The earthenware porridge bowl sat steady upon the iron ring of the kitchen prep table, caught inches above the hearthstones before a single drop of barley gruel could spill, its steaming surface trembling with the vibrations of the sixth bell.
Outside, the heavy bronze clapper of St. Jude tolled its sixth stroke across the river mist, the deep iron resonance humming through the floorboards of the River Lantern Inn.
Elin Hale stood frozen beside the hearth, her hands still curled in the empty air where the falling crock had slipped from her flour-dusted fingers. Her breath hitched in her throat, a sharp, ragged sound that caught on the silence of the room. She turned slowly, her wide grey eyes traveling from the caught bowl to the bare, white-banded right arm of her husband, and then to the thirty-pound calfskin volume of the Bound Town Ledger he had set beside her on the prep table to show her the fifteenth bond.
“Jon,” she whispered. The word was barely louder than the simmer of the cider kettle on the coals.
Her fingers reached out, trembling, brushing against the rough skin of his knuckles. She felt the cool, raised scar tissue of his nine rings—four on the right hand beside the faded index scar, five on the left—alongside the two right-wrist vows and the five right-forearm bands stretching cleanly to the crook of his elbow. Her eyes lifted to his face, taking in the dark hollows beneath his cheekbones, the gray ash dusting…
