Chapter 1

Maris

The dough fights back before dawn, always.

I press my palms into it, folding and turning against the floured board while the hearth fire throws heat across my face. The kitchen is filled with the scent of warm yeast and the rosemary oil I brushed along the bread pans last night. Outside, Brindle Hollow is still dark and quiet. This hour belongs to me and the bread.

"Mama." Elin drags her wooden stool closer to the worktable without looking up. She has both mixing bowls in front of her, sifting flour back and forth between them with grave concentration. Half of it lands on the table. The other half lands on her dark curls.

"Don't eat it," I tell her.

"I'm not eating it." A pause. "I'm measuring it."

"You're wearing it."

She ignores this and keeps sifting.

I work through two more rounds of kneading before I set the loaves to rise under their linen cloths. The pastry dough comes next — butter cut cold into flour, hands working fast so the heat doesn't ruin it. Elin narrates her sifting quietly to herself, a running conversation between the flour and the bowl that I've stopped trying to follow. Her voice is soft and steady, filling the kitchen the way the fire fills the room. I don't need to look at her to know exactly where she is.

By the time pale grey light starts bleeding through the window shutters, I have two dozen rolls, a tray of honey-glazed muffins, and four fat loaves ready for the brick oven. I load them in with the long-handled paddle, check the draft, and latch the iron door.

"Come here, Ellie."

She slides off the stool and pads across the kitchen floor, arms out for balance, flour dusting her nose. I crouch to her height and pull the folded scarf from my apron pocket. It's soft wool, deep green, the kind that blends into her curly hair well enough that it reads as decoration rather than concealment.

"Hold still."

"I am holding still." She is not holding still.

I wrap the scarf carefully around her head, tucking it snug around each ear. Her small ears come to a gentle point, delicate as a folded leaf edge. The scarf covers them completely. I smooth a curl over the knot and study her face. Her eyes, silver-pale and bright, blink back at me.

"Pretty?" she asks.

"Very pretty." I stand and untie my apron strings, retying them tighter. "Now stay behind the counter when customers come."

"I know," she says, already climbing back onto her stool.

I unbolt the front door at half past dawn.

The first customers are regulars — Dora the weaver and her eldest boy, who buys two loaves every morning without fail. Then comes a cluster of market women with baskets over their arms, talking over each other before they're even through the door.

"Four of the honey muffins." The taller one, Pella, drops her coins on the counter. "And one of those seeded rolls if you have them."

"I do." I wrap them in paper while she leans toward her companion.

"Gert's husband found two more this morning," Pella says, voice dropping just enough to signal gossip rather than ordinary conversation. "Both sheep. Just inside the tree line."

"Same as the others?" The companion pulls her shawl tighter.

"Same as the others. No blood. No marks. Just — gone, inside. Like something pulled the life right out."

I set the wrapped package on the counter. Pella takes it without breaking stride.

"They're saying it's ritual work," the companion adds. "Someone drawing power from the animals."

"Nonsense." The third woman, older, adjusts her basket strap. "It's a sickness in the grass. Happens every few years near the marshes."

"Then why only at the forest edge? Why not the southern pastures?"

I slide their change across the counter and move to the next customer. Three years of running this bakery have taught me that the gossip cycles — illness, weather, bad harvests, strange omens. It rises and settles like bread. Whatever is killing livestock near the forest, it will find an explanation by end of week or be replaced by something newer and more alarming.

"Elin." I nod toward the small paper bags folded on the lower shelf. "Can you bag the seed rolls for me?"

She straightens on her stool with the focused expression she reserves for important tasks. Her small hands pull a bag open and she places the rolls inside with careful deliberateness, one at a time, counting under her breath.

The market women move toward the door, still talking.

"I heard there was an elf hunter seen on the eastern road," Pella says, quieter now. "Tracking somebody."

"Through here?" The companion glances back over her shoulder, as if the road might be visible through the bakery wall.

"That's what Fenwick's boy said." Pella steps out into the morning light. "Said he had a bounty seal."

The door swings shut behind them. The next customer steps forward with a smile and a request for two of everything sweet, and I give her my full attention. Whatever rumors are circling the eastern road, they belong to someone else's morning.

"Mama." Elin holds up a neatly filled bag, beaming. "I did four."

