. "Sunday banns?" "Yes." "Three days." "Yes." Rosemary put the half-pendant on the table. The broken edge caught the light. "It's all I have. My mother's. The other half is spoken for." Elara looked at the pendant. She did not touch it. Her eyes went to Rosemary's face, then to her hands, then to the hem of the dress she was wearing. "Put that away," Elara said. Rosemary's throat closed. "Please. I can't stand up in front of them in this." "Put it away," Elara said again. She stood and went to a chest by the wall. She lifted the lid. Inside was folded cream linen, a length of white lace, and a bodice already cut and pinned. "I heard the banns yesterday. I started last night." Rosemary stared at her. Elara laid the pieces on the table beside the pendant. "You paid Mabel Crumb to tell a story for you and then you stood up and told the truth. My sister was married under a lie once. Nobody in this village helped her." She picked up the pendant and pressed it back into Rosemary's palm. "Stand on the stool. I need your measure." Rosemary stood on the stool. Elara worked around her with pins in her mouth and did not speak again for an hour. When Rosemary left, the sun was low and the bodice fit like a second skin. Saturday night the dress would be at her door. She walked home with the half-pendant still in her pocket. For the first time in a week, she had not spent something to buy her way forward.

Rosemary woke Thursday morning with the fitted bodice still in her mind and a colder problem in its place. The dress would come. The village would not fit in her cottage. After the banns on Sunday, half the village would walk out to see the bride's house. Neighbors always did. Her kitchen held four chairs. The parlor held a table and a churn. There was no room to pour cider for thirty, no bench to sit an old woman down. She had spent every coin on the carter's boots for Damien and the cream owed to the gnome. She could not host them. She could not stop them coming. She walked to the village before the bakery opened. The green at the edge of the market was empty. In the middle stood the park gazebo, white lattice and open sides, the roof pitched high enough to shed rain. It had held summer dances when she was small. Nobody had used it since spring. The rail was clean. The floor was swept. Someone still tended it. She went to Mabel Crumb at the bakery. Mabel was pulling loaves onto the counter with a peel. Flour dusted her forearms. She looked up and did not smile, but she did not turn away either. "I need the gazebo on Sunday," Rosemary said. "After the banns. Cider and bread for anyone who walks up. I can't do it at the cottage." Mabel set the peel down. "You've no money." "No." "And you're asking me to bake for it." "I'm asking you to sell me the bread on credit against my garden. Apples in autumn. Honey when the hive takes. I'll write it down and sign." Mabel wiped her hands on her apron. She looked at Rosemary a long moment. "The gazebo belongs to the parish. You'd need the warden's word." "Will he give it?" "He will if I ask him." Mabel picked up the peel again. "Bring me the paper tonight. I'll do the bread at cost. The cider you get from the carter — he owes his man wages and he'll take the trade." Rosemary's hands shook on the counter. "Why." "Because a shabby wedding sets a village talking again," Mabel said. "And I am tired of talking about you." Rosemary walked home with the promise in her chest and a debt in her ledger she would spend a year paying. She stopped at the green and looked at the gazebo again. It would hold thirty standing. It would hold the eyes of the village off her small kitchen. Damien was in the yard when she came through the gate. She told him where they would stand on Sunday afternoon. He nodded once and went back to the wood, and she sat on the step and began writing the note of credit before her courage cooled.

