Archive of Our Own

The first thing Caitlyn remembered was the sound.

  It wasn’t exactly the explosion itself, though there would be years afterward when she woke in the middle of the night with the phantom crack of it still lodged somewhere behind her teeth. It was not the horses screaming or the carriage splintering or her mother shouting her name. It was the little sound immediately before all of that, the almost imperceptible rattle of something beneath the floorboards, a tiny metallic tremor that had seemed so strange and so out of place that Caitlyn had looked down at her gloves as though she might find the answer there.

  She had been thinking about a dress. That, more than anything, seemed to haunt her. A damned dress. A blue one, if she remembered correctly, although afterward she could never decide whether it had actually been blue or whether her mind had simply painted it that way because blue was the colour she associated with the sea, and she had spent the entire journey being told that New York was near enough to it to smell salt in the air. 

  Her mother had wanted something fashionable. Her father had wanted something appropriate. Caitlyn had wanted something that did not make her look like a porcelain doll somebody had dressed for display.

  The coach rocked gently beneath her, the wheels complaining over the rutted road. Across from her, her mother was reading a letter. Her father had fallen asleep. Caitlyn had been looking through the window at the countryside, watching the fields roll past in long, golden stretches, the grass bending beneath the afternoon wind in great waves that made the whole world look alive.

  She had never seen so much empty land before. England had always felt crowded to her, even in the countryside. There were estates and hedgerows and stone walls, churches with their little graveyards and roads that curled politely between villages. Everything had a boundary. Everything belonged to someone. The land here seemed to have forgotten that it was supposed to behave.

  It made her uneasy. It also made her want to smile.

  Her mother lowered the letter and regarded her over the top of it. “You have been staring out of that window for nearly an hour,” she said, and there was fondness beneath the mild reproach.

  Caitlyn turned from the glass, smoothing the skirt of her travelling dress with one gloved hand. “It is difficult not to.”

  Her mother folded the letter carefully along its existing crease before slipping it back into her handbag. “You are not going to spend the entire journey romanticising America.”

  Caitlyn held back her rather unladylike snort. “I am not romanticising it.”

  Her mother tilted her head, inclining the same strong, sharp jawline Caitlyn had inherited. “You are.”

  And so Caitlyn lifted her chin. “I am observing it.” 

  Then she glanced toward her father. He had fallen asleep again. His hat had tipped forward over his brow, and one hand rested loosely against his stomach. He looked older when he slept. Not old, exactly, but softer, as if the sharpness that came from being a Kiramman had been set aside with his spectacles.

  Caitlyn lowered her voice. “Bà is asleep.”

  Casandra smacked her lips. “He has been asleep for the better part of two hours.”

  “Well,” Caitlyn replied. “He has been working.”

  “He has been snoring,” her mother retorted, almost fondly with a quick side glance to regard her said slumbering husband. 

  Caitlyn pressed her lips together to hold back her loud laughter. Women weren’t supposed to be so bright and bubbly. They were to smile and hide giggling and gossip between the strokes of silly fans. Still, her mother gave her a knowing look. Caitlyn still failed to suppress a smile.

  There had been a time when this was what she understood happiness to be. Small things, private things, like her mother’s hand smoothing the collar of her dress before dinner. Her father’s voice drifting from his study late at night. The three of them walking together through the gardens at home while Caitlyn complained about lessons and her mother pretended not to listen.

  Then, she had turned twenty-two. Then there was the marriage. Then, a trip to America. The order of events seemed absurd when Caitlyn looked at it too closely. She was travelling halfway across the world because her father had business to attend to, and because apparently a suitable dress for a future wife could not be purchased in England, and because the man she was expected to marry had already been selected for her.

  Her father gave a sleepy grunt from his corner. Her mother glanced toward him, then back at Caitlyn, a curl at the corner of her lips. Caitlyn smiled again despite herself.

  There had been a time when conversations like this had been ordinary. Before the dresses, before the engagement, before every pleasant little moment with her mother had begun to feel like something she ought to preserve.

  She looked down at her left hand. The ring was not there yet. That had been one of the conditions of the journey, her mother had explained when Caitlyn had protested. Her mother had insisted that nothing official would be done until they returned. The dress first, the announcements afterward. There would be photographs and parties and invitations written on heavy cream paper. There would be champagne and flowers and women smiling at Caitlyn as though they had been waiting their entire lives to watch her become somebody else’s wife.

  Caitlyn hated that she could imagine it so easily. That there would be time for announcements and photographs and champagne and all the rest of it once the business was settled. As if a marriage were business. As if her life were a ledger.

  Her mother reached across the narrow space between them and squeezed her knee. “You need not look so frightened, darling.”

  Caitlyn lifted her gaze, cool cerulean blue eyes meeting those that mirrored her own, right down to the silver at the edges. “I am not frightened.”

  Cassandra frowned, lips pressed into a firm, flat line. “You are.”

  Caitlyn now dipped her once-lifted chin, cheeks flushing, self-awareness flooding over her at the sudden acknowledgment. “I am merely uncertain.”

  Her mother smiled sadly. “I suppose that is the same thing.”

  The carriage lurched suddenly, surprising them. Caitlyn wobbled and her mother reached across the seat and caught her wrist. “Careful, darling.”

  Caitlyn huffed, immediately straightening out her skirt. “I am fine.”

  Cassandra tsked her tongue. “You nearly struck the window.”

  “I noticed.”

  Her mother gave her hand a squeeze before letting go. Outside, the horses kept running. Their hooves struck the road in a steady rhythm. Four bears, again and again. Caitlyn watched them through the glass, their dark bodies moving beneath the harness, steam rising faintly from their nostrils in the cooling air.

  Something about the sound soothed her. It reminded her of childhood. Of riding lessons. Of her mother's voice telling her to loosen her hands on the reins. A horse could feel fear through the smallest pressure. That was what her mother had said. You must not pull when you are frightened, darling. You will only frighten it more.

  Caitlyn had never forgotten.

  The carriage rushed, rattling on. Then something beneath her feet moved. It was a tiny thing, like a shiver. A metallic click.

  Caitlyn frowned. She glanced down. The floorboards were still. The carpet was still. Her mother’s shiny leather shoes were still.

  Still, it came again. 

  Caitlyn's eyebrows furrowed, bunching in the middle. Something beneath the carriage shifted. “Bàba?” She asked unsurely. Shakily. “Bà?”

  Her father woke up with a start. Caitlyn opened her mouth, but the explosion came before he could answer. The world became white. There was no great cinematic moment in which Caitlyn understood what was happening. There was only heat, then pressure, then the sensation of being lifted violently from her seat. The windows burst inward. Wood and iron and glass tore through the carriage in a storm of splinters. Her mother screamed once, and then the sound vanished beneath the thunder. 

  Caitlyn was thrown sideways, and for one strange second she thought she was flying. The air left her lungs. Something hot tore across her face. She heard her mother scream again. She struck something. Hard. 

  Then there was nothing. It wasn’t even silence. It was something worse: a ringing so complete that it swallowed every other sound. Caitlyn opened her eye. The world was white. She blinked. The white became grey. The grey became smoke. She tried to breathe and tasted ash. Her fingers moved against dirt.The world turned black. When she opened her eyes again, she was lying in the dirt. For a few seconds, she could not understand why the sky was on the ground. 

  Then she realised she was on her back. Smoke crawled across the afternoon sun. Pieces of the carriage burned nearby, the blackened metal glowing red in places. One of the horses was down, its harness tangled around its legs, while the other had broken free and was running blindly into the trees. The coach was split open like a fruit struck by an axe. One wheel still turned. The horse screamed somewhere nearby.

  Caitlyn pushed herself onto one elbow. Pain came rushing in. Her hand flew to her face. She tried to breathe. Only the pain answered her. She lifted a hand to her face. Her glove came away red. She stared at it.

  There was so, so much blood. There was so much blood. Too much.

  She stared at it with the detached horror of someone watching a stranger’s body. Then she understood. Her eye…

  Her hand went to her face again. The pain nearly blinded her. She screamed.

  “Mother!” 

  The word came out broken. There was no answer.   

  “Mother!”

