The village was a labyrinth designed to swallow the uninitiated. To Annabelle, every alleyway looked like the last, a repeating cycle of grey stone and rotting timber. Peter's directions—"straight then the first right"—had led her into a dead-end courtyard filled with the stench of stagnant water.
Panic began to prickle at her skin. The sun was dipping lower, turning the sky the bruised purple of an old wound. Desperate, she approached a woman sitting behind a rickety tray of boiled candies.
"Excuse me," Annabelle said, trying to maintain her poise despite the mud splattered on her hem. "By any chance, do you know where Miguel the blacksmith lives?"
The woman didn't answer immediately. She leaned back, her eyes raking over Annabelle's fine cloak and the delicate lace at her throat with mocking fascination. "Someone from high society hunting for our Miguel?" She let out a sharp, jagged laugh. "What's the matter, darling? Do the lords in their silk sheets not satisfy you? You have to come down here to find a real man?"
"Miguel is a friend," Annabelle snapped, her patience fraying like an old rope. "Do you know the way or not?"
"I might," the woman said, her eyes glinting with avarice. "But my memory is a very expensive thing. Seeing the flash of a silver coin might help me remember."
Annabelle was about to reach for her purse when she saw him.
On the far side of the muddy thoroughfare, Miguel was walking alongside a woman. Annabelle's breath hitched. Was this her? Was this the girl Peter had warned her about?
The woman was dressed in simple, faded blue, her dark hair tied back in a practical ponytail. She lacked Annabelle's jewels and silk, but there was an easy, terrifying intimacy in the way she moved beside him. She reached up and tapped his shoulder playfully, laughing at something he said. The way Miguel looked at her—soft, guarded, and entirely present—was a look he had never once cast toward the forge entrance when Annabelle stood there.
Annabelle ignored the candy seller and began to follow them, her thin-soled slippers slipping and sliding on the treacherous mud.
"Hey! Ten copper coins and I'll tell you!" the woman shouted after her. When Annabelle didn't turn, the woman spat on the ground. "Rich people... think they're so high and mighty until they're crawling in our dirt!"
Annabelle kept her distance, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She watched, hidden behind a stack of crates, as they reached a small, sagging cottage. Miguel didn't just say goodbye; he pulled the woman into a brief, fierce embrace. The woman's smile was radiant, a lighthouse in the gloom of the slums.
When they parted, Miguel turned and continued walking toward the treeline. He moved with long, aggressive strides, his head down, looking like a man haunted by his own thoughts. Annabelle called his name, but the wind swallowed her voice, and he didn't slow down.
She had to run to keep up, her lungs burning in the damp evening air. He finally reached a small, weather-beaten shack tucked away on the very edge of the woods, where the village ended and the wild began. As he reached for the iron latch, Annabelle didn't think. She lunged forward, her arms snaking around his waist, pressing her cheek against the rough, heat-treated wool of his tunic.
"Hey, handsome," she whispered, her voice trembling with exertion and a sudden, sharp fear. "I missed you."
Miguel froze. The air around him seemed to turn to ice. He turned slowly, his hands—blackened by coal and scarred by fire—gripping her arms to steady her, though his touch was startled and stiff.
"Annabelle?" he gasped, his dark eyes wide with a shock that bordered on horror. He looked at her, then at the darkening woods, then back at her radiant, misplaced face. "What on earth are you doing here?