Chapter 5: Gael's Confession
The silence in the cottage after Bren’s accusation was a taut wire, vibrating with violence. Arya’s father, Jerrick, took a step toward the old hunter, his hands curled into work-worn fists. The other two men shifted, their hands dropping to the knives at their belts.
“You’re saying my daughter… consorted with that thing?” Jerrick’s voice was low, deadly.
“I’m saying the evidence sits plain on her skin,” Bren spat, not backing down an inch. “And the hound don’t lie. The beast was here. In this room. And she was here. You figure the math.”
Gia moved then, inserting herself between her husband and the hunters. Her posture wasn’t confrontational; it was placating, the worn-down wife. “Jerrick, please. He’s upset. We’re all upset. Arya came out here to grieve. She told me she heard noises in the woods last night—probably just the beast passing through, scared and hurt. She locked the shutters and stayed by the fire. She’s shaken. That’s all this is.”
She turned to Bren, her eyes wide and earnest. “The mark? She’s been scratching at insect bites all week. The damp brings them out. You know how it is.”
It was a flimsy lie. Pathetically so. But delivered with the brittle confidence of a mother, it created a sliver of doubt. Jerrick wanted to believe it. He desperately wanted the simpler, cleaner horror of a monster in the woods, not a monster in his daughter’s bed.
Bren’s smirk didn’t fade. He glanced at the other hunter, a younger man named Cade, who looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight. “Insect bites,” Bren echoed, dripping with sarcasm. “Right. Well, the ‘insect’ headed north, toward the high ridge. We’re going after it. Magistrate’s orders. Every able man.” His eyes pinned Jerrick. “You’re able, aren’t you, Miller?”
It wasn’t a question. It was a command, wrapped in the threat of exclusion. Refuse, and you’re siding with the beast. Refuse, and the suspicion on your family hardens into certainty.
Jerrick’s jaw worked. He looked from Bren’s triumphant face to Arya’s pale, defiant one. The confusion and anger in him warred, a storm she could see in his eyes. Finally, he gave a sharp, single nod. “I’ll get my axe.”
“Dad, no—” Arya started, but Gia’s hand shot out, gripping her wrist hard enough to bruise. The message was clear: Not another word.
“Good man,” Bren said, turning away. He paused at the door. “Oh, and girl? You stay in the village. Where folks can see you. No more trips to the woods to ‘grieve.’ Understood?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He and the other hunters filed out, the hound pulling eagerly at the leash. Jerrick followed, pausing only to shoot a last, unreadable look at Arya—a mix of betrayal, fear, and sheer paternal bafflement—before the door slammed shut, leaving the two women alone in the sage-scented silence.
The moment the heavy tread of boots faded, Gia’s grip loosened. She didn’t look at Arya. She walked to the hearth and slumped onto the stool there, as if all the bones had left her body. She stared into the cold ashes.
“He’s going to kill him,” Arya whispered, the words tearing from her throat. “They’re all going to go up there, and they’re going to find him, and they’ll—”
“They won’t.” Gia’s voice was flat, final. “If he’s half as clever as you think he is, he’s already calling his own people. They’ll be to him long before that pack of drunken fools stumbles up the goat path.” She finally looked over. “The problem isn’t the dragon, Arya. It’s you.”
“Me?”
“They think you’re tainted now. Bren saw that mark. He’ll talk. By sundown, the whole village will think you let the beast have you. They’ll call you a witch, or worse. They’ll say you’re in league with it. That you lured it here.” Gia pushed a hand through her greying hair. “Your father… he’s going because he has to. To prove we’re not part of this. But when he comes back empty-handed, and the whispers start…” She trailed off, the consequences hanging in the air, uglier than any beast.
Arya understood. Her value, what little she had, was crumbling. No decent farmer’s son would have her now. The magistrate’s oily nephew certainly wouldn’t. She’d be an outcast in her own home, a stain on her family’s name. Her brother, Lem, would be mocked. Her father might lose trade at the mill.
“What do I do?” The question was a plea.
Gia was silent for a long time. The cottage creaked around them. “You give them a different story. One they can understand. One that replaces the monster with something… ordinary.”
The walk back to the village was agony. Every rustle in the bracken made her heart jump, expecting Kaelen’s golden eyes or Bren’s sneering face. They took the long way, avoiding the main track where groups of men were gathering, hefting spears and rusty swords, voices too loud and boisterous with fear-masquerading-as-courage.
Her home, when they reached it, felt like a stranger’s house. Her younger brother, Lem, was chopping wood out back, his strokes violent and worried. He didn’t meet her eyes when she passed.
Inside, the silence was worse.
Gia set to work immediately, boiling water, pulling out the tub. “You’ll wash. Thoroughly. Everywhere. With the strong soap.” It was said with no room for argument.
Arya stripped in the kitchen, the steam doing little to warm the cold knot in her stomach. She scrubbed until her skin was raw and pink, trying to remove the phantom feel of his hands, the scent of him that still seemed to live in her nostrils. It felt like a betrayal, washing him away. But her mother was right. She couldn’t walk around smelling of dragon-prince and sex. It was a death sentence.
As she toweled off, wearing a clean, high-necked dress, Gia spoke again, her back turned as she stirred a pot of soup. “You need a suitor. A real one. And quickly. Someone who can stand up and say he was with you, that the mark was his. Someone to silence the whispers before they start.”