  For one terrible, confused second, she thought about it: that the blood belonged to someone else. Then she touched her face again. She screamed. The sound seemed to come from somewhere far away.

  Smoke rolled across the road. Caitlyn tried to stand. Her legs folded beneath her. She crawled instead. Her dress caught on something. She tore it free.

  “Father?”

  Nothing.

  “Bà!”

  She could not see him. She could not see anything clearly. Everything had become shapes and shadows, and the left side of her world had simply vanished into darkness.

  There were men nearby. Caitlyn heard them before she saw them. One of them said something she could not make out. She turned toward the sound. “Please.”

  Nothing. 

  “Help.” Her voice cracked. “Please.”

  There were more men shouting. Boots struck the ground around her. Caitlyn tried to crawl backward, but her body would not cooperate. Her left side burned fiercely. Something sharp was embedded somewhere near her eye, and every breath made the pain flare brighter.

  Her mother. She needed her mother.

  “Mother?” No answer. “Mother!”

  A figure stepped through the smoke. Caitlyn tried to move backward and the man simply smiled. “Pretty lady.” 

  He reached for her. Caitlyn slapped his hand away. “No—”

  He caught her wrist. The fear that came then was different from the fear of the explosion. That fear had been too enormous to understand. It had hands. It had breath. It had weight.

  Caitlyn fought back. She kicked at him, skirts flying. He cursed and spat at her. His fingers dug into her skin as he dragged her backward, and Caitlyn clawed at his hands until her nails tore. She screamed until her throat burned. “No.”

  The word barely sounded like her own.

  The man only sighed. “Save your breath.”

  She tried to sit up. A hand seized her shoulder, pushing, pulling. 

  “No.” Caitlyn responded, retorting, recoiling violently. “No.”

  The man leaned over her. She could smell sweat and smoke and something sour on his breath. Something sickening. “Easy there, sweetheart.”

  She scrambled backward, bile rising up the back of her throat. “Don’t touch me.”

  He only laughed. Laughed, all low and lazy, languid. Throwing his head back, like a creature in a storybook, Scylla, the six-headed monster, stretching open her maw and preparing to snatch and swallow whole yet another sailor. 

  Caitlyn had no weapon. She had no strength. No idea where her father was. Her vision had narrowed to a strange, watery tunnel, and the man in front of her seemed to stretch and blur at the edges.

  He reached for her again. She fought. There were fingernails against her skin, the scrape of dirt, the sharp pain of her wrist being caught. Caitlyn kicked and twisted and screamed until her throat felt torn raw, but the world was still burning and nobody came.

  And then someone did. 

  A fist struck the man’s jaw hard enough to send him sprawling. His head snapped sideways as he released Caitlyn. She froze. Another figure stood between them. A girl. No, not a girl. A woman, perhaps, although Caitlyn’s addled mind could barely make sense of her. She was young, younger than the men around them, with pink hair hacked roughly around her nape and shoulders and blood splattered across her knuckles. She moved with a kind of furious certainty that Caitlyn had never seen before, the sort of movement that belonged to wild animals and storms.

  She looked young, too young to have a face like that. There was nothing gentle about her expression. She looked like something the wilderness had made when it got tired of being beautiful and decided to make something dangerous instead.

  The man staggered upright. “You little—”

  The woman hit him again. He fell. Caitlyn stared.

  When the man lunged, the woman met him halfway. There was a brief, brutal struggle. Then it was over. Caitlyn could only stare with her singular, still-seeing eye. The woman stood breathing hard, her chest rising and falling beneath a worn shirt, her hands trembling just slightly now that there was nothing left to fight. She wore trousers, fitted at her hips and through strong, stocky thighs, flared at the calf, cloaking and covering her dust-covered boots, boots that edged closer, making Caitlyn lift her chin, hand clasping at her chest, where part of her dress had torn, revealing slivers of smooth, porcelain skin, not worn and warmed by the sun, unlike this stranger. This stranger with her flushed, freckled face and soft, sun-kissed skin. 

  She looked down at Caitlyn. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then the woman's expression changed. The anger disappeared. What remained was something Caitlyn would remember long after she forgot almost everything else about that afternoon. Confusion. Concern.

  “Oh,” the woman whispered, wincing. “Shit.” 

  A woman rarely spoke in such a manner back home, maybe in private, but, still, it was not polite, not proper. Caitlyn couldn’t help the scoff that escaped her throat, scraping the soft, sensitive parts of her mouth, the tips of her top teeth, whistling past the gap in them the other girls always teased and taunted her for.   

  “Hell.” Caitlyn held back another scoff, or a snort, as the woman dropped to her knees beside her, knocking knobby bones and kicking and dirt and whatever only debris. “Hey. Hey, look at me.”

  Caitlyn tried. She really did. But the sky was spinning, the smoke was thick, and the woman's face kept swimming in and out of focus.

  “Don’t,” Caitlyn whispered. “Please.” 

  The woman stopped immediately. “All right.” Her hands lifted, palms open. “I won’t touch you, sweetheart.” 

  Sweetheart. 

  Her heart squeezed, constricting in her chest, but she forced herself to swallow. There was blood running down her cheek, furthering her next point. “Frankly,” she started. “I cannot see.”

  The woman’s face tightened. “I know.”

  “My…” Caitlyn murmured softly. Slowly. “My mother.”

  The woman looked away for half a second. That was enough. Caitlyn understood instantly.

  She could only shake her head, stiff and stock-still, every part of her still sore and screaming. “No.”

  The other woman swallowed slowly, thickly, like the tide that caused a ship to rock in a stormy sea, the same ship she would have to board to get her back home. “I am sorry.”

  She shook her head again. “No.” 

  Her voice broke, the bile coming up to the base of her throat, her breakfast—smoked salmon and soft-boiled eggs, fresh fruit of strawberry and raspberry preserves, Earl Grey tea with milk—she had this morning. It hit her then. The memory of the moment. The sights, the sounds, the scraping against the porcelain plate, the sensation of food on the tip of her tongue, caught in that goddamned gap between her two front teeth.  

  This morning, Caitlyn had eaten an egg with a silver spoon. She remembered that much. She remembered the way the yolk trembled when she cut into it, still soft and golden beneath the white, and the little dish of raspberry preserves sitting beside her toast. She remembered her mother complaining that the tea had gone lukewarm and her father reading the newspaper as though nothing in the world could possibly surprise him anymore. She remembered the sunlight coming through the tall windows and laying pale squares across the breakfast table, remembered the smell of butter and black tea and freshly baked bread.

  She remembered being annoyed because her mother had told her, for the third time, that she ought to finish her breakfast. You have a long journey ahead of you, darling.

  At the time, Caitlyn had thought she was talking about the journey to New York. She had not known that, by now, she would be remembering the taste of raspberry jam as though it belonged to another lifetime. Her father had barely looked from his newspaper the whole time her mother had been talking and—

  Her breath caught, sudden and scraping. “My…” She tried now, barely a croak. “My father.”

  The woman did not answer this time around. She had no words of comfort or closure. But Caitlyn knew. She knew. 

  Caitlyn closed her eyes. She had been raised to be composed. She had been taught how to sit through funerals without crying, how to receive condolences without appearing overwhelmed, how to speak politely to men she disliked and smile at women she distrusted. She had been taught that a Kiramman did not make a spectacle of herself.

  Somehow, none of it survived the explosion.

  Caitlyn shook her head again. “No.”

  “I know.”

  “No.”

  The woman did not argue. She simply remained there in the dirt. Caitlyn began to cry. She hated herself for it. She had been taught better.

  Kirammans did not weep in front of strangers. Kirammans did not collapse. Kirammans did not claw at their own skirts or clutch another woman’s coat like a frightened child.

  But Caitlyn was no longer certain what a Kiramman was supposed to be. Her mother was dead. Her father was dead. Her home was across an ocean. The future waiting for her in England had disappeared in the same fire.

  She began to sob. The woman stayed where she was. She did not touch her. She did not tell her to stop. She simply sat in the dirt beside her while the smoke curled through the trees and the ruined carriage crackled behind them.

  After a while, Caitlyn felt something warm settle over her shoulders. A coat. The woman’s clean, worn and yet warm. Caitlyn clutched it with shaking fingers. The fabric smelled of smoke, leather, and something sharp and green. Pine, perhaps.

