He Ignored My Pain, So I Left Him in Regret novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Third Wagon

On the road Clara is all honey and questions, and Rafe finally asks who burned Ivy and learns he was on the Greyhaven road that night.

The caravan left the granary hold before the sun was over the ridge, forty wagons in a line on the pass road.

Rafe rode at the front on his grey, and he did not turn around once.

I sat on the board of the third wagon with Nessa and a crate of winter ledgers I had refused to leave behind.

Clara came down the line on foot, which took her a while, because every wagon wanted to say good morning to her.

She stopped at ours with a jar of honey and a folded wool blanket.

"For your back," she said. "The boards are hard, and I remember how those bandages itched."

"Thank you."

"Was it the dark of the moon, when it happened?" she asked. "I keep trying to count the nights. Autumn, wasn't it?"

"Autumn," I said.

She nodded, patted the blanket once, and went back up the line.

Nessa waited until she was out of earshot.

"She's very kind for a woman who just got her name written in my friend's place."

"She brought honey," I said.

"She brought a question."

I looked at the jar.

It was good honey, dark and thick, the kind the hold only traded for in spring.

I put the lid back on and set it under the seat.

We made camp that night in a hollow below the pass.

The wagons circled, the cook fires went up, and the whole pack ate together in the cold.

I sat by my own fire with my back to a wheel, because the blanket had not helped and my shoulders ached in a way that was not new.

I had stopped telling anyone about it weeks ago.

Rafe came out of the dark with his coat open and stood on the other side of the flames.

Nobody else at the nearest fires was talking anymore.

"Who burned you?" he said.

It was the first time he had asked me anything in a month.

"A fire," I said.

"There was no fire at the granary. I checked the stores myself when I came in this morning. Nothing was scorched."

"Then it wasn't at the granary."

"Where, then?"

I poked the coals with a stick.

"You were away the night I lost the pup, Rafe. You'd know where better than I do. Ask where you were."

He stood very still.

The firelight caught his face, and for once there was something in it.

"The watch ledger puts me on the Greyhaven road that night," he said slowly. "There was a barn burning by the toll house. Clara had gone out to see the old road, and I went and got her."

"I know," I said. "Everyone knows. You were a hero."

"Ivy."

"You carried her out. Good. She's alive."

He opened his mouth, and Clara's voice came from the circle of wagons.

"Rafe? Your tea's gone cold."

He looked toward it.

Then he looked at me again, and I watched him decide.

"We'll speak at the Hall," he said.

He turned and walked back to her wagon.

Nessa came out from behind the wheel with two bowls of stew, and for a moment neither of us said anything.

"He asked a question and walked off before the answer," she said. "That's new and also exactly the same."

"I'd like to laugh at that."

"Laugh later. Eat now."

I took the bowl, and I finally noticed that my hands were shaking.

It was not fear.

It was that in four years of wearing his mark I had never once seen him ask me a question and wait for the answer.

Then, across the circle, a rider in a green-grey cloak came slowly into the firelight, leading a limping horse.

Every wolf in the caravan turned to look at him, and he was not one of ours.

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