The air was thick in Balor’s lungs. He felt weight on his sunken shoulders beyond that of the cart he pulled back to the house. His feet resisted each step he made. His arms yearned to be released from any burdens as if he had worked them for days. As he passed the still puddles, he refused to look at his reflection. He couldn’t bear seeing himself now. Not after what he said to Offla.

  “I’m sorry,” he had said to him with his head hanging and his eyes being too heavy to lift. “I have to call you my enemy now.” He had tried to explain that it was Aurie’s head that was filled with hate toward him, that he had never been anything but kind and understanding to them, but it didn’t feel like it was enough.

  The offlander had only grinned, kind as always, grabbed his shoulder with that knowing nod, and pointed to his horse. When Balor had agreed that he was even more of a jackass now than ever for standing by her against him, the man only smiled and waved his hand to say that he wasn’t a jackass this time. Well, that didn’t change how he felt. What sort of man would smile at such a thing? Being called an enemy should have gotten him a black eye or at least an angry look, but the man only smiled, encouraged him to go back. To call him an enemy when he was anything but.

  Balor cursed himself, cursed Talkro, cursed Aurie, cursed the tilled field he walked along, cursed the road he walked on, cursed the puddles and his reflection, cursed himself. He left some of the things he brought, Aurie would kill him if she knew, and hoped that Offla could use them soon. His ankle looked much better now and that made him feel a bit better. Only a bit. He still needed help with that stable for his horse, still needed the rest of his roof finished now that he had removed most of the one side. And it was going to rain again before the night was through. The man might as well be in the road when it happens if he can’t finish it himself.

  He told Alden to take the cart the moment he reached the house. Aurie was standing on the porch with a smile so warm he had to look away. What if he’s not a noble? What difference did that really make? If he were a wanderer, he was the sort that Balor would give the shirt from his back if they were both caught in a blizzard. They would starve, she said. Well, believe you me, that man was worth the risk. Even as he made his way to the bridge across the stream into the village, Balor hoped with all his heart that his Maud would see what he saw, let her heart open to the offlander and take hold of his kind heart. His understanding heart. The offlander was the only man he had ever met that made him truly trust would care for his daughter properly. Theirs would be a marriage of love, togetherness, beyond all comparisons he could think of, including his own.

  Talkro was foreign to him now. The wooden houses and stone walls were of another world. A cursed world. A world he may have loved once but no longer. The smell of manure and smoke made his nose curl, the thin mud on his shoes made him sneer, and the light bustle of the village wives and children were like scraping a plow over rocks. Even Tuck’s smooth voice and skilled strumming of his guitar made Balor grit his teeth when he stepped into the pub.

  They were all there, as he expected. The rain made the mud too heavy to pull a plow and there was more to come even if it stopped for the day. This was where he knew they would all be, just as they always would, just as it had always been. Not as it had always been, he found as he stepped in. Their glares turned to him from their stools, Tuck’s guitar squeaked to a halt, and sentences were cut short.

  “Look what the boar skewered,” Gregor choked a laugh with a tall mug of beer in his hand and a crooked leg.

  “I told you no a drink from me,” Freider leaned over the bar from the other side at him.

  Balian, Preston, and Soran had been huddled together at the middle of the bar when he entered, now turned to him with faces looking for a fight. Gregor was on one side and Morin the other, both resting back on their elbows to watch him with their drinks in hand. Egan was on the other side of Morin and Balthazar was there, too.

  “Shit on it,” Balor met their glares with a fleeting glance and pulled himself into one of the empty stools. He bounced a finger on the bar, “Just give me one.”

  “Used too much teeth on the offlander, did you?” Balthazar’s gruffly chuckled with a look around to see if the others laughed.

  They each grinned. Then they all turned away from him. Silence filled the air loud as roars.

  “You can’t afford it,” Freider growled.

  “Very well,” Balor lifted his chin and straightened in the stool. To each of them with a glance in either direction, “I’m Talkrois as you all are. Or have you forgotten? This land is more my blood than most of you. You think my loyalty has changed, then you never knew me. Now, pour me a plowing drink, Freider.”

  Freider looked to the others. Balian narrowed his eyes, Gregor nodded. Freider thumped a shot cup on the bar and eyed Balor as he uncorked a bottle of schnapps. Balor watched him pour it into the cup with furrowed brows. He didn’t care that it was the worst kind of schnapps he made, the cheapest swill, it was the point he wanted to get across. They weren’t going to cast him out, that was the point of all this.

  “I was hasty,” Balor said as he lifted the shot toward his lips. “I admit it. But my loyalty to Talkro never changed.”

  He nearly tipped the shot when Balian choked a mocking, “Loyalty.”

  He set the shot back down and shot his brother a fierce glare. “Want to say that louder, little posy?”

  Balian grinned at the others in the pub, “I think you heard me. Everyone heard you ‘treat him like a good neighbor’ and watched you parade Maud to him as if she were a slave to be sold.”

  “My boy not good enough for her, Clevlan? Is that it?” Egan didn’t stand from his stool. His thickly muscled blacksmith’s arms were tight in his shirt sleeves. He was flexing.

  Balor tightened his jaw, his fingers tightening around the shot cup. To the rivers with you, Aurie, for making me do this. “She will marry who she marries, but it won’t be the offlander. He’s…” Balor wanted to spit at the words, “not good enough for her. She’ll marry a Talkrois, I’m certain.” Over my dead body.

