“We can’t do this anymore,” he said, his heart in his throat.
“Surely you must be joking,” she said, spinning around with her arms held out to the sky. “We can do whatever we like.”
“Last night,” he said, stumbling over the words. “Last night I found you covered in blood. It wasn’t your blood, and it wasn’t a deer’s, was it, Fiona?”
She stopped, held a hand to her milky-white hip, and observed him. “I hope you realize you’re being no fun at all right now, Tom.”
“Whose blood was it, Fiona?” he demanded, his voice straining with anger.
She stared at him, her face pinched as if she was caught between two worlds, and then she smiled, fairly drenching him in her beauty. “You’ve had a bad dream, Tom. You must forget about it at once and come enjoy yourself with me.”
The anger gradually drained from his eyes, and he looked at her with utter heartbreak. “I know,” he said.
“What?” she laughed. “What do you know?”
Slowly he walked to her, and gazing at her with the love of a broken man, he said, “You can enchant me all you want. You can confuse me, and exhaust me, and drive me half mad, but I’m still a man, and I know what you are.”
She stared at him, silent, her face devoid of emotion, and then it was as if something within her switched off, and her face seemed to crumble. Tears filling her eyes, she backed away from him. “Tom,” she said, shaking her head.
“I know what you’ve done. I love you. I’ve never loved anyone or anything like I love you. Without my love for you, I don’t even know that I’m a person anymore, but I have to let you go.”
“No!” she shrieked, her face contorted, panicked. “You can’t leave me! I’ll stop it.”
“You can’t stop it.”
“I can,” she said, and flinging herself at his feet, she wrapped herself around his knees. “I promise you that I can.”
Reaching down, he gently pulled her up to stand. He looked into her dazzling eyes. “Fiona.”
“I can,” she said. “I promise you. I promise you with everything that I am, that we are. I won’t do it again.”
“Please,” he said, nearly crying, taking her hands and pressing them to his heart. “Promise me it will stop.”
“I promise,” she said. “No more. I promise.”
He pulled her close to his chest and kissed her head, knowing that no matter what he might say, he could never leave her.
When Rowan awoke, she smelled an awful stench coming from the center of the village. A fire. A funeral pyre, she thought. Only, whose could it be?
“Tom,” she gasped, and dressing quickly, she set out from the house, pulling the hood of her cloak down over her eyes.
When she reached the center of the village, she saw that everyone was already there, gathered round the pyre. She searched the crowd. Her father was engaged in serious conversation with Goi Parstle. Elsbet fanned the flames, while holding the ear of several of the older women. Jude sat alone, a short distance from the fray.
She rushed over to him.
“It’s not Tom, is it?” she asked, desperate.
“Goi Flint,” he answered, shaking his head. “He was to be executed tonight at sunset, but it seems someone has gotten to him before the elders and their noose.”
“But who?”
“No one knows. The cell was locked.”
“Where’s Tom?” she asked, looking around, but Jude just shrugged.
“Missing, as usual.”
Rowan put her face in her hands and tried to staunch the flow of her tears. Then something began to rise inside her, and she shook her head. “This has to stop. I’m going to find him.”
“And how will you do that?” Jude asked.
“I have an idea where he is,” she said, thinking back to the ancient yew in the woods.
“Do you want me to come?” Jude asked, and while Rowan appreciated the gesture, she wanted to speak to Tom alone.
“No,” she said. “Thank you for the offer, but this is between me and Tom.”
He nodded. “Be careful,” he said, and with that, she turned and headed into the forest.
Jude watched Rowan disappear between the trees, his heart heavy with worry. He was deciding whether or not he should secretly follow her as he’d done the day he pretended to abandon her outside of the village barrier, when he saw Goi Tate approaching and realized his opportunity had slipped away.
“Terrible business this,” Goi Tate said, whistling through his teeth.
Jude nodded, not bothering to rise.
“I’ve been wanting to speak with you,” Goi Tate continued. “These meetings we’ve been having at the tavern, the ones where we make plans about how to stop the killings. I wanted you to know that there have started to be other meetings as well, ones we’ve kept secret from your family.”
“Is that the case?” Jude asked, trying to hide his concern.
“It is. It was actually Tom’s betrothed who put the idea in our heads. It was during that meeting. She wondered aloud if the thing we seek might not be a monster at all but a man who walks among us.”
“What are you saying?” Jude asked, suddenly cold.
“I’m trying to do you a favor here,” Goi Tate said.
“And what favor is that?”
Goi Tate leaned in close. “We know something is wrong with Tom. Everyone can see it, and we know he goes off into the woods nearly every chance he can get. We’ve tried to follow him, but we always lose him. He always seems to vanish.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I like Tom, and I don’t want to hang an innocent man, and that is what the others are just about ready to do.”
“You can’t be serious,” Jude said, but he could see that Goi Tate was. He wondered if the elders had told the men what their oracles had seen—the darkness they’d seen over the inn—and his heartbeat began to speed up.
“My advice is that you find him,” Goi Tate said. “Find out where he goes and clear his name while you still have the chance.”
And with that, Goi Tate turned and headed back to the fire.
Rowan knew exactly where she was going. She weaved through the trees with long, purposeful strides. Earlier, she had heard Tom’s voice out in the woods, seeming to emanate from the ancient yew tree. She didn’t know what that might mean, or how it might be possible, but she was going to find out. She was tired of feeling helpless.
And yet, as she walked, fear seemed to bite into her, and with each step, she grew warier. When she was nearly to the clearing, she heard his voice again, only this time much more audibly. She stopped where she was and crept up toward the area, careful not to let herself be seen. As quietly as she could, she rounded the bend in the path, and they came into view.
What she saw shocked her. Tom stood in the snow. In his arms, he held a girl clad only in a white dress, and he was kissing her passionately, his lips traveling to her neck, her shoulders, and all the while he gripped her body with an intensity Rowan hadn’t imagined Tom could possess.
So this was the source of Tom’s secrecy? A girl? A hidden love affair? She could barely contain her relief. So Tom loved another. That was his great crime. He was no murderer. He was just a lovesick fool, and a reckless one at that, having risked the woods the previous night just to meet a girl. But who was she?
Rowan was stepping forward to get a better look when something about the scene struck her. The two had stopped kissing, and now Tom held the girl close to his chest, and on his face was the most beautiful look of complete and profound love. This was not a boy straying randomly, his infidelity catalyzed by fear at his approaching nuptials. This was something wholly different. This was how a man gazed at the mother of his child. This was something she knew she could never touch.