  Caitlyn pulled it around herself. It was too large. She did not care.

  “What’s your name?” Caitlyn whispered, her throat tight and voice trembling from the effort. 

  The woman hesitated, then parted her pursed lips, offering one simple, short word. “Vi.”

  Caitlyn blinked. “Vi?”

 The woman, Vi, quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah.”

  She blinked again. Her bloodied eye burned and her brow furrowed, vision momentarily flashed black, then red. “That is rather short.”

  A tiny smile tugged at Vi’s mouth, stretching a tiny, tight scar she had on her upper lip. “Got a problem with it?”

  Despite everything, Caitlyn almost laughed. “No.”

  Vi looked at her for another long moment, then she glanced toward the wreckage. “We need to get you somewhere safe.”

  Caitlyn’s fingers tightened around the coat. “I cannot walk.”

  Caitlyn turned to stare at her. To study her. There was something strange about Vi's face. It was not pity. Caitlyn knew pity. She had been surrounded by it her entire life. This was different. It was recognition, as though Vi knew what it meant to look at something broken and refuse to look away.

  Vi frowned, lips pressed together. They were

almost pouted, a pretty pale shade of pink. “I know.”

  Caitlyn forced herself to look away from this stranger’s mouth, setting her gaze on the ground, anywhere but the wreckage of the overturned carriage, now her parents’ coffin. “I do not know you.”

  Another tug at the corner of Vi’s lips, the tightening of that tiny scar. “I know that, too.” Caitlyn looked up at her and Vi’s expression suddenly softened. “You don’t have to trust me yet.”

  The words settled between them.

  Trust. She thought, a luxury she didn’t have, not at home, not here, either. 

  Truth. Something she couldn’t even offer herself when she found herself still and silent between girls her age as they slowly sipped tea, giggling and giddy about boys. Boys, who were boring and bothersome. Boys, who she did not like, not one bit. Boys, one of whom she would have to marry and bear a rowdy bunch of children for. For, not with. 

  Time. Something she thought she had, but didn’t now. Something her parents didn’t have. Something she— 

  Caitlyn’s eyes began to close. The last thing she remembered before darkness took her again was Vi carefully lifting her, one arm beneath her knees and the other behind her back, holding her as though she were something precious despite all the blood, despite the smoke, despite the fact that they had met only minutes ago.

  When Vi lifted her from the ground, Caitlyn buried her face against the woman’s shoulder. The world tilted. Smoke curled through the trees. Somewhere behind them, a horse broke free from the wreckage and bolted into the wilderness, hooves hammering against the earth.

  Caitlyn heard it running. For a while, she heard its hooves, fast and furious and fervid. Free, like watching wild horses.

For the first three days, Vi was convinced the woman was going to die.

  She did not say it aloud, because Vander had a particular look he gave people who spoke too soon about things they could not possibly know, and because there was something about the way Caitlyn lay beneath the blankets that made the words feel like a curse. But she thought it every time the girl went too still, every time her breathing became so shallow that Vi had to lean close enough to feel it against her cheek, every time the fever climbed and Caitlyn’s skin grew hot beneath her palm.

  The cabin was barely a cabin anymore. Half the roof had collapsed years ago, the windows were nothing but empty black squares, and the floorboards groaned beneath every footstep, but it had four walls and a fireplace that still drew smoke reasonably well, which made it a palace compared to sleeping beneath the open sky. They had stretched canvas over the broken portion of the roof and weighted it down with stones, and when the wind came hard through the trees it made the whole thing shudder and snap like a ship’s sail.

  Vi hated the sound. It reminded her that they were only pretending to be safe. She sat beside Caitlyn on the third night with a damp cloth in one hand and a pistol within reach of the other, watching the fire turn the walls amber and red. Vander had gone out to check the horses. Sevika was somewhere beyond the cabin, keeping watch. The others had made camp farther off, because there was only so much room around the little wreck of a place and because Vi had made it very clear that she did not want anybody crowding Caitlyn, especially not men.

  Caitlyn had been frightened of all of them at first. She had screamed when Mylo tried to help carry her inside. She had recoiled so violently from Claggor that she nearly tore open the stitches at her temple. Even Ekko, who was only a boy and had done nothing but stand in the doorway, had made her curl in on herself beneath the blankets.

  Vander was the only exception. For reasons Vi could not quite understand, Caitlyn had tolerated him from the beginning. Perhaps it was his voice, low and patient and rough around the edges.

Perhaps it was the way he never reached for her without asking. Perhaps there was something in him that reminded her of the father she had lost.

  Whatever it was, Vi was grateful for it.

  Still, Vi had been the one who stayed. She had stayed through the first night, and the second, and the third. She had stayed while Caitlyn drifted in and out of feverish sleep, while Vander changed the bandages, while the girl muttered things that made no sense and sometimes called for her mother in a voice so small that Vi had to leave the room for a moment just to breathe.

  She had stayed because every time she tried to leave, Caitlyn's hand would move across the blanket, seeing, searching. And, so, Vi stayed.

  On the fourth day, Caitlyn opened her good eye and looked directly at her. Vi was sitting cross-legged beside the bedroll, trying to clean blood from the cuff of her shirt.

  “You’re staring,” Caitlyn whispered, rough and ragged. Raspy. 

  Vi looked up. Caitlyn’s voice was so weak that for a moment Vi thought she had imagined it. Then she smiled. It was not much of a grin but a grimace. 

  “Yeah,” Vi said, setting the rag aside. “Guess I am.”

  Caitlyn’s brow furrowed, her features crinkling. “Why?”

  Vi tilted her head back, the absence of that scratchy slide against her skin reminding her she had left her hat on the chair over in the corner. “Making sure you’re still breathing.”

  Caitlyn briefly considered that, appearing thoughtful. “I assure you, I am.”

  Vi leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. “Good.”

  Caitlyn closed her eye again, either sighing or scoffing; Vi couldn’t tell which. “Your bedside manner is appalling.”

  Vi snorted. “Yeah, well,” she said slowly. “Nobody’s ever exactly accused me of being a nurse.”

  For the first time since the explosion, Caitlyn made a sound that was almost a laugh. Almost. And it hurt her.

  Vi saw it immediately. The smile vanished from Caitlyn’s face as she winced, one hand curling against her ribs.

  “Easy.” Vi was beside her before she could think. “Easy.”

  Caitlyn flinched, unblinking. Involuntarily. 

  Vi stopped. She kept her hands suspended between them for a second before slowly lowering them. “Sorry.”

  Caitlyn breathed through the pulse of pain. “I am all right.”

  Vi held back another snort. “You don’t have to say that every five minutes.”

  Caitlyn opened her eye again, lashes fluttering. “I am beginning to suspect you do not believe me.”

  Vi only shook her head, sighing, yet smiling too. “I don’t.” 

  That earned her another teeny tiny smile and a jumping jolt to her chest, like the grass under a galloping horse’s gait. 

The fever broke two days later.

  It left Caitlyn exhausted. She slept for almost an entire day afterward, waking only when Vander made her drink water or Vi coaxed broth between her lips. When she finally woke properly, the room felt different. The air was cooler. The fire was lower. Outside, birds were making their morning racket in the trees. Vi sat beside the doorway sharpening a knife. Sure. Why not? 

  Caitlyn, still sore and sleepy, stared at the ceiling, blinking. “I had a dream.”

  Vi looked over. “What about?”

  “My mother,” Caitlyn croaked out. 

  Vi’s hand stopped.

  Caitlyn’s eye remained fixed on the broken roof overhead. “She was braiding my hair.”

  Vi swallowed slowly. “She used to do that?”

  Caitlyn nodded. “Sometimes.” Her fingers curled against the blanket. “It was one of the only times we were alone together.”

  Vi did not know what to say, so she said the first thing that came into her head. “My mom used to braid mine.”

  Caitlyn turned her head, tilting it too. Listening. Waiting. Wanting. 

  Vi looked back down at the knife. “Back when I had hair down to my waist.”

  Caitlyn's eyebrow lifted, the sharp slope of her nose scrunching up. “You?”

  Vi grinned. “Yeah, me.”

