The morning sun did not touch the valley floor of Oakhaven often, choked as it was by the high, jagged peaks of the Whispering Range. But in late August, the light found a way. It pierced the canopy of the ancient forest, turning the dew on the spiderwebs into necklaces of shattered diamonds.
By the edge of the Whispering Stream, where the water roared over moss-slicked stones, the world felt suspended in amber. It was a secret place, a hollow of crushed ferns and wildflowers hidden from the prying eyes of the village proper.
Kael lay back in the tall grass, the golden light painting the ridges of his chest. At twenty, he was a man sculpted by the axe and the saw. There was no softness in him, only the lean, ropy muscle of a laborer who survived on hard work and harder bread. He threw an arm over his eyes, his breathing slowly returning to a rhythm that matched the river.
Beside him lay Elara.
At thirty-eight, she was the jewel of Oakhaven. As the Village Chief's wife, she was usually encased in layers of stiff brocade and propriety, a statue to be admired but never touched. But here, in the sanctuary of the glade, the statue had shattered. Her silk robe lay discarded on a hawthorn bush. Her hair, usually pinned in a severe bun, spilled over Kael's shoulder like a river of dark ink.
She ran a finger down the center of his chest, tracing the line of hair that narrowed toward his navel. Her touch was reverent, almost desperate.
"You are a dangerous thing, Kael," she whispered, her voice husky with the aftershocks of pleasure. "If Haru knew... if the village knew..."
Kael moved his arm, revealing eyes that were the color of storm clouds. He turned to her, a slow, lazy smile spreading across his face. It was the smile that made the maidens at the harvest festival trip over their own skirts. It was the smile that made the merchant wives linger too long at their windows.
"Haru sees what he wants to see," Kael said, his voice a low rumble in his chest. He rolled onto his side, propping himself up to loom over her. He brushed a stray lock of hair from her damp forehead. "He sees a wife who prays at the shrines. He doesn't see the woman who screams my name into the moss."
Elara shivered, arching into his touch as his hand drifted down to rest on the curve of her hip. "He touches me as if I am made of glass," she confessed, a tear leaking from the corner of her eye. "He is kind, Kael. He is so kind. But he is... cold. When he holds me, I feel like I am being put on a shelf."
"And when I hold you?" Kael asked, his thumb stroking the soft skin of her waist.
"I feel like I am burning," she breathed. She reached up, pulling his head down. "Make me burn again. Before the sun gets too high. Before I have to go back to being a doll."
Kael obliged. He did not rush. He was a man who understood the language of wood—how to find the grain, how to apply pressure, how to make it yield. He applied that same instinct to Elara. He kissed the hollow of her throat, the sensitive skin behind her ear, moving with a deliberate, agonizing slowness that made her gasp.
This was Kael's gift. In a village where men treated their wives like broodmares or servants, Kael treated women like mysteries to be solved. He listened to their bodies with the same intensity he listened to the forest.
As they moved together in the dappled light, the world narrowing down to the friction of skin and the scent of crushed clover, they felt safe. They felt hidden.
But the wind shifted. The leaves of the great oaks turned over, flashing their pale undersides. For a heartbeat, the sweet scent of the wildflowers vanished, replaced by a sharp, metallic tang—like a knife blade left in the rain.
Elara stiffened in his arms. "What the hell was that?"
Kael paused, his senses alert. He looked toward the dense tree line. "Just a fox," he lied, though the hair on his arms stood up. "Or the wind changing season."
It was neither. It was the sound of a lock turning.