In her cottage that evening, Nyssa yawned as she finished distilling a batch of whiproot extract and considered how long she should stay up. If Kellam was in the village today then she knew from experience there was a chance the ranger might call on her — but also knew he would only come if he hadn’t had any better offers in the meantime.

  There was a light tap on the door. She hesitated for just a heartbeat, then pulled off her work-stained apron and cast it aside, opening the door as she tucked away an errant lock of hair that had come loose from its braid.

  “Good evening,” Kellam said, framed in Nyssa’s doorway. The setting sun behind him created the formidable silhouette of an armed elf in fighting leathers and a cloak. “May I come in?”

  “Since when do you ask? Since when do you knock?”

  “Since I’m feeling particularly polite.”

  Nyssa narrowed her eyes. “Sounds suspiciously like you want something.”

  “I always want… something.” His voice took on a mock-husky tone, and he closed the distance between them, near enough for Nyssa to feel the heat radiating from him, but without actually touching her.

  She took a half-step backward, gesturing him into her home. “Well, you’re not getting it from me — but come in anyway.”

  Kellam stepped inside and closed the door. Leaving his assorted weapons piled near the threshold, he walked through to the small sitting room, shrugging the backpack from his shoulders and stowing it behind a wooden chair in a smooth, familiar motion. Then he sprawled in the chair with his legs stretched out towards the fire.

  “Make yourself at home,” Nyssa said. “Oh, you already have.”

  Kellam chuckled, then reached back to fish a bottle out of his pack.

  “I brought you some wine. Courtesy of the Coopers. They say thanks again for patching up little Bennit.”

  “They know they don’t need to do that. The boy barely needed more than a bandage and a brave-heart honeygum.” She settled into her own chair opposite him. “Did you find any more goblins in their house?”

  “One. Little fucker bit my glove, but I bravely fought it off and rescued the distressed damsels it was menacing.”

  Nyssa snorted. “You did see the two mangled corpses in the kitchen when you arrived? Do you think they just slipped on some spilled milk and accidentally broke half the bones in their bodies?” She shook her head. “Turns out one or two members of the village knitting circle can wield a fearsome broom.”

  Kellam nodded his acknowledgement and uncorked the bottle with a quick twist, holding it out to Nyssa. She took it from him and swigged straight from the bottle, enjoying his grimace at her lack of decorum as much as she savoured the wine.

  “So, did you miss me?” Kellam asked.

  Instead of answering, Nyssa took another swig.

  “I missed you,” the ranger said. “It’s been too long.”

  “You know where I live.” Nyssa scoffed. “And I’m not the one who vanishes into the forest for moons on end. You can find me here any day. Every day.” Her fierce glare fixed on him. “So, why are you here now? And what’s going on with the border?”

  “I came to the village to see you, actually. To ask a favour. The only reason I didn’t come straight here after battling the ferocious beast was because I didn’t want to worry anyone by breaking my usual routine.”

  Nyssa’s eyebrows rose. “So… you desperately wanted to talk to me, but felt the best way to do that would be to stop for a meal and a drink at one house, then a drink and a meal at another, and —” she made an obvious sniffing sound — “a couple of drinks somewhere else?”

  “I know. It’s genius, isn’t it?”

  Nyssa let the ranger reclaim the wine from her and said, “Or… whatever the favour was, you didn’t want to come and ask me to my face without a few drinks inside you first?”

  Kellam looked at the bottle he was drinking from, then up at Nyssa. He gave a helpless shrug she was sure most women would find adorable, then set the bottle down on the small table beside her chair. When he still didn’t answer, Nyssa rose and began to light the lamps around the room. The uneasy silence stretched out, punctuated only by the soft pop and crackle of the fire, until she coaxed the last lamp into flickering life.

  She sat down and picked up the bottle again, unsurprised to note that her visitor had helped himself to more of its contents while her back was turned. “Out with it, Kellam. What’s the favour?”

  “Mmm.” There was another long pause. Finally he asked, “How would you feel about a change of scenery?”

  He reached out for the drink, but Nyssa withheld it.

  He still hesitated, then finally dropped his playful facade. “Aelinor needs your help,” he said.

  The name hung in the air, and the warmth of the wine they had shared could not thaw the freezing barrier that suddenly rose between them. Nyssa set the bottle back down with deliberate care. “No.”

  “Nyssa—”

  “I said no.” She turned to add more wood to the fire, viciously stirring the half-burned logs with a poker. When she turned back, Kellam had shifted forward in his chair, close enough that she could see the concern in his eyes.

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  “The border wards are failing,” he said quietly. “Three breaches in the past week alone. The goblins are just the beginning — you know what else could come through. The council sent me to ask you—”

  “I don’t care what the council want.” She took up the wine again. “They have plenty of other healers to call on.”

  “None with your particular… expertise.”

  Nyssa’s hand tightened on the bottle’s neck. “My expertise,” she said, “is treating coughs and broken bones and children’s scrapes. Nothing more.”

  “We both know that’s not true.” His voice had softened. “Whatever they did or said all those years ago shouldn’t—”

  “Don’t,” she snapped. She held the wine bottle between them like a shield. “Either drink with me and tell me about your forest-y adventures, or leave. Those are your choices.”

  Kellam took the bottle, fingers briefly brushing hers, then settled back in his seat and finished the drink. “The border stories will keep,” he said eventually, “but the border might not. Just think about it, Nyssa. Please.”

  She looked away from his earnest expression, focusing on the fire again, instead of the ranger sitting in the chair that had somehow become his over the decades. The evening’s shadows gathered in the corners, but behind them waited the deeper shadows of all that had been left unsaid for a hundred years.

