The man wordlessly disappeared into the woods, and Amaris didn’t bother to watch him leave. She wouldn’t have known how much time had passed had it not been for the elongating shadows. He’d been absent for nearly an hour before reappearing with a rabbit. The bearded stranger sat across from her and began to quietly skin the creature.

She continued ignoring the assassin altogether, her pupils burning against her unbroken stare into the fire. She caught the man’s occasional glances in her peripherals, each time wearing an expression that may have been concern. Perhaps he was right to be worried. Soaked as she was in dried blood after having screamed like a banshee just that morning in her grand escape, he probably thought she’d gone mad.

She studied him from the corner of her eye. Though she didn’t look at him directly, she absorbed his dark beard, thick brows, and broad shoulders; the man appeared to be in his fifth decade of life. His hair had remained slicked back from his morning wash and hung roughly as long as his cropped beard, down the back of his neck. He appeared as though he would be an intimidating foe in battle, to be sure, but the man did not seem threatening in a way that had stirred her to run as she had from Millicent.

After he’d discarded the hare’s bloodied fur, he skewered the rabbit and stuck it across the campfire to cook. While the meat roasted, he offered her a flask of his water.

“No, thank you,” she said. Amaris was surprised at how her voice croaked. She hadn’t used it since she’d cried in desperation that morning.

“It’s for your face,” he said. They were the first words he’d spoken since their exchange in the courtyard.

She blinked rapidly, wondering what she must look like through his eyes. A distant part of her felt quite certain he was staring at the gore of a girl’s reanimated corpse. She took the canteen. The man tore a length of clean cloth from inside his satchel that seemed to be for just this purpose.

“Clean your cuts as best as you can, and I’ll give you a healing tonic. I’ll bill you later.”

She wasn’t sure if he was trying to be funny or if he genuinely wanted payment. Amaris was almost positive he’d purchased healing tonics from the orphanage and that whatever money he’d used to buy the tonics had been stolen by Nox and then swiftly regifted in exchange for her life.

It had been quite the deal. The assassin had received shelter for the night, healing tonics, bandaging by Matron Flora, and the life of a particularly valuable girl for one coin purse.