  Caitlyn’s eye narrowed. “I find that difficult to imagine.”

  Vi raised one eyebrow. “Everyone says that.”

  “I mean, you seem rather...” Caitlyn trailed off, trying to choose the proper, posh word. 

  Vi’s other eyebrow shot up, joining the other. “Violent?”

  Caitlyn’s mouth twitched, trying not to smile. “I was going to say unruly.”

  Vi shrugged. “Same thing.”

  Caitlyn laughed softly, and Vi found herself smiling too.

  “My mom used to put ribbons in it,” Vi continued after a moment. “Pink ones. Blue sometimes. Powder liked the blue.”

  Caitlyn inclined her head, sharing that sharp, starting jawline of hers. “Powder?”

  “My little sister,” she supplied. 

  Caitlyn’s expression softened, familiar. Familial. “She is alive?”

  Vi looked toward the fire, sniffing as she reached to scratch at the sunburned patch on her nose. “Yeah.”

  The answer came too quickly. Caitlyn noticed. Vi knew she did.

  “She helps around camp,” Vi added. “She has got a knack for finding things nobody else sees.”

  “Hmm,” Caitlyn hummed noncommittally, with another wrinkle of her nose. “That sounds… useful.”

  “She’d like you,” Vi added again, this time more slowly. 

  Caitlyn looked rather startled, or maybe scandalized, the way she did when Vi or Vander had to lift her light, loose chemise to check her wounds or change her bandages. Vi really didn’t get these proper ladies and their purity nonsense. “I am not certain that is possible.”

  Vi only smirked, another thing that made Caitlyn appear stunned. “You’re funny when you’re half-dead.”

  Caitlyn gave her a stiff nod, eye sharp. “I shall have to remember that.”

  Vi laughed quietly. Outside, the wind moved through the trees. It sounded almost like the sea.

  By the second week, Caitlyn could sit upright. By the third, she could stand, though only for a little while. The first time she tried, Vi was beside her, ready to catch her if she fell, but Caitlyn glared at the offered hand.

  “I can do it myself,” she had grumbled, gasping when pressure presented at her side when she took a step. 

  Vi fought the urge to push her back onto the cot, or carry her. Her cheeks were flushed. She must have been sunburnt again. “I know.”

  Caitlyn turned her gaze on her, glare still as sharp even with just one eye. “Then stop looking at me as though I am about to collapse.”

  Vi tsked her tongue, the way she did while riding. “You’re swaying, sweetheart.”

  Over time, Caitlyn had stopped protesting that nickname. Now, it just amused, or annoyed, her. “I am not.”

  “You are.”

  “I am not.”

  Vi crossed her arms, frowning. 

  Caitlyn stood perfectly still for approximately three seconds before her knees buckled. Vi caught her. Caitlyn’s fingers clutched the front of Vi's shirt. Neither of them spoke.

  Then, Vi grinned. “I told you.”

  Caitlyn looked furious, flames in her still-seeing eye. “I rather dislike you, Violet,” she drawled, the drawing almost drooping, dropping, when she said Vi’s whole name, which she had learned on one of those scary, sleepless nights, when she was sweating from the fever, floated scarlet, and Vi told her tales and sold her stories, trying to keep her amused, keep her awake. Keep her alive. 

  Vi rolled her eyes, ignoring the somersault her heart did at the swirling, swooping way Caitlyn said her name, her vowels like velvet. “Yeah, yeah.”

  Vi helped her back down to the cot, also ignoring the way her heart stalled when Caitlyn’s soft, slender fingers brushed her bigger, bruised ones. 

  The next morning, she went to the river. It was colder now. The leaves had begun turning at their edges, gold and rust creeping through the green, and the mornings had that particular bite that meant winter was waiting somewhere just beyond the hills. Vi filled two buckets and hauled them back to the cabin, then went out again. She gathered ginseng because Vander had told her it might help.

She also gathered willow bark, mint, and a few other herbs she knew by sight and a few she only vaguely remembered Powder mentioning once.

  When she returned, Caitlyn was sitting near the fire wearing nothing but the bloodstained chemise she had been kept in since the robbery, wrapped in two blankets and looking deeply offended by the entire concept of being cold.

  Vi stopped in the doorway and let out a shrill, sharp wolf whistle, one that already had Caitlyn grimacing and grumbling under her breath. “You look miserable, sweetheart.” 

  Caitlyn glanced up, glaring at Vi already. “I am.”

  Vi simply nodded. “Good.”

  Caitlyn blinked, as if truly trying to be offended. As if she hadn’t been keeping the company of bandits and outlaws for weeks now. “I beg your pardon?”

  Vi set the herbs down. “I mean, good that you’re miserable,” she said slowly. “That means you’re awake enough to complain.”

  Caitlyn stared at her. Then, despite herself, she smiled.

  The bath took most of the afternoon. Vi had found the old steel tub beneath a pile of rotting boards in one of the back rooms, scrubbed it until her arms ached, and hauled bucket after bucket of heated water into it. Caitlyn stared at the tub as though Vi had presented her with some medieval instrument of torture.

  She sniffed, nose wrinkled. “You expect me to bathe in that?”

  Vi leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest and her sly smile crooked. “You’ve been sleeping in the same shirt for three weeks.”

  Caitlyn looked down at herself, then sighed. Even her sighs were somehow polite. “Point taken.”

  “And before you ask,” Vi continued. “Yes, the water is clean.”

  Caitlyn turned to glare at her over the slope of a skinny shoulder, thinner than she was when first brought back to camp. That still startled Vi a bit, honestly. “I was not going to ask.”

  “You were thinking it,” Vi replied, retorting. 

  “I was thinking,” Caitlyn muttered. “That I have bathed in considerably nicer circumstances.”

  Vi smirked now, the corner of her lips curling up helplessly. “You probably have marble floors, huh?”

  Caitlyn looked at her with complete seriousness. “They’re granite, actually.”

  Vi blinked, then she burst out laughing. It was the first real laugh Caitlyn had heard from her. It filled the broken cabin, warm and rough and startlingly bright.

  Caitlyn smiled. And, for a moment, neither of them remembered the blood.

  The bath was slow. Vi kept her eyes lowered whenever Caitlyn needed to remove the chemise, turning away when she could and giving her every bit of privacy the ruined cabin allowed. When Caitlyn finally settled into the warm water, she let out a breath so deep that Vi could practically see the exhaustion leaving her.

  “There,” Vi said quietly. “Better?”

  Caitlyn nodded, small and simple. “Much.”

  Vi knelt beside the tub. She washed Caitlyn’s hair carefully, avoiding the injured side of her face, working her fingers gently through the strands. There were patches where the hair had been burned nearly to the roots.

  Vi hated looking at them. She hated even more what she had to do. “You’re going to need to cut this.”

  Caitlyn’s good eye met hers through the steam, already knowing in the way she always was. “How much?”

  Vi hesitated. “Some.”

  Caitlyn nodded, turning her gaze back to the still-steaming water and the swirling spirals of soapy suds.  “Then do it.”

  Vi fetched the scissors from one of the bundles of grooming supplies. She cut slowly. Long pieces of singed hair fell into her lap and onto the floor, blackened at the ends. Caitlyn watched them disappear. When it was done, her hair fell just below her shoulders.

  Vi ran her fingers through it once, careful and gentle. “It looks nice.”

  Caitlyn looked skeptical, long jaw slack, then set and strong. “You are lying.”

  “Maybe a little,” Vi said, then straightened, rolling one shoulder, sore from dragging buckets of warm water uphill all morning. “But I think it suits you, sweetheart.” 

  Caitlyn smiled. Vi smiled back. When her gaze went back down, she saw the scratches on Caitlyn's hands. The smile disappeared. They were healing, but Vi remembered exactly where they had come from. She remembered the man on top of her. The blood. The way Caitlyn had screamed.

  For a moment, Vi was somewhere else. She was younger. She was back with Deckard. She could feel the old grip around her wrist. Could remember the way she had stared at her own hand afterward, horrified by how small it looked, how useless. She had shaved her scalp afterward, shorn it short and scruffy on one side. She had bound her chest so tightly that breathing hurt. She had stopped wearing the ribbons her mother gave her. Stopped letting anyone touch her hair. Anything that could be pulled, anything that could be grabbed, anything that made her feel soft or pretty suddenly seemed like another weakness somebody could use against her.

