Five Mates Let Me Burn, So I Rejected Them All novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Elias at the Gate

Elias was standing at my gate when I came home from the square.

He wore his grey commander's coat buttoned to the throat, and he stood with his boots planted and his hands behind his back.

He did not move when my carriage drew up.

"You're guarding my gate," I said.

"Yes."

"Nobody asked you to."

"No."

"Then go home, Commander."

"I can't," he said.

I climbed down and looked at him.

"Can't or won't?"

"Four nights ago," Elias said, "forty of my men set torches to your mill on my watch. I trained them. I put them in that yard." His jaw worked. "I will not have another one of them near your door."

"You are one of the men who told me to reject you."

"I know."

"You'd have taken Dahlia to bed in front of me."

His face did not change, but the color went out of it.

"I know that, too."

I walked past him and in through the gate.

He stayed where he was.

At nightfall it began to rain, and he was still standing there.

I put the kettle on, and I watched him through the kitchen window for as long as it took the water to boil.

His left hand was hanging at his side, and it was bleeding.

He must have torn it on a nail at the mill, hauling doors.

He had not said a word about it.

I took the kettle off the stove and went out with a lantern and a roll of clean bandage.

"Give me your hand," I said.

"It's nothing."

"It's dripping on my gravel. Give it here."

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