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  “Here, hear,” Preston bounced a fist on the bar and came to Balor’s side. He threw an arm around Balor and squeezed him with a pat on his other shoulder. “I knew you’d never turn your back on your own!”

  “Here, hear!” All but Balian and Gregor lifted their drinks with wide smiles.

  Balor eyed Balian as he grinned at them and took the whole cupful in one gulp. Balian’s glare was full of fierce suspicion and Gregor looked like he had just been given a pile of compost instead of gold.

  “I told you, Balor’s Talkrois through and through,” Preston tossed Balor’s hair with a swipe of his hand on his way back to his stool. “Now, back to the off…”

  Balian coughed, cutting him short. Preston silently pled to each of them with a grin that faded when their faces never turned away from Balor. Not one was still smiling.

  “You spoke with the man, yeah?” Balian had turned to his hands, one drumming half wrapped fingers on his mug, the bruises on his knuckles still red from his last brawl. “Tell us.”

  Balor drew in a breath. His shoulders felt heavier than ever. “He’s no noble, that I know. Man’s mute, so not much talking.”

  “His horse…has he any…?” Egan piped.

  Balian coughed again. “You must have learned something?”

  Balor shook his head. “Not much, really. With his injury,” he stopped himself, but it was too late. Shit on all of it!

  “Injury?” Balthazar leaned in his direction. “What sort of injury?” Balor’s heart skipped a beat.

  Balor hesitated. Balian’s malicious grin spread. Balor begged the gods to make them forget he had said it. But it was too late and he knew it. He felt the heat in his eyes and swallowed the tears back. His back was beginning to break from how heavy the load on him had become. How weak his entire existence felt.

  “Well?” Balian goaded him. Then, louder, as if none of the others could hear him before, and with a glance around the pub that included all the empty tables, “I told you. He’s with the offlander now. Like the coward he’s always been.”

  Balor bit his lip. He needed to leave. There was no fixing it. Aurie, whether she knew it or not, sent him to be beaten and humiliated. He straightened his back against the weight, “I’m no coward.”

  “Then tell us what his injury is.”

  “What is it, Balor?” Morin called.

  “He won’t say because he’s no longer a Talkrois,” Gregor spat.

  ‘Us or him,’ Aurie’s voice played in his ear. Balor bit the side of his lip. “He injured his leg while hunting.” He felt the weight push him into the floor yet sat straight as ever. It was done. He had betrayed Offla in the worst possible way he could imagine by the beaming grins on their faces at hearing that. All he could do was look to Freider with a pointing finger at the empty shot cup.

  Balian’s smile was fanged, his dark eyes like a rabid wolf’s. “Good.”

  “Here, hear!” Echoed across the pub.

  Freider refilled the shot cup with one of his better bottles of schnapps. “On the house, both.”

  Balor thanked him with a nod and threw his head back to pour it all into a single scratchy gulp. He set the empty shot cup upside down on the bar and stood with a swipe of his wrist across his beard and lips.

  “Give Aurie a big kiss for me,” Balian growled as Balor let the door close behind him. He could hear everyone’s laughter through the closed door.

  He didn’t look up from his feet, couldn’t muster the strength, as he made his way back over the bridge to his house. Aurie was sitting on the porch as he meandered toward it. Her smile was only reflected by his numbing heart. He couldn’t move his lips to meet hers. Couldn’t lift his arms to answer her embrace. He only gave her a pained grin and stepped past her to the door. She might forgive him after this, but he never will. He lifted his eyes to the Kelger house for only a glance, a single second of shame, before he walked into the house that no longer felt like home.

  He hesitated behind his chair at the table. The head of the table, the chair that his father and grandfather before him had sat in, meant for the one worthy of leading the household. On the other side of the table, at the hearth, Maud was sprinkling herbs into the stew. She gave him an encouraging, yet sympathetic, grin.

  “Where’s Alden?” Balor regarded the chair again with a hand resting on its back.

  Maud only shrugged.

  “Well?” Aurie came in behind him. He didn’t look up. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his neck with her chin on his shoulder, “Did you talk to them? Will they let us go into the village again?”

  “Yes, I spoke with them.”

  “And?” Aurie moved to in front of him, her head tilted with concern. “What did they say?”

  Balor looked up to meet her eyes. Who was this woman standing beside him? Who was this man she pretended was good enough to be hers? His glance shifted away and he stepped around her toward the bedroom. His hand burned where it had rested on the back of the chair long after he crawled into the bed.

  Aurie closed the door behind her and slid into the bed behind him. She tucked her head into his hair and draped her arm over him. He couldn’t close his eyes, couldn’t remove his gaze from the wall he wanted to run headfirst into.

  “I know this is hard for you,” Aurie said softly. She ran a hand across the side of his forehead to pull his hair from over his ear. Loving as ever. It only made him sink more. “I know you like the offlander. But we have to take care of our own.”

  He rolled to look at her. His eyes burned at the sight of her warm grin. He rolled back toward the wall. He couldn’t find words to say. There was nothing. Just a void filled with shame, betrayal, heartache.

  Aurie kissed the back of his shoulder and sat up from the bed with a warm caress, “I love you, Balor Clevlan. Never forget that.”

  “I love you,” he knew he didn’t sound like he meant it. He did. He truly did. And that was what made it hurt even more.