After we had applied the salve and dressed the woman’s wound, Nik carried her to my bedroom to rest. Her pale skin, her lifeless body—I could’ve only imagined the exhaustion she was facing. She’d lost a lot of blood, and although I wasn’t certain how deep the wound was, traveling at a horse’s gallop couldn’t have made it better.

When the laceration had seared shut and her blood stopped spilling over the table, an unfamiliar relief drummed against my chest. I’d been used to helping Nik with his injuries, but I’d never dealt with an injury as severe as this. Afterward, her heartbeat steadied—albeit weakly—but no normal person should’ve been able to lose that much blood and live to speak about it. So, here I was, hovering in front of my bedroom with my hand on the door, preparing myself to see a dead girl in my bed.

The door opened with a dull creak and made the hairs on my arms stand on end. I peeked my head in first. The room flooded in a shadowed glow from the rising dawn. My throat constricted, lodging my breath there, and I narrowed my eyes to cut through the stillness of daybreak until her shoulders gave the slightest sign of life.

Thank fuck.

My lungs burned as I exhaled. She stirred once more, and a soft whimper sliced through the silence. Nodding to no one, I pulled the door closed and retreated down the hallway.

Nik had offered his bed to the priestess last night and opted to sleep on the couch. As I entered the parlor, I half-expected to find him still asleep, but the couch lay vacant, the quilt neatly folded on its armrest.

Usually, it was my job to rouse him at dawn, but a quick glance out the kitchen window revealed his motivation for an early start. Shaking my head, I made my way outside toward the stable.

Nik heard my approach and looked up from tending to the priestess’s horse. A nod served as his greeting as he dipped the grooming brush into a pail of water, diligently removing dried blood from the animal’s blond coat. A crimson puddle gathered at its hooves.

“Been awake long?” I rubbed the horse between its ears, and it let out a soft nicker.

“Got up a little while ago. Couldn’t sleep.”

“Me either.”

Using the back of his hand, Nik swept his dark hair from his eyes, strands escaping the tie at his nape. His hair hung to his mid-back, but no matter how much I teased him about it, he refused to trim it shorter. A cultural preference, he’d claimed. “How’s she doing?” he asked, nodding toward the house.

I exhaled sharply. “Good, I suppose. Still breathing.”

“You could try sounding a little less disappointed about that.” Nik’s grin faltered as he poured the pail of water over the horse to rinse away any remaining blood.

“I don’t trust them—”

“You don’t trust anyone,” he interjected.

“For good reason,” I countered, pointing at him. “There’s something off about them. I mean, for gods’ sake, you just cleaned blood from their horse. A priestess’s horse! Let that sink in.”

“We don’t know what happened to them. They could’ve been attacked by raiders or something. You know how they get.”

That I did. While I’d never encountered raiders firsthand, I’d heard enough harrowing tales of those unfortunate enough to cross paths with the nomadic thieves.

Nik untied the reins from the post and led the horse back into the stable. I followed them. Once he settled the horse into an empty stall and secured the gate, he leaned against the wooden barrier.

“They’re not our problem.” I braced against the doorway. “We’ve already taken them in and patched the girl up. We can’t let them drag us into their mess.”

“Their mess?” Nik’s brow furrowed. “You’ve known them for what, a few hours? Most of which have been spent sleeping.”

But that was plenty of time to justify why our goodwill should only extend so far. The priestess didn’t want to answer questions? Fine. I’d cast my judgment without them.

“Just trust me.” With a pointed stare, I added, “And don’t get attached.”

Nik rolled his eyes and glanced up at the stable’s rafters. “This is just more proof that fate exists. Everything happens for a reason.”

I groaned, running a hand down my face. “Again, with this?”

“What?” He shrugged. “Maybe they were meant to show up at our door. And maybe we were meant to help her. And maybe we are meant to get dragged into their mess.”

“Or maybe this was all a coincidence.”

“There’s no such thing as coincidence.”

“Says you.”

“Not says me.” His gaze drifted to the ground, shadows deepening beneath his eyes. “Says everything I’ve tried to tell you about the deities.”

I released a heavy sigh. Theology had never been a bearable topic for me. The gods abandoned me, so why would I honor them? Simple—I wouldn’t. And Nik knew this. But with a priestess now in our home, the ideation had likely been renewed in his thoughts.

“There was this phrase my nan used to say. Everything happens when it’s supposed to.” Nik’s gaze never left the hay-strewn floor.

My body tensed. It’d been years since he’d mentioned anything about his family. I took a step closer to where he stood enraptured at the stall gate.

“No matter the situation, she’d say it religiously,” he continued, lifting his head to look at me. “I used to be like you—never believing in fate, always believing in luck. But then one day, my pa sent me to check the crayfish traps.” He shrugged. “I’d done in loads of times before—didn’t think much of it. Didn’t even think to check for crocodiles before I waded through the water. I pulled the first trap up, but the handle came loose and sunk the trap again.” The corner of his mouth tilted upward. “Do you know what my first thought was? ‘Please don’t let any of the crayfish escape.’ But if the handle hadn’t broken, the crocodile would’ve gotten a mouthful of my leg instead of the trap.”

“Damn,” I muttered, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“Exactly,” Nik agreed with a chuckle. “I could’ve dismissed it as luck, but at some point, fate demands to be acknowledged.”

The priestess’s horse bobbed his head as though he agreed with the man who’d made him spotless. Of course, he’d side with Nik. I cast a sympathetic look at our horses in the other stalls, but they seemed indifferent to my silent appeal for solidarity.

“I didn’t know you grew up in a fishing village,” I remarked.

“It’s in the past,” Nik replied, waving away the subject.

But the brief flicker in his eyes betrayed his nonchalance. Part of me yearned to pry further, to learn about his past, about what it was like to have a family. To hear what it was like to have a little sister. To know how it felt to have the whole family gathered for dinner at the end of a long day.

The thought weighed heavily on my shoulders, and I slumped against a wooden column. “If everything is fated, does that mean you deserved to lose your family?” A frown tugged at my lips. “Did I?”

“It’s not about deserving,” Nik explained, his tone gentle. “If things had happened differently, we wouldn’t have crossed paths. Then who would keep you on your toes?”

I chuckled, the tension easing momentarily between us. “More like, I keep you on your toes.”

With an answering crass hand gesture, he allowed silence to fall between us, but the quietude only made the alarms of apprehension ring louder in my head.

I released another heavy breath, my unease simmering beneath the surface. “I can’t shake this bad feeling about those two women. Especially the priestess. She’s definitely hiding something.” The prickling feeling in my chest whenever I was close to her was a clear enough sign.

Nik tapped his fingers against the gate, contemplating my words. “We can’t possibly be the only trustworthy people left in the world.”

“I beg to differ,” I said, only half-joking.

He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture of frustration or resignation, I couldn’t tell. Silence settled between us once more, broken only by the soft sounds of the horses munching on hay. Abruptly, he stepped away from the gate, avoiding my gaze.

“Ciro’s plowshare needs to be finished by the end of the week, yeah? I’ll go work on it.” And with that, he promptly left the stable.