  Vi blinked, back in the present, as a drop of water brushed the neck of her hand, the hand she had draped casually over the edge of the silver tin-tub. 

  Caitlyn was watching her, curious. Concerned. “Are you all right?”

  Vi looked down at her hands, then back up at that beautiful blue eye. “Yeah.”

  Caitlyn waited, tilting her head, that knowing glint in her gaze again. How could this girl be intimidating while sitting naked in a makeshift tube? 

  Vi sighed. “Not really.”

  She did not explain. She did not have to. Caitlyn only turned her hand beneath the water and let her fingers rest near Vi’s. Their hands were touching,  just close, but Vi understood.

  Afterward, Vi wrapped her in towels and helped her into one of Vi's old overshirts and a pair of trousers that had once belonged to Mylo or Ekko, neither of whom was likely to claim them now.

  They were far too large. Caitlyn looked ridiculous. Vi loved it.

  “You look like a scarecrow,” she said for the second time as Caitlyn scowled. 

  Caitlyn tugged at the oversized sleeves. “I sure

feel like one.”

Vi laughed. Then, she found the ribbons. There were only a few left. She had kept them tucked away for years, shoved into the bottom of an old tin with things she could not bear to throw away and could not bear to look at. Caitlyn picked one, a pretty pale pink with tiny violets embroidered across the edge.

  Vi went still, shocked. “That one?”

  Caitlyn nodded, shrugging. “If you don’t mind.”

  Vi looked at the ribbon for a long moment, blinking, and then she smiled. “My mom made that.”

  Caitlyn's expression softened. “She did?”

  Vi nodded. “Yeah.” 

  She sat behind her and began to braid Caitlyn's hair. Her fingers remembered before her mind did. Three sections. Cross. Pull. Three sections again.

  The cabin was quiet except for the fire and the wind worrying at the canvas above them.

  “My mom used to do this,” Vi said softly. “When I was younger.” She stopped momentarily, swallowing. “And then I did it for Pow, when Mom was gone.” 

  “Oh, so did mine.” Caitlyn’s voice was soft, her memory like a melody. “When I was younger, as well. Of course, I had nursemaids and nannies to tend to me, but I liked the time we had together. I would sit at the vanity and she’d brush my hair, then braid it. Sometimes, when she was finished, she kissed the top of my head.”

  She touched the spot now, as if feeling the press of her mother’s lips. Vi sometimes recalled her mother’s scent—grit and grease, coal and crops—and the creak of the door to their small, simple house, back in Roanoke Ridge. 

  Vi finished the braid. She tied the pink ribbon around it. For a moment, she simply looked at Caitlyn. The woman who had arrived in a carriage with blood on her gloves and a life waiting for her across an ocean had somehow become this: sitting barefoot on a wooden stool in Vi’s oversized shirt and stolen trousers instead of a skirt, hair freshly washed, a faded pink ribbon resting against her shoulder.

  Caitlyn looked back at her. “What?”

  It always sounded like “wot?” with the addition of her English accent. Vi wrinkled her nose every time, wishing she could bottle that sound up and replay whenever she was down, wishing to get drunk to it, to—

  Vi shook her head. “Nothing.”

  But it was not nothing. It was the first time Vi understood that surviving something did not always mean returning to the person you had been before it. Sometimes, you came out different. Sometimes,  you came out softer. Sometimes,  you came out scarred and shaken and still breathing.

  And, sometimes, if you were lucky, someone sat beside you in the wreckage and stayed. Vi had spent most of her life believing that wild things were meant to run. Caitlyn was teaching her, slowly, that sometimes they chose to stay.

By the time the leaves had turned completely gold, Caitlyn could walk without leaning on anyone.

  Vi noticed it on an ordinary morning. There was no grand revelation, no sudden moment in which Caitlyn threw off the blankets and declared herself healed. It was simply that Vi woke before sunrise, stirred the fire, and looked up to find Caitlyn already standing at the doorway of the cabin with her coat pulled around her shoulders, watching the dawn come up over the hills.

  For a second, Vi forgot to breathe. Caitlyn was still too thin, light and lithe. She still moved carefully, still favoured her injured side when she was tired, and the scar that disappeared beneath the edge of her hair was something Vi had learned not to stare at, though sometimes she caught herself doing exactly that. Her hair had grown enough that the shorter pieces no longer looked quite so strange, and she had taken to tying it back with the pale pink ribbon whenever they went riding. 

  The ribbon had faded slightly from too much washing. Vi liked it that way. It made it look lived-in.

  Caitlyn turned when she heard her moving. “You are awake early.”

  Vi rubbed a hand over her face, smearing the dirt and dust from the morning’s ride, and sat up from beneath the blanket. “So are you, sweetheart.”

  “I could not sleep,” Caitlyn stated simply, shrugging. These days, her discomfort was a dull, dismal affair. She had gotten used to tin baths and hardtack, to the dust and dirt of the desert, to burnt coffee and basking in the hot, humid sun. 

  Vi tilted her head. “Nightmares?”

  Caitlyn was quiet, then she nodded. Vi did not ask what kind. She had learned that some questions were doors, and you ought to let the person on the other side decide when to open them.

  Instead, she got up and crossed the cabin. The morning was cold enough that Caitlyn’s breath came out white. Vi shrugged off her own coat and settled it over Caitlyn’s shoulders. “You’ll freeze.”

  Caitlyn looked at her, facial features contoured and crinkled. “You are already freezing.”

  Vi shrugged the way Caitlyn had a moment before. “Yeah, but I’m tougher.”

  Caitlyn frowned, lips a firm, flat line. “That is not how temperature works.”

  “Don’t ruin this for me, sweetheart,” Vi drawled. 

  Caitlyn smiled. It was a small thing, but Vi had learned the shape of her smiles. There was the polite one she had worn when they first met, the careful little curve of her mouth that belonged to a woman raised around people she did not particularly trust. There was the crooked one that appeared whenever Vi said something stupid. There was the rare, bright one that made her look younger. And then there was this one, the one that belonged only to mornings like this.

  Vi reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Caitlyn’s ear. Caitlyn did not flinch or fumble. That still mattered. It mattered more than Vi could explain. 

  The first time Vi had touched her after the explosion, Caitlyn had gone rigid. The first time she had helped wash her hair, Caitlyn had trembled so badly that Vi had nearly called Vander. The first time Caitlyn had fallen asleep with her head against Vi’s shoulder, Vi had stayed awake for three hours because she was terrified that moving would wake her.

  Now, Caitlyn leaned into her hand, slightly and simply. “I received a letter yesterday,” Caitlyn said.

  Vi lowered her hand. “From England?”

  Caitlyn nodded slowly. “From Jayce.”

  Vi nodded back. She knew about Jayce, the big, broad-shouldered man who was Caitlyn’s brother in all but blood. She knew about the lawyer and the money and the wills, though Caitlyn had never said much about what any of it meant. She had enough money now that they could probably leave the cabin tomorrow and never sleep beneath a leaking canvas roof again.

  Vi had never asked her to. Caitlyn had never offered.

  “I told him I am alive,” Caitlyn continued. “He has arranged for a lawyer to handle everything regarding my parents’ estate.” She sighed. “It’ll be a lot of work to convince a lawyer that an unwed daughter should inherit her father’s affairs, but Jayce can do it. I know he can.” 

  Vi tilted her head, looking back, but not letting Caitlyn’s eyes. Not yet, anyway. “And?”

  Caitlyn looked out at the hills, golden and gleaming in the morning light. “And I suppose I am free.”

  Vi's stomach tightened. The word sounded strange. Free.

  It was the sort of word that could mean anything.

  “Are you going back there?” She asked, brief and blunt, no bearing around the bush, no polite, pompous way of wording it like the British high society seemed to. “To England?” 

  Caitlyn did not answer immediately. The sun was beginning to rise behind the trees, turning the mist gold. Finally, she shook her head. “No.”

  Vi scoffed. It startled Caitlyn, who shifted, looking over her shoulder. “Well.” She looked down at the floorboard, rough and rotting in some parts. “Good.”