Rosemary sat at the kitchen table Thursday night with three scraps of paper in front of her. Bread from Mabel. Cider from the carter. Cream from the gnome. She had written each promise in a hurry, on whatever she had, and now the ink smudged where her sleeve had passed. She smoothed them flat and read them again. The dates did not agree. The amounts did not agree. She had promised Mabel apples in autumn and honey when the hive took, but she had also promised the carter apples for cider. She could not give the same apples twice. Damien came in from the yard with wood shavings on his shirt. He set the axe by the door and watched her a moment. He pulled out the chair opposite and sat. "Show me," he said. She pushed the papers across. He read slowly, one finger under each line. His jaw tightened at the second sheet. "You've sold this year's apples to two people." "I know." "And the cream to the gnome runs two years. You'll have nothing left for the house." "I know." He set the papers down. "Fix it now. Before Sunday. If Mabel finds out you shorted her she'll pull the gazebo before the banns dry." Rosemary took a clean sheet from the shelf. She ruled it into four columns with the back of a knife: who, what, when, against. She copied every promise she could remember. The half-pendant to the gnome. The extra cream for a year for bringing Mabel. Two more years of cream for the letter south. Bread at cost from Mabel against garden goods. The gazebo against future trade. Cider from the carter against wages owed to his man. The dress from Elara against nothing. She wrote that last line and stopped. "The dress is a gift," Damien said. "Leave it." "I owe her a kindness back." "Write it in a different column, then." She added a fifth column: owed in kind. She listed Elara there. When the sheet was full she counted. The apples were the only real conflict. She crossed the carter's line and wrote pears instead. The tree by the fence would carry. It would not carry much, but it would carry enough for one man's cider. She walked to the village before dawn. The bakery light was already on. Mabel was banking the oven. Rosemary put the sheet on the counter. "Read it," she said. "If any of it is wrong, tell me now." Mabel wiped her hands and read. She read it twice. She took a pencil from behind her ear and made one mark against the honey line. "Half of what you promise here," she said. "Your hive won't carry the rest." "Half, then." Mabel signed under her own name. Rosemary signed under hers. The paper went into Mabel's apron pocket. "Now you have a ledger," Mabel said. "Keep it where he can find it if you die." Rosemary walked home with an empty satchel and a clear head.

Rosemary walked home from the bakery with the signed ledger folded in her satchel. The paper felt heavier than the bread she had not bought. She had balanced the promises she could name. She had not counted the ones the garden had to keep. At the cottage she spread the ledger on the table and walked out to the rows. The morning was thin and grey. She counted beans first. Then onions. Then the pear tree by the fence. She wrote each yield in the margin. The apples she halved on paper for Mabel and struck through for the carter. The honey she halved again. When she added the totals she stopped and added them a second time. The garden came up short. Not by much. By a basket of onions and a jar of honey and the pears she had already promised twice in her head. She sat on the step. The cats came and pressed against her skirt. She thought about which promise to break and could not choose one. Break Mabel and the gazebo went. Break the carter and the cider went and his man's wages with it. Break the gnome and she did not want to know what broke next. She went inside and took down the green spellbook from the shelf. The cover was cracked leather over green and gold, a star wheel stamped in the center. It had belonged to the witch. She had kept it for the reversal and the wards and had not opened it since. She turned the pages slowly. She was not looking for a spell. She was looking for a page she could tear. Damien came in behind her. He watched her hand on the book. "What are you doing?" "Mabel pays well for secrets," Rosemary said. "This book is full of them." "That book killed a woman." "It also saved you." She closed it and held it against her chest. "One page. The recipe for a tonic. Nothing that names anyone. Nothing that calls anything." He was quiet a long moment. Then he nodded once. She walked back to the village before the bakery closed. Mabel was pulling loaves. Rosemary set the ledger down and, beside it, a single folded page in old ink. "Against the onions and the honey," she said. "A recipe. It's real. Test it on yourself first." Mabel wiped flour on her apron and read. Her eyes moved twice. She folded the page small and pushed it into her bodice. "Onions cleared," she said. "Honey cleared. Don't bring me another." "I won't." Mabel took the pencil from behind her ear and crossed both lines in the ledger. She signed the margin. Rosemary signed under her. She walked home with the book lighter by one page and the ledger balanced. On the step she stopped. She had paid the debt. She had opened a door she had meant to keep shut.

