Prologue

 

Fingers trembled along the grains and splinters of a broken leg.

“What was that obnoxiously loud crack?” yelled a voice muffled by sounds of approaching footsteps.

Jared’s eyes prickled with tears. He blinked rapidly as he picked up a fallen piece of pine. He rubbed the space above where his knee had once been, tracing along the leather straps that held the other half of the leg in place. A scowl of pain marred his face. He’d fallen hard this time, somehow managing to twist his prosthetic underneath him and snap it in half.

“Well, what now? Must you ruin everything?” A young woman with the same dark eyes as Jared glared at him. She wiped soiled hands across an apron patched with rags. Her lips puckered when she noticed the broken leg. “I cannot pay for a replacement. Enjoy thumping about on the one leg you have left.”

“Moretta—”

She snorted before stalking out of the room, extending and exaggerating each step taken with her two good legs.

Jared gritted his teeth as he lifted himself from the floor. Pain lanced from his ankle to his knee. He knew he shouldn’t have been running, but he had to strengthen his good leg if he was going to be useful to anyone. Moretta had taken care of him long enough. She wanted a husband, and Jared was tired of hearing that he was the reason she couldn’t get one. He had plenty of theories why Moretta had no offers, which he was sure she would learn for herself. Once he was gone.

“Two days,” he muttered. “If I’d lasted two more days for my apprenticeship with Machin to begin, I could have avoided this altogether.”

The walk to Machin’s cottage would be a long one. Jared decided to busy himself by building a crutch from scrap lumber and metal screws. He hobbled to his workbench and rolled up his sleeves. His arms were muscled and strong from hammering and cutting wood. His inventiveness and ability to work with his hands had impressed everyone in Havenbrim, except for Moretta. Jared was sure these skills were what convinced Machin to hire him for the position. Machin had also called him an intelligent young man, which was news to Jared given Moretta’s frequent declarations of his stupidity.

Jared’s lips stretched into a lopsided smile. All remnants of pain, both mental and physical, faded at the prospect of getting to learn how to read and write. If he caught on quickly, Machin would teach him figures as well. As if these opportunities weren’t enough, Machin had promised he would make Jared whole again. Jared assumed that meant a high-end prosthetic, something part machine that could flex and bend just like a real leg. Until then, a crutch would have to do.

Lost in daydreams of a brighter life, Jared worked on the crutch through mid-meal and supper, ignoring Moretta’s howls and insults as he carved and shaped a simple length of wood into a work of art. After tightening the screws and smoothing a rough patch with glass paper, Jared set his handiwork aside. With a sigh, he dropped his head forward and to the sides to loosen the tightness in his neck.

Hungry, he wiped his hands on a towel before pulling from his pocket the last piece of fig cake wrapped in paper. “This will have to do for tonight,” he said to no one in particular as he munched the cake. There was no way he was going to ask Moretta to heat up week-old pottage; and the rats, he noticed, wouldn’t eat it cold. Jared chewed slowly. The fig cake had been a gift from a girl in town who he’d assumed pitied him for his infirmity. He’d no clue she’d been flirting—that the batting of her eyelashes was meant to make her look attractive, not to hold back tears of pity.

While readying himself for bed, Jared flinched in surprise when he realized the broken end of his prosthetic was still attached to his thigh. He unbuckled the leather straps and tossed the contraption aside before settling onto the mattress laid out near his workbench. “Two more days,” he murmured as he drifted off to sleep.