  “I’ll think about thinking about it,” she said finally. “That’s all I’m promising.”

  His warm smile returned. “That’s all I’m asking. For now.”

  Nyssa glowered at him for a moment longer, then stood, sighing. “I need to stir the whiproot mix,” she said, heading for the door.

  Kellam smirked. “First time I’ve heard it called that.”

  Nyssa rolled her eyes. “No, Kellam. I need to actually stir the actual whiproot mix.” Adding with her own smirk, “Then I’m going to relieve myself.”

  ***

  When she returned, she was carrying an unlabelled bottle from her cellar and two wooden cups. The ranger sniffed the contents appreciatively and raised his cup to her in salute. “Forest-y adventures it is, then,” he said.

  She kept his cup refilled as he talked, listening to the tales of his life as a forest warden — long days and nights spent patrolling the magical divide that had separated the elven and human lands for two hundred years. Kellam overplayed his heroism in some situations and downplayed the danger in others; most listeners would have thought him a careless adventurer, forever stumbling into and out of scrapes of his own making. But Nyssa knew better. She saw the callouses on his hands from relentless daily weapons practice, and the steely glint in his eyes when he described the creatures he had dispatched in defence of both elves and humans.

  As the night deepened, though, the stories darkened. Kellam began to speak of recent creatures that had managed to cross the border, and of rangers who had not returned. Eventually his words trailed away completely, until he sat holding his cup and staring into the fire.

  Nyssa began to fill the silence, telling him about life in the village since he’d last visited. Births, marriages and feuds. Small injuries and small dramas. Anything that might draw him back from thoughts of killing and dying. Anything that might rekindle the light in his eyes.

  Eventually she reached the moment before she'd been called to the Coopers' house that afternoon. “They were round there, busy doing… whatever sewing circles do. A house full of people, and the goblins were so bold they attacked that boy almost right in front of them. It’s strange,” she mused.

  Kellam made no comment. Nyssa glanced over at him to see if he was still lost in melancholy or even asleep, but he had just been watching her while he listened.

  “Haven’t they ever invited you to join them?” he asked quietly.

  Nyssa blinked, surprised at the seemingly irrelevant question, then flushed, taken aback by his perception of village life. She shrugged, with studied indifference. “I probably wouldn’t join them even if they did. I prefer stitching up wounds to sewing initials on handkerchiefs, if that’s what they get up to.”

  “They don’t appreciate you enough,” he murmured, his gaze fixed on the bottle, thumb absently tracing slow circles over its curved shoulder.

  Nyssa frowned and snatched the bottle from him. She sloshed some of the liquor into her own cup. “Forty years I’ve lived in this village,” she said, gesturing around her with the bottle, forgetting the cup. “Forty years, and they still watch me like cats at a mouse hole.” She slumped back in her seat, swirling the bottle lazily. “What’s Nyssa doing in the woods? Is she gathering herbs? Do you think she’s using magic?”

  Kellam smiled. “It’s a small community. People are curious.”

  “They’re more than curious. I swear they’ve got an official committee, dedicated entirely to me. Well alright, not an official one. But it’s definitely a something one. Watching me all the time with their nosey eyes—”

  “Nosey eyes?” Kellam asked, taking the bottle from her and peering at it suspiciously. “What’s in this stuff?”

  “Secret recipe,” Nyssa said with a wink, then frowned at herself. She never winked. It must be time for bed. She put the stopper back in the bottle and stood, careful not to sway, then went through her bedroom door to fetch a heavy folded blanket.

  “I take it you’re staying here tonight?” she asked, throwing the blanket at Kellam’s chest. He caught it deftly with one hand, despite the amount of alcohol he had consumed that evening.

  “Well, I don’t know if I should. What will the neighbours say?”

  “I imagine they’ll say, ‘Thank the moon Kellam’s staying at Nyssa’s for once, and not prowling round our daughters.’”

  “I don’t prowl,” he protested. “I just sit or stand somewhere, minding my own business, then sooner or later the pretty moths come to dance around my flame.”

  “That’s a very poetic way of putting it.”

  “Thanks, I thought so myself. You know, you’re always welcome to come and dance around my fl—”

  “No, thank you. I’ve been caught by your flame before. But I don’t blame you for forgetting. You’ve crisped up quite a few other moths since then.”

  “Forget?” The word came out as a choked laugh, but he recovered himself quickly. “No. I have not forgotten, trust me. Would you like me to describe our first night together? Just to reassure you.”

  “Good night,” Nyssa squeaked, grabbing one of the lamps and hastily retreating into the bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind her.

  “Would you like me to come and tuck you in?” Kellam called to her through the thick oak door.

  “Would you like me to come and surgically remove your—”

  “No, that’s fine — I was just checking.”

  Nyssa lay on her bed with Kellam’s earlier request echoing in her mind, threading through her defences. She knew he was right; goblins were just the start. They were a symptom rather than the disease, and if the border failed then everything beyond it would also be at risk.

  Aelinor. She closed her eyes, but instead of darkness she saw giant trees, merged to form the towering, living structure. It was why she had settled in this village in the first place. Close enough to feel the pull of the elven forest’s sacred heart, but far enough outside the border to dull the constant ache of it. Far enough away from the elves who lived within it. (Most of them, anyway.) And yet for some reason those elves in their precious Aelinor community thought she might be able to help.

  She opened her eyes and looked around her room, still debating with herself. This little cottage had become her refuge. If she went back to Aelinor she would be breaking through the fragile barrier she had built between herself and her memories, and she wasn’t sure she would be able to find her way home afterwards.

  It wasn’t much of a choice; deciding between the elven realm that had rejected her or the human one that barely tolerated her. She sighed and extinguished the lamp.