Rosemary put the ledger away and the spellbook back on the shelf. The door was closed on that debt. Another one was still open, and it had been open longer than she wanted to count. Damien sat at the table cleaning mud off his boots. The banns would be read the day after tomorrow. She watched him work and tried to remember if he had ever said the words she needed to hear. He had stayed. He had returned her half of the pendant. He had told the steward nothing. He had not once said he loved her. She set a cup of tea by his elbow. The three cats came in from the garden and pressed around her ankles in a tight, patient knot. "Damien." "Yes." "Say it plain. Are you marrying me because I pulled the curse out of you, or because you want to?" He set the boot down. He looked at his hands, then at her. "That's not a fair question." "It's the only one I have left." He was quiet. The kettle ticked as it cooled. Outside, the purple alligator thumped its tail against the garden fence, waiting for its apple. She did not go to it. "I owe you my life," Damien said. "I know." "That's not why." "Then say why." He stood. He walked around the table and stopped in front of her. He took her hands. His palm was warm. The fresh scar she had cut into it caught against her thumb. "I came to your door for eleven nights and would not step inside. When I finally did, I meant to leave before dawn. I did not want to want anything. You made me want to stay before you ever lifted the curse." "That's not a vow." "No." He drew a breath. "I, Damien, take you, Rosemary, to be my wife. To keep. Not to owe. If the curse had killed me last month I would have died wanting this. I want it now without it." Her eyes stung. She held on to his hands. "Say it once more on Sunday," she said. "In front of them." "I will." One of the cats climbed her skirt and settled against her hip. The alligator thumped again. She laughed once, a wet sound, and wiped her face on her sleeve. "Feed the beast," she said. "Before he eats the fence." Damien went to the barrel and took an apple. At the door he stopped. "Rosemary." "Yes." "A letter came while you were at the bakery. From the south. The carter brought it up. I left it on the sill." She turned. A folded page sat on the window ledge, sealed in dark wax she did not know. The gnome had not been due back for days. Someone else had ridden ahead of him. She reached for it.

Rosemary picked up the letter. The dark wax was smooth and unstamped. No crest. No initial. Only a thumbprint pressed into the seal while it was still warm. She turned it over. Her name was written on the front in a hand she did not know. Damien came back inside with the empty apple hand. He saw her face and set the door latch quietly. "Don't open it," he said. "I have to." "Not now. The banns are Sunday. If that's from my father's house, it will say something to make me leave. That's what it's for." "Then we should know what it says." "We should know who sent it first." She put the letter down on the table between them. The three cats came in and settled in a tight cluster on the hearth rug, watching her the way they watched mice. She was grateful for their weight in the room. "The carter," she said. "He brought it up. He'll know who gave it to him." "Go. I'll stay here with it." "You'll stay here and not touch it." "I won't touch it." She took her satchel and went down the path. The carter was at his shed, greasing an axle. He straightened when he saw her. "The letter," she said. "Who gave it to you?" "A rider. Yesterday evening at the crossroads. Southern horse, blown hard. He paid me a shilling to bring it up and not ask." "What did he look like?" "Older. Grey at the temples. Plain coat, good boots. Not a servant. He said the name on the front and I said I knew the house." "Did he give a name?" "He said tell her it's from a friend of the father. Nothing else." She thanked him and walked back with the words tight in her chest. A friend of the father. Not the father. Not the steward she had already turned away. Someone else who had ridden four days without waiting for a reply. Damien was where she had left him. The letter had not moved. The cats had not moved either. "A friend of your father sent it," she said. "Rode ahead of the gnome." His jaw set. "Then it's warning or bribe. Either way it wants me on a horse before Sunday." "I'm opening it." "Rosemary." "If I wait, I'll wait through the banns wondering. That's worse." She broke the seal. The wax cracked clean. She read it once to herself, then again. She set the page flat so he could see. "Your father is already dead," she said. "Six days ago. Before our letter ever left. This man says the estate is yours if you ride south by month's end. If you don't, a cousin takes it and will send men to be sure of you." Damien sat down slowly. One of the cats climbed into his lap. "Sunday first," he said. "Sunday first," she said. "Then we decide about the men."