Page 1 of Heart of Shadows

1

HARPER

Sheer desperation bought Harper another day from death. The rabbit’s lifeless eyes reflected late autumn’s woods. Steely skies and scudding clouds, stretching trunks and bloody leaves—and the darkness of her looming shadow extinguishing all from those glistening orbs. Harper eased the snare from its neck before resetting the trap, then fastened the animal to her belt next to two of its dangling kin. She muttered a small thank you to it as she always did, and stroked its silken ear. Her slim fingers pressed the cord back into the pile of sodden leaves, concealing it from view on the game trail once again.

She stepped back to appraise it. Invisible. Betta had taught her well. The old woman was no longer as independent as she had once been and a shadow of her former self. She relied on Harper to keep her safe, warm, and fed more than she liked to admit. Harper did not begrudge it. Betta had saved her from the streets of Glymouth as a young and hopeless waif, and without the taciturn woman’s pragmatic kindness, Harper would have long since starved to death. Harper’s stomach growled in anticipation. She stirred into action. That day, it would not be empty. Her willowy figure might have been praised as elegant and attractive in some circles—but it was no town fashion. Her jutting bones were a testament to the slow starvation of poverty. For a change, she had both surplus meat and hides to sell. The pittance they would fetch were the heights of her prospects.

Harper wiped her wet palms on her breeches. It did little good. The steady drizzle, which had persisted since that morning, had soaked through every layer of clothing she wore. The sun soared far above, wreathed in mist and fog—nothing more than a baleful disc that cruelly mimicked the moon’s grace with its cool disdain. Down in the bowels of the forest, there was no light or warmth to comfort her. Harper suppressed a groan at the stiffness of her limbs as she stretched.

It was time to return to the village. Soon, dusk would come, and with it, creatures she was not armed against. Her feet sank through wet loam and layers of fallen leaves with each step. The trees were half bare, the forest floor a kaleidoscope of oranges and browns. It made tracking both a blessing and curse. The mud made every print stand out in sharp relief, yet following the game trails was a difficult wade through boggy thickets. It was lucky she knew the woods like the back of her hand. Where the rabbits lived, where the deer grazed, and where the denizens prowled.

Over the rhythmic squelching of the mud on her leather boots, Harper’s heightened senses scanned her surroundings. The overwhelming scent of damp, natural decay clogged her nose, making it impossible to trace the natural haunts of predator and prey and requiring all her other senses to bridge the gap. A flicker of leaves falling spiked her pulse as crashing betrayed a presence beside her own. It sounded big enough to be a bear that was too far down the foothills for comfort. Her heart thudded in her chest, strong and alert, ready to thunder into action at a second’s notice to spirit her away should danger approach. But the leaves fell of their own accord—and the noise faded.

Harper skidded down the last embankment as the village came into view. There was the smallest wave of relief at the safety it promised, before dislike rose in her. It always did. The village meant people and she had no fondness for them. She would be glad of the tavern’s hot fire that night, but not who would be there too. The street was half empty. Those who weren’t huddled inside from the weather were out on the bay fishing for their own suppers, braving the edge of the coming storm. Harper made her way straight to the lone public house, letting herself in.

Tam, the landlord, clattered downstairs at her entrance—and raised a brow as he appraised her. His gaze caught the bounty strapped to her waist. “Very nice,” he said with an appreciative nod. “They’ll do for tonight’s stew.” Cook would whip up a batch of hot, filling, meaty stew. Harper usually managed to slip a bowl for herself from the fresh pot before all the patrons, though Tam always charged her for it if he caught her.

“Three coppers apiece, and I keep the hides,” she said as a starting negotiation. She’d get more for those from the tanner.

Tam sucked the inside of his cheek for a second. “Two coppers each, but I want a hide—a tanned one. Need to patch up.”

“Three each and you’ll keep a hide.” She would not give him an inch. Not when the difference meant her starving. He could afford it, the miser. She kept her face blank from the resentment seething inside her.

“Hmph.” Tam jerked his thumb toward the kitchen, a silent invitation for her to take them by way of the cook, and ambled upstairs. It was as close to an accord as she would get.

