“I’ll make you a promise,” said Red, and when I turned to look at him he had put away his work and was watching me. I wondered why I had thought his eyes were blue. Today they seemed to match the river water, a light, shifting color between gray and green. “I promise I will take you back, no matter what happens. I promise I will see you safe home when it’s time. As soon as I learn the truth about my brother, I will take you there. I never break my promises, Jenny. I know it’s hard for you to trust me. If ever I find the man who did this to you, who made you so frightened, I’ll kill him with my bare hands. But you can trust me.”

I stared at him. How could he make such a speech in everyday tones, as if he were telling me how to build a haystack, or describing the best way to dig up a row of turnips? But there was something in his eyes, something hidden so deep that it would be easy to miss it, an intensity that told me he meant every word. I felt a shiver run down my spine. Something had changed; but I couldn’t tell what. It was as if the world tilted, and nothing was quite as it had been. Or as if there were the very smallest turning in the pathway, just a tiny deviation, but to take it meant you would end up somewhere quite different. And it was already too late to go back.

My response came without thinking. I made a gesture that said, I know. I believe you. And when he held out his hand to help me up the bank, I took it without flinching, as I had done once before in a torrential downpour, when that hand had been my only grip on reality in a flight from death. I trusted him. He was a Briton, and I trusted him. Perhaps he really would keep me safe until I finished the shirts, and then—but that was the point at which my mind reached a blank wall. Red might be all kindness now, with his promises and his protection. But he was still waiting. Waiting for me to tell him Simon’s story. Waiting for me to tell him how his brother was burned and violated, and driven half crazy by my own people. How I had left Simon alone in the forest, alone with his demons, how I let him go out into the dark and perish from cold and hunger and terror under the great oaks. What price Lord Hugh’s kindness, when he had heard this tale? How easy would it be to keep his promise, knowing what we had done to his young brother? I had seen the strength in that implacable mouth, the hardness in that uncompromising jaw. I had seen how cold those eyes could be. And just once, I had heard the passion in his voice, as the Fair Folk teased him with their talk of Simon. He would set little store by my safety, and that of my kin, when he learned the truth.