  Caitlyn glanced at her. “That was very quick.”

  Vi shrugged. “I didn’t want to waste time.”

  Caitlyn snorted. That was something she did now, apparently. “You are rather confident.”

  Vi’s smirk was as sly as ever. “So I’ve been told.”

  Caitlyn smiled again, then she reached into the pocket of her coat, retrieved something, then revealing it.  “I brought you something.”

  Vi frowned. “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to,” Caitlyn replied, still unaware that gifts around here often came with a price, owed favors and debts. “Why else?” 

  Caitlyn pulled out a small object wrapped in cloth. Vi stared at it. Her first thought was that it was a gun. Her second was that it was something expensive. Her third, which arrived when Caitlyn unfolded the cloth, was that she had absolutely no idea what to do with it. 

  A silver brooch lay in Caitlyn’s palm. It was delicate, old-fashioned, shaped like a flower. Vi recognised it immediately. “That’s your mother’s.” 

  Caitlyn nodded, staring down at it serenely. Solemnly. “They recovered it from the wreckage.”

  Vi swallowed. “I washed it.”

  “I know,” Caitlyn replied. 

  Vi’s head snapped up, swallowing thickly. “You knew?”

  “I saw the way you looked at it.”

  Vi’s throat tightened. She remembered that day. She and Powder and Ekko had gone back after the fire had died, picking through the wreckage with gloved hands. They had found Caitlyn’s father’s handkerchief, embroidered with the Kiramman crest, half buried beneath the splintered remains of the carriage. 

  They had found the brooch later. Vi had washed the blood from both herself. It had taken hours. She had scrubbed until her fingers hurt. She had not known why. She only knew that Caitlyn deserved to receive something clean, something that did not smell like death.

  Caitlyn held the brooch toward her. “I think my mother would have liked you.”

  Vi laughed softly. “You didn’t even know me.”

  “She was very fond of stubborn women.”

  “Then she’d hate me.”

  Caitlyn tilted her head, always thinking, thoughtful. “I doubt that.”

Vi took the brooch. It was cool in her palm. For a long moment, she simply looked at it, then she closed her fingers around it. “Thank you.”

  Caitlyn stepped closer. “You are very welcome, Violet.”

  The silence between them had changed over the weeks. At first, silence had been something necessary, something Vi used because she was afraid of saying the wrong thing. Then it became comfortable, then familiar. Now, it felt almost like another language.

  Vi reached for Caitlyn’s hand. Caitlyn let her take it. She didn’t flinch or flush or fumble for an excuse. She stood, still and silent. Their fingers intertwined. They didn’t pull or push each other away. 

  They stayed. 

  Beyond the cabin, the horses moved through the meadow. The morning mist was lifting. One of the younger ones broke into a sudden run, kicking up dirt and leaves as it went, and the others followed, thundering across the field in a loose, laughing line.

  Caitlyn watched them. “They are beautiful.”

  Vi looked at her instead, at the sharp yet soft lines of her face, at the outline of her body in another one of Vi’s shirts. “Yeah.”

  Caitlyn turned, frowning only slightly. “You are not looking at the horses.”

  “Nope,” Vi replied, popping the p. 

  A blush crept across Caitlyn's cheeks. “Vi.”

  “What?” Vi asked innocently, pouting her lips. 

  “You are staring,” Caitlyn stated simply, as if saying the sky was blue or that wheat was golden. 

 “Yeah,” Vi said back. “So?” 

  Caitlyn shook her head, but she was smiling. Then she stepped closer. There was a question in her eyes. Vi understood it immediately. She waited. She wanted. 

  Caitlyn closed the distance, choosing this time for herself. The kiss was soft, nothing like the violence that had brought them together. Nothing hurried or hasty. Nothing terrible or taken.  

  Caitlyn’s hand came up to Vi's cheek, careful around the old scar near her jaw, and Vi’s fingers settled at her waist. For a few seconds, the world became very small. There was only the warmth of Caitlyn’s mouth, the cold morning air, the smell of smoke lingering in Vi’s clothes, and the quiet little sound Caitlyn made when she pulled back.

  Vi rested her forehead against hers. “You sure?”

  Caitlyn smiled right back at her. “Yes.”

  “You don't have to be,” Vi reminded her. 

  “I know,” Caitlyn replied. 

  That was the thing. She knew.

  Vi closed her eyes. Caitlyn’s thumb brushed over her cheek. “I am not going back,” she whispered.

  Vi opened her eyes. “To England?”

  “To the life they chose for me.” Vi’s chest tightened. Caitlyn looked toward the hills. “I spent so long believing that surviving meant returning to what I had been promised. The marriage. The family. The house. The expectations.” She took a breath. “Then everything was taken from me, and I thought that meant I had lost everything.”

  Vi squeezed her hand. “But you didn't.”

  “No.” Caitlyn looked to her. At her. “I found something else.”

  Vi smiled so hard her cheeks were surely as chapped as her thighs when she rode bareback. “Yeah?”

  The answer was as short and simple as the first time Caitlyn heard her name. 

  “Yes.”

  The wind moved through the grass. The horses ran again, wild and wonderful across the open land, their manes flying behind them as the morning broke over the hills. Caitlyn watched them for a while, then she looked back at Vi. “Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we had never met?”

  “All the time.”

  “And?”

  Vi considered it. “I don’t like the answer.”

  Caitlyn’s expression softened quite suddenly. “Neither do I.”

  Vi pulled her closer. For years, she had thought freedom was something you fought for, something bloody and brutal. Something you stole with your fists and defended with your teeth. She had never imagined it could look like this, with a woman beside her in the morning light, a pink ribbon fluttering from dark hair, a silver brooch warm in her pocket. A broken cabin that had somehow become home. The sound of horses running through the grass.

  And Caitlyn, alive. Caitlyn, choosing. Caitlyn, staying.

  Vi kissed her forehead. “Come on.”

  Caitlyn raised an eyebrow. “Where?”

  “Breakfast,” Vi said. “Burnt coffee and eggs. Benzo’s special.” 

  Caitlyn sighed almost mournfully. “That is considerably less romantic.”

  “I never said I was romantic,” Vi said, tsking her tongue. 

  “No,” Caitlyn said, slipping her fingers through Vi’s. You have said quite the opposite.”

  They started back toward the cabin. Behind them, the horses continued across the meadow, hooves pounding the earth, wild and weightless beneath the widening sky. 

  Vi looked back only once. She thought about the wreckage. About blood and fire and broken wood. About the little pink ribbon she had once buried in a tin because she could not bear to remember what it meant.

  Then she looked at Caitlyn. Some things survived the burning. Some things even grew. And Vi had spent her whole life believing that wild horses could never be held, that if you tried to keep something beautiful it would only kick and buck and break itself against the fence.

  But Caitlyn was not something to be held. She was someone who had chosen to stay. And Vi thought, perhaps for the first time, that there was a difference.

The first time Caitlyn saw the eye patch, she thought it was black.

  It was sitting on the edge of the little wooden table beside her bedroll, folded neatly in half as though it had been there all along, though Caitlyn knew perfectly well that it had not. The cabin was still dark with morning, the fire reduced to a bed of red coals, and pale winter light was beginning to seep through the gaps in the canvas stretched across the broken roof. Dust drifted lazily through the beams of sunlight, turning and tumbling in the air.

  Caitlyn stared at it for a long moment, then she looked toward Vi. Vi was asleep in the chair beside the fire, or pretending to be. She had become very good at pretending to sleep.

  Caitlyn pushed herself upright, slowly enough that the mattress did not creak. Her body was stronger now, but there were still mornings when every old wound seemed to remember itself at once. The burns along her side pulled when she moved. The scar around her eye ached in the cold. Her hands were still tender in places, and the muscles in her legs complained if she stood too quickly.

  Still, she was alive. That had become enough. Most mornings, anyway. 

  She reached for the patch. It was softer than she expected. The fabric was a deep, dark brown, almost black in the dim light, made from something smooth enough not to irritate the sensitive skin around her eye. It had been carefully shaped to cover the empty socket without pressing against it, with a narrow strap running around the back.

  Caitlyn turned it over.