Harper skinned the rabbits and left them on the counter, then retreated to the hearth, almost grasping the flames in her desperation for warmth. Her cloak was heavy and sodden as she peeled it off and hung it by the fire. Soon, steam rose from it. She turned this way and that until she had mostly dried, her attention on the flickering flames. The first of that night’s patrons ambled in. One of the fishermen from the bay, wanting his own warmth and a place to dry off. Harper stirred with a sigh. Time to work.

Harper wiped the globule of spittle from her cheek with her sleeve as she twisted away from the man, his cold and clammy hand wrapped around her wrist. She suppressed a shudder of distaste and schooled her expression into bland boredom as she backed away, her hands full of empty tankards.

“What do yeh say, lass?” Old Robson roared with laughter as he raised a paddle-sized palm to try and slap her on the bottom, but he was far too drunk and she far too nimble. All the same, she thrust the tankards before her as a barrier and tried not to gag on the stench of his hot breath fanning across her face bearing stale beer, tobacco, and something she couldn’t identify—and did not want to.

Her eyes slid over his toothless grin, his grizzled, unkempt stubble, and the stains on his tattered tunic. I wouldn’t take you to bed in a thousand years, she thought. Not even if you were the last man in Caledan. She vowed she would never need coin that badly.

“Are yeh accosting my girl?” shouted Tam from across the bar, leaning over it to peer into the dim corner. “Yeh wouldn’t leave me without a hand now, would yeh?”

“I’ll leave you wi’out those two hands,” said Old Robson, leering at Harper, who hastily turned away. “I bet they make short work of my?—”

“All righ’. That’s enough,” Tam called as raucous laughter erupted from the inebriated patrons.

Harper’s cheeks burned as she rushed behind the counter, longing to curse the lot of them.

“All right?” asked Tam. His eyes roamed over her, but not in the same predatory manner as Old Robson’s. He was a slightly better man than that. He liked to make sure his staff were not accosted, though not out of kindness. It was bad for business to have it on the premises. What his staff got up to elsewhere was their own business. Harper appreciated the illusion of safety all the same.

“Fine,” she muttered, slipping past him to dunk the empty tankards into the pail of water in the kitchen out of sight of the patrons.

She dropped to her knees to scrub them, using a sticky hand to push a wisp of loose hair out of her face—and immediately regretting it. Now she had a smear of goodness knows what on her cheek. Her eyes stung from the long day, the smoke curling in the air no help, but she resisted rubbing them with the back of her hand. In the dark corner of the kitchen, she allowed herself to pause for a long moment. Her eyes slipped shut in exhaustion. She inhaled deeply through her mouth if only to avoid the fullness of, for just one breath, the rank stench of spilled ale, sweat, and worse that hung heavy on the dank air.

Harper dunked her hands into the bucket and scrubbed furiously at the skin the old man had touched, but the ghostly feeling of his fingers still clamped there, despite her best efforts. With her eyes closed, she could pretend she washed with clean water. By that time of night, it was usually more beer than water, but Harper wasn’t about to dodge through the crowd again to go fetch a fresh pail from the well. She could not block out the din from the next room. The silence of home was always golden after each shift. Not long now. Her head thumped dully.

At a clatter behind her, she rushed to appear busy, nearly slopping half the pail onto the floor with her sudden movement. Tam shoved open the door, thudding it into the wall. “You could appease them, you know. Earn a bit of extra coin.”

She whipped around to look up at him, mortified. “You mean…?”

“Well, aye.” Tam shrugged. “There’s no shame in it. Take ‘em home. I don’t care what yeh do outside my place to earn your way.” And now, he did look at her in the way that made her skin crawl.

Hidden by the water, she clenched her hands deep in the bucket. Harper bared her teeth at him and turned away, scrubbing at the tankards furiously, as though she could take out her anger on them. “How dare you. I’m not whoring myself out to them.”

“What?” She heard the creak as he leaned against the slanting door frame. “It’s not like you have anything to lose. What are yeh now? Five and twenty?” Her jaw dropped. Was that how bad she looked for twenty-three winters? He tutted, oblivious to her indignation. “Well, y’aren’t gonna find a husband as you are anyway, so you might as well do better for yourself than that shack of yours. There ain’t no shame in it. ‘Specially with winter comin’ and your old gal to care for. Pride don’t keep a bed warm or a belly full.”

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