"Good girl." I take the bags and set them on the counter. "Now do four more."

She turns back to the shelf with great purpose, and I turn back to the bread.

The caravan rolls through just after midday.

I hear it before I see it — the groan of wagon wheels and the clop of heavy draft horses pulling loads over the cobblestones outside. I lean past the doorframe long enough to count the wagons. Six, maybe seven, loaded high with covered crates and bundled goods. Strangers ride the benches. More walk alongside, calling instructions to each other in voices too loud for the narrow market lane.

Within the hour, they've claimed the open stretch of square at the fountain and started unfolding tables, hammering stakes, and draping cloth over their displays. The marketplace fills with the noise of it — hammers and greetings and the sharp smell of dyed fabric unfurling in the afternoon sun.

My foot traffic picks up immediately. Travelers are always hungry after a long road, and caravan workers eat faster than they browse. I sell off the remaining muffins, most of the afternoon rolls, and the last of the seeded loaves before the shadows have shifted more than an inch. Elin bags items behind the counter with focused efficiency, handing parcels across to customers who lean down to accept them from her with mild surprise.

"She's a good little helper," one woman says.

"She is," I agree, and move the next customer forward.

Between waves of customers, I catch pieces of conversation drifting in from the square. The caravan brings news the way caravans always do — in fragments, passed from mouth to mouth until the original detail barely resembles itself.

"—three farms now, they're saying—"

"—came through Aldwick and Pell's Crossing before here—"

"—not just livestock, someone found a dog too, nothing wrong with it that anyone could see—"

Then, later, two men loitering near my open window.

"Fenwick spotted him on the ridge road this morning. Said he was watching the valley."

"A dark elf? Out here?"

"Bounty hunter. Full seal, proper commission. Whatever he's tracking, it led him this way."

I keep my hands busy wrapping a paper parcel. The crinkle of the paper is loud in my ears.

"They don't come this far into human territory without cause," the second man says. "Something serious must've drawn him."

Their voices drift away with the crowd. I set the parcel on the counter and let my eyes find Elin without appearing to look for her.

She is sitting on her stool, turning a small bread roll over and over in her hands, studying it. The afternoon light falls across her face and arms. Her skin, always warm brown like mine when she was born, has been shifting for months now. It sits cooler these days, the undertone pulling toward grey at her temples and along her forearms. She doesn't notice it. She's three. She notices the bread roll.

"Mama, this one has a crack."

"It still tastes the same."

She considers this, then takes a bite.

I turn to the next customer and take their coins and say the right things. But the back of my neck stays tight, and I keep my movements deliberate and calm.

A bounty hunter. Dark elf. Moving toward Brindle Hollow.

It means nothing. Bounty hunters travel everywhere. They follow criminals, not bakers with small daughters. There is no reason for my stomach to sit the way it's sitting.

The afternoon crowd thins. I start wiping down the counter, stacking the empty trays for washing. Elin hops off her stool and wanders to the front of the shop, pressing her face against the lower window glass to watch the caravan activity in the square. Her breath fogs the pane.

Then the green scarf drops to the floor.

I'm across the counter before I've thought it through, crouching beside her and scooping the scarf up. She turns at the sound of my movement.

"It’s itchy," she announces, like this is a decision she's made and stands behind.

"You need to wear it." I wrap it around her head again, fingers quick and certain. She squirms but holds still enough for me to tuck it snug. The tips of her ears disappear. I smooth the fabric down and hold her face in both hands, waiting for her to look at me.

"We’ve talked about this, about your ears," I say quietly.

Her brow furrows. "They are just ears."

"What do we do with them?"

"Keep them covered." She says it in the flat tone of something repeated many times.

"That's right." I glance toward the window, then the open doorway. The square is full and loud and no one is watching us. "When do we keep them covered?"

"When people are around."

"Good girl." I press a kiss to her forehead and stand, the scarf fully in place. She turns to the window again immediately, breath fogging the glass again, already interested in something else entirely.

I go back behind the counter and keep wiping down the surfaces. The cloth moves in steady circles. The square outside bustles with caravan noise and the ordinary late-afternoon business of Brindle Hollow.

A dark elf bounty hunter on the ridge road.

I wring out the cloth and hang it on the hook beside the wash basin, and I don't let myself think about it again.