The White Rose

2. Murderer

Nura doesn't waste a moment of time as the sun brightens the village and dries the muddy roads. She dresses in an oceanic blue cotton dress, the material just reaching her ankles, preventing it from catching too much mud. She slips her satchel over her head, waving a hasty goodbye to a tired-eyed Calla before jogging into the street.

Rephas already waits by the horses, finishing buckling their saddles as Nura reaches him. His brown tunic is tight across his broad shoulders, the man built for his trade as a smith. His time in the army taught him how to use the weapons he crafted.

Sometimes Nura catches a glimpse of the man he was before soldiering. They're brief glimmers, like trying to spy the moon through dense trees on a cloudy night. But Nura knows that softness is still within him. It's why she agreed to move so far away from the only home she ever knew.

"I try to beat you," Nura says with a huff as she moves to his side, "but you're always up before me."

A small smile twitches at the corner of his lips, a hint of mirth in his gaze as he looks down at her.

There it is.

Nura pushes herself up onto the balls of her feet to brush her lips against his, a featherlight touch that unravels the tension still built from their disagreement last night.

"That's because your snoring wakes me," he murmurs as he leans back.

Nura laughs and swats his arm with a shake of her head. Her smile doesn't stray from her lips as she looks at him, emotion swelling in her chest to see the softness around his eyes linger.

It doesn't last. But this time it's her softness that slips away.

"I need to buy a couple of things before going back to the cabin. Don't wait for me."

A crease forms between Rephas' brows as he looks at her, removing his hands from the saddle of the horse. "I don't want you to ride alone."

"It's daylight, Rephas, and I won't go wandering into the forest." She offers him a gentle smile, trying to ease the worry that shines in his dark eyes. "I'll be back before you even get a chance to miss me." Nura slips away before he can argue, knowing that he won't convince her not to go. There are things she needs to do, things she doesn't want Rephas to know she's doing.

Her pace quickens as she walks down the street, her gaze straying to the forests at her right, shadowed even in the morning light. Each time she looks into those trees, she expects to find another villager stumbling from them, a bloody trail snaking across the earth behind them.

Nura drags her gaze away from the trees to instead turn her sight to the fields ahead, lush with produce and busy people, the time of Harvest still ending.

It should be a time of celebration and joy, instead the villagers are wracked with sorrow for those they've lost and those that have been mauled, still lying in their sickbeds. Nura tends to them as much as she can, but most of their fates are left to the Spirits.

"Nura!" someone calls, and she glances to one of the wood and thatch homes to see a woman on her porch, waving. The infant tucked in her arms has a wide smile gracing Nura's lips.

"How are you?" Nura asks as she climbs the steps to the woman.

"Good, good," she replies, swaying the baby in her arms, allowing him to suckle on her thumb.

Nura brushes her fingertips to the baby's rounded cheeks, glittering brown eyes staring back at her. "And him? How's he faring?"

"He's precious," the woman says with a slight smile as she gazes down at the boy. "He has a set of lungs on him though. I swear he keeps the whole village up some nights."