That was when she saw the embroidery. Violets, the tiny purple flowers, had been stitched across one corner, each one painstakingly made with thread so fine Caitlyn had to bring it close to her face to see the individual petals. There were green stems beneath them, curling delicately across the fabric.

  Her breath caught. She touched one with her thumb. There was something almost absurdly familiar about it. The same flowers as the ribbon. The same flowers Vi’s mother had once embroidered. The same flowers Vi had given her after the bath, when Caitlyn had sat in an oversized shirt with her hair still damp and let Vi braid it for her.

  Caitlyn looked toward the fire again. Vi was awake now. She was watching her, waiting. 

  “You’re terrible at sneaking around,” Vi said, her voice rough with sleep.

  Caitlyn looked back at the patch. “I did not realise I was sneaking.”

  Vi frowned. “You were.” She stretched, wincing slightly as her back cracked. “I didn’t mean for you to find it yet.”

  Caitlyn looked at her. “You made this?”

  Vi shrugged. “Yeah.”

  Caitlyn’s jaw nearly fell open. “What? When?”

  Vi, slack-jawed herself, rubbed at sleep-crusted eyes. “A couple nights ago.”

  Caitlyn squinted down at the piece of fabric that was the patch, then up at Vi. “You have been sewing?”

  Vi frowned even deeper. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

  “But I am surprised.”

  Vi stood, rubbing one hand over the back of her neck. “I can sew.”

  Caitlyn looked at her skeptically.

  Vi glared at her, crossing her arms over the curve of her chest, no longer bound so tight. “I can.”

  “I am not questioning your abilities,” Caitlyn said simply. 

  “You’re absolutely questioning my abilities, sweetheart.”

  “I am merely surprised that you possess them.”

  Vi pointed at her, shaking her head. “That is somehow worse.”

  Caitlyn smiled. She turned the patch over again, eyeing it. “You embroidered it yourself?”

  Vi's expression changed just slightly, sudden, soft. M“Yeah.”

  Caitlyn ran her thumb over the flowers. “Why violets?”

  Vi leaned against the table. For a moment, she did not answer, then she did. “Because you like them.”

  Caitlyn lifted her chin, nodding loftily. “I do.”

  “And because…” Vi glanced toward the ribbon in Caitlyn’s hair. “Well…”

  Caitlyn understood. “They remind you of your mother.”

  Vi nodded. “She used to put violets on everything.” 

  Caitlyn smiled again. “My mother liked them too. She had them in the garden.”

  Maybe we could have a garden someday, she thought wistfully. 

  “I know,” Vi said now. 

  Caitlyn looked up, surprised. “You know?”

  Vi shrugged. “You told me.”

  “I did?”

  Another nod. “Bath day.”

  Caitlyn thought back. The broken cabin and the warm water, steam curling against the ruined walls. Vi’s fingers moving carefully through her hair. Her mother’s hands. Her childhood. She remembered.

  “Yes,” Caitlyn said softly. “I did.”

  Vi looked down at the patch. “I thought maybe you’d want something that wasn’t just… a reminder.”

  Caitlyn’s fingers tightened around the fabric. “What do you mean?”

  Vi took a breath. “I mean, everybody keeps looking at you like you’re something that happened.” Caitlyn went still and Vi continued quietly. “The scar. The eye. The carriage. Your parents. All of it.” She looked toward Caitlyn. “I know you can’t just forget it. I’m not saying you should. But I thought maybe you ought to have something that was yours.”

  Caitlyn stared at her. The patch suddenly seemed much heavier in her hands. She had spent weeks waking up to people looking at her injuries: Vander checking the bandages, Vi checking her fever, Sevika glancing at the scar and then quickly looking away. She had learned to recognise the particular silence that came after someone saw her face for the first time. Pity. Fear. Shock. Sometimes disgust.

  But never Vi. Vi looked at her as though she were still Caitlyn. As though the missing eye had changed something physical but not essential.

  Caitlyn swallowed. “It is beautiful.”

  Vi looked embarrassed. “It is crooked.”

  Caitlyn couldn’t help but snort, suddenly protective of the flimsy fabric cradled in her hand, palms now calloused from chores around the camp. “It is not.”

  “The stitching is terrible,” Vi muttered.

  “It is not, Violet.” 

  “I poked myself about six times.”

  Caitlyn smirked. “I am sorry to hear that.”

  “You’re laughing.”

  “I am,” she admitted. 

  “You’re mean,” Vi mumbled back. 

  Caitlyn lifted the patch. “Will you help me put it on?”

  Vi's smile faded, but she came closer. “Yeah.”

  Vi took the patch from her. Her fingers were rough. Caitlyn had noticed that before, but she noticed it differently now. There were calluses across Vi’s palms, small scars over her knuckles, tiny cuts that never seemed to have enough time to heal before another appeared.

  Vi raised the patch toward Caitlyn’s face. “Tell me if I hurt you.”

  Caitlyn hummed lowly, nodding. “I will.”

  Vi carefully fitted it over the injured side. The first touch made Caitlyn tense. Vi immediately stopped. “Too much?”

  Caitlyn breathed in. “No.”

  “You sure, sweetheart?”

  “Yes, Violet.”

  So Vi continued. She adjusted the strap behind Caitlyn’s head, her fingers brushing lightly through the shortened hair at the nape of her neck. The contact was so gentle that Caitlyn almost cried. When Vi stepped back, Caitlyn looked toward the small piece of cracked mirror hanging beside the fireplace. 

  She stared at herself. For a moment, she did not recognise the woman looking back. Her hair was shorter. Her face was thinner. There was a scar. There was an eye patch. There was a woman who had survived something terrible. But the flowers were there. Tiny violets, stitched by hand.

  Caitlyn touched the edge of the patch. “I look different.”

  Vi stood beside her, hands on her shoulders. “You do.”

  Caitlyn looked at her reflection. “I do not know if I like it.”

  Vi was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “You don’t have to.”

  Caitlyn looked at her, nose wrinkled. “I don’t?”

  “No.” Vi folded her arms. “You don’t have to like what happened to you. You don’t have to like the scar. You don’t have to like the patch. Hell, you don’t even have to like the way I made it.”

  Caitlyn smiled faintly. “But?”

  Vi’s expression softened. “But none of that makes you less beautiful.”

  Caitlyn looked away. The compliment was almost too intimate. She touched the violet embroidery again. “I think I like the flowers.”

  Vi smiled, not sly, but soft. “Good.”

  “And I like that you made it,” Caitlyn continued. 

  Vi looked down at her boots, scuffling and scraping against the floorboards. “Good, again.”

  “And I think I like you.”

  Vi’s eyebrows rose, a pretty blush dusting her cheeks, mixing with the freckles splattered there. “That so?”

  Caitlyn nodded, steady and sure. “I think so.”

  Vi’s grin slowly spread across her face, gentle and gaudy and good. “Well, that's convenient, cause I like you too, sweetheart.” 

  Caitlyn laughed. She turned back toward the mirror. The woman reflected there was still unfamiliar. But she was beginning to look less like a stranger. The patch did not hide what had happened. It did not erase the scars. It did not make the loss disappear. It simply gave Caitlyn something to wear that had not been chosen by doctors or dictated by necessity.

  Something made for her. Something soft. Something stubbornly beautiful. Something with violets. 

  Vi moved behind her and adjusted the strap one last time. “There.”

  Caitlyn looked at her reflection. “How do I look?”

  Vi smiled. “Like yourself.” 

  Caitlyn’s throat tightened, but she leaned in despite it. 

  Outside, the horses shifted in the frost-covered grass, their breath rising in pale clouds as the morning finally broke open over the hills. Caitlyn reached for Vi’s hand. Vi laced their fingers together.

  They stayed that way for a long time, watching the horses graze in the grass. 

Months later, Caitlyn could still wake screaming.

It happened less often now.

  That was what she told herself, anyway, and perhaps it was true. There were whole nights when she slept without stirring, nights when the fire burned down to ash and the horses shifted softly beyond the camp and Vi slept beside her with one arm flung carelessly across the blankets, and Caitlyn remembered nothing of the hours between closing her eye and opening it again. There were mornings when she woke rested, almost surprised by the simple luxury of it, and for a few golden seconds she could forget that she had ever been afraid of sleep.

  But some nights remembered her. This was one of them.

  The camp had gone quiet hours ago. They had stopped beneath a stand of cottonwoods beside a broad, shallow creek, far enough from the road that nobody passing through would notice the small collection of bedrolls and saddles tucked beneath the trees. Their horses grazed nearby, hobbled loosely enough to wander but close enough that the soft clink of their tack carried through the dark. The fire had burned low, leaving only a dull red glow beneath the blackened logs, and above them the sky was enormous and star-strewn, the kind of sky that made England seem like another planet entirely.

  Caitlyn had learned to love it. She had learned other things, too. How to ride for an entire day without her legs aching afterward. How to shoot from horseback. How to clean a rifle without being reminded three times by Vi. How to tell when somebody was lying by the way they avoided looking at her. How to read the land. How to sleep with a pistol beneath her pillow. How to sit around a campfire with Vander and Sevika and the others and not feel like an outsider. How to become useful.

  That last one mattered most. She no longer spent her days recovering in the cabin while everyone else went out into the world. She rode with them now. She carried her own rifle. She had learned the routes through the hills, the hidden paths between settlements, the places where a patrol might pass and the places where it would not. She helped with scouting, with negotiations when Vi decided that shooting first would only make matters complicated, and with the occasional robbery when they needed somebody who looked respectable enough to walk through the front door.

  She had become, much to her own surprise, rather good at it.

  Vi never stopped teasing her about it.

  “You’re getting dangerous, sweetheart,” she had said once after Caitlyn had put a bullet neatly through the centre of a bottle perched on a fencepost.

  Caitlyn had lowered the rifle. “I thought you approved of dangerous women.”

  “I do.” Vi had grinned. “Especially when they’re pretty.”

  Caitlyn had rolled her eye. She had been smiling anyway.

  Tonight, however, she was not smiling. She was running. The road stretched endlessly beneath her. The horses were screaming. Smoke filled the air. Caitlyn could smell burning wood and scorched leather, could taste blood at the back of her throat, and when she looked down, she was wearing the same gloves she had worn that afternoon.

  The same dress. The same ringless hand. She knew what came next. She always knew.

  “Mother?”

  The carriage stood broken across the road.

  “Mother!”

  Her father's voice was somewhere in the smoke. Someone was crying. Someone was laughing. A man’s hand closed around her wrist. Caitlyn tried to pull away. She could not. She screamed. The explosion came—

  She woke with a strangled gasp. For several seconds, she did not know where she was. The darkness was enormous. Her heart hammered against her ribs so violently that it hurt. She could not breathe properly, each breath catching halfway down her throat as she clawed at the blankets tangled around her legs. Her hands shook so badly that she could not make them obey her.

  She reached for the gun. Her fingers closed around empty air— 

  A hand caught her wrist.

  Caitlyn jerked violently.

  “Cait.”

  Vi’s voice, rough and raspy. Real. 

  Caitlyn froze. Vi was already awake. She had pushed herself up on one elbow, her hair falling across her face, eyes narrowed against the darkness as she tried to understand what had happened.

  “Hey,” Vi whispered. “Cait, sweetheart.” 

  Caitlyn could not answer. Her chest heaved. Vi did not reach for her again. She waited. That was something Caitlyn had come to know about her. Vi waited. She never assumed. She never grabbed. She never pulled Caitlyn out of a nightmare by force.

Instead, she shifted slowly across the bedroll until she was close enough for Caitlyn to choose.

  “You’re here,” Vi murmured. “With me.” 

  Caitlyn closed her eye. She knew. She knew where she was. She knew the creek was nearby. She knew the horses were grazing beyond the trees. She knew the fire was almost out. She knew Vi was beside her.

  But knowing was not the same as believing.

  “I thought…” Caitlyn whispered, but her voice broke.

  Vi’s expression softened instantly. “I know.”

  Caitlyn shook her head. “No, you don't.”

  Vi was quiet, then she opened her arms. “Maybe not.”

  Caitlyn looked at her. “But I’m here.”

  That was enough. Caitlyn moved into her. Vi wrapped herself around her immediately, one arm curling beneath Caitlyn’s neck and the other settling carefully across her waist. She pulled her close, not tightly enough to trap her, only enough to make the boundaries of her body unmistakable. Caitlyn pressed her face into Vi’s shoulder. She was shaking, she realized. 

  Vi’s hand moved slowly up and down her back.

“Breathe,” she whispered. “Come on, Cait.” 

  Caitlyn tried. The first breath trembled. The second caught. The third finally made it all the way down.

  “There you go.” Vi’s voice was barely louder than the wind. “Good.” 

  Caitlyn clutched the front of her shirt. “I hate it.”

  “I know.”

  “I hate that it still happens.”

  Vi’s hand paused between her shoulder blades. “You don't have to hate yourself for it.”

  “I do not.”

  “You do, Cait.”

  Caitlyn was silent. Vi resumed stroking her back. “You survived something awful,” she said. “Your brain hasn’t figured out that it’s over yet.”

Caitlyn swallowed. “It has been months.”

  “Yeah.” Vi kissed the top of her head. “Brains are stupid.”

  A tiny, broken laugh escaped Caitlyn.

  Vi smiled against her hair. “There she is.”

  Caitlyn closed her eye. The world was slowly returning to itself. The creek whispered over stones. The wind moved through the cottonwoods with a soft, papery rustle. Somewhere beyond the fire, one of the horses snorted. Another shifted its hooves, and then came the sound of grazing, quiet tearing sounds as grass was pulled from the earth and the occasional soft clink of a bit, a hoof scraping lazily against the dirt.

  Caitlyn listened. She had always loved horses. Her mother had once told her that they were honest creatures because they did not pretend to be tame when they were frightened. Caitlyn had thought that was rather poetic at the time.

  Now, she understood.

  Vi’s breathing had begun to slow beneath her cheek. Caitlyn could feel the steady rise and fall of her chest.

  “You’re awake,” Caitlyn whispered.

  Vi’s eyes were closed. “Barely.”

  “You should sleep.”

  “You should sleep.”

  “I was.”

  “So was I.”

  “You were snoring.”

  “I do not snore.”

  “You absolutely snore, sweetheart.”

  Caitlyn smiled into her shoulder. “That is slander.”  

  “Prove it then.”

  “I cannot prove the absence of something.”

  Vi opened one eye. “See, this is why I like you.”

  Caitlyn lifted her head. “Because I am argumentative?”

  “Because you make everything sound fancy.”

  Caitlyn smiled and then she settled back down. Vi tucked the blanket higher around her shoulders. The pale pink ribbon was still tied into Caitlyn's hair. She had forgotten to remove it before bed.

  Vi’s fingers found the end of it and gently smoothed it between her fingertips. “You still wearing this?”

  Caitlyn murmured sleepily, “Always.”

  Vi was quiet for a moment, then said simply, “Good.”

  Caitlyn drifted closer. The nightmare was still there somewhere. She could feel the edges of it lingering, like smoke after a fire, but it was becoming harder to remember the details. The carriage was disappearing. The man’s hand was disappearing. The scream of the horses was fading.

In their place came the creek, the wind, Vi’s heartbeat. The soft sounds of the herd grazing beyond them. Caitlyn listened to the horses as they moved through the grass, free to wander but never far from camp, their bodies warm and breathing beneath the stars.

  She thought about the road. About how far she had travelled from the woman who had once been carried from a burning carriage. She had lost an eye. Her parents. Her home. The life that had been chosen for her. She had gained scars. A rifle. A horse. A gang of outlaws who had somehow become family. And Vi.

  Always, always Vi.

  Caitlyn felt Vi’s lips brush her forehead. “You all right?”

  Caitlyn’s eyes were already closing. “Yes.”

  This time, she meant it.

  Outside, a horse pulled another mouthful of grass from the earth. There was a soft, wet tearing sound, then another. The herd shifted together, peaceful in the darkness.

  Caitlyn let herself listen. She let the rhythm carry her down. The night was no longer the road. The darkness was no longer the smoke. The sound beyond the bedroll was not screaming or gunfire or splintering wood.

  It was only horses. Wild horses, grazing beneath the stars. And, wrapped safely in Vi's arms, Caitlyn finally slept.