Arya’s laugh was hollow. “Who, Mother? Who would do that? After what Bren will say?”
“Someone with nothing to lose from the rumor,” Gia said softly. “Or someone with a secret of their own to protect.”
A name floated between them, unspoken. It was the only name that made a terrible kind of sense.
The mill was the heart of the village, a great, groaning building of stone and timber perched on the fast-moving creek. The air around it thrummed with the sound of the waterwheel and smelled perpetually of damp stone and crushed grain. Arya found him in the side shed, a dusty, cavernous space stacked high with sacks of flour waiting for collection.
Gael was heaving a fifty-pound sack onto a towering pile, his back muscles corded under a thin linen shirt damp with sweat. He was a year or two older than her, with a kind, open face perpetually dusted with a fine white powder, and hair the color of wheat straw. He was the miller’s youngest son—strong, reliable, and famously, quietly, unbetrothed.
He saw her lingering in the doorway and straightened up, wiping his forehead with his arm. “Arya. Heard there was a commotion up at the old cottage. You alright?” His concern was genuine. They’d known each other since they were children, splashing in the same creek. He’d once shown her a bird’s nest with blue eggs in it.
She stepped inside, the dust motes dancing in the slanted afternoon light. “No,” she said simply. “I’m not.”
He leaned against the sack pile, his easy smile fading as he took in her expression—the redness around her eyes that washing couldn’t erase, the tense set of her shoulders. “The dragon hunt?”
“Part of it.” She took a shaky breath. This was the plunge. There was no elegant way to say it. “My father told the hunters I was with you last night.”
Gael blinked. “With me?”
“At the cottage. He told them that’s where I was. That we’re… courting. Secretly.”
There was a long pause. The only sound was the distant rumble of the millstones and the scuttle of a mouse in the corner. Then, slowly, Gael’s face broke into a wry, disbelieving smile. It wasn’t a happy smile. It was the smile of someone who’s just heard a joke that’s also a personal indictment.
“Did he now,” he said softly, almost to himself. He picked up a bit of stray wheat stalk and twisted it between his fingers. “And I suppose this grand fiction is meant to explain why you were out there all night? And perhaps explain any… particular marks someone might have seen on you?”
Arya felt her face flame. She gave a tight, miserable nod.
Gael sighed, the smile turning sad. He looked at her, really looked at her. “Arya… you know the rumors about me, right? What people say when they think I can’t hear?”
She did. Whispers in the tavern. The way the older women clucked about such a strong, handsome lad showing no interest in any of the girls. The knowing, sidelong glances when he preferred the company of Elias, the blacksmith’s broad-shouldered apprentice. She’d never given the rumors much thought. They were just background noise. Now, they were the central instrument in a desperate symphony.
“I’ve heard them,” she whispered.
“They’re true,” he said, the words clear and unashamed, dropped into the dusty air between them. “So you see, your father’s story has a few holes. I’m not exactly in the habit of leaving love bites on village girls.”
The raw honesty disarmed her. “Then why did you never say? To anyone?”
“Who would I say it to? The priest? My father?” He shrugged, a gesture of profound resignation. “It’s easier this way. Let them whisper. It keeps them from asking other questions. And it keeps my father hoping I’ll ‘grow out of it,’ so he doesn’t disown me.” He tossed the wheat stalk aside. “But now you’re wrapped up in it. And they’re not whispering about me, they’re screaming about you and a dragon.”
“They’re going to call me a witch, Gael. Or say I mated with it. They’ll run my family out.”
He was silent, thinking it over. His eyes, a calm grey-blue, scanned her face. “You were really with it, weren’t you? The dragon.”
She couldn’t lie to him. Not after his truth. She nodded again.
“And it’s not… it wasn’t a monster.”
“He’s a prince,” she said, the words bursting out with a fervor that surprised her. “He’s proud and hurt and lonely and he… he didn’t hurt me. I helped him. And then…” She trailed off, the memory too vast and tender to articulate.
A strange look passed over Gael’s face—not judgment, but a deep, weary understanding. “Of course he is,” he murmured. “Nothing in our lives is ever simple, is it?” He pushed off from the sacks. “So. Your brilliant plan is that we pretend to be sweethearts. That I, a man who has zero interest in women, publicly claim I was sneaking around with you, thereby explaining your very real and very human love bite, and deflecting the much worse, much more dangerous rumor.”
Put that way, it sounded insane. “Yes.”
“And in return, you give me the perfect cover. The village gets to stop whispering about why I’m not married and start chattering about who I’m married to. My father gets to be happy. I get left alone.” He cocked his head. “It’s a hell of a trade, Arya.”
“I’m not asking you to lie forever,” she said quickly, desperation creeping in. “Just until this blows over. Until the hunt is done and he’s… gone. Then we can have a falling out. You can say you discovered my terrible personality. Anything.”
Gael walked to the small, grimy window of the shed that looked out toward the northern woods, toward the dark line of the high ridge. The cheers of men still drifted from the village square. “That ridge is a hard climb. The hunters will be gone for days. And when they come back with nothing, their pride will be wounded. They’ll need someone to blame. That’ll be you, unless you’re spoken for.” He turned back to her. “And my secret… it’s not just for me. There’s… someone else. Someone who couldn’t bear the scrutiny if this all fell apart.”
Elias. It had to be. Arya felt a pang of guilt, dragging him into this. “I’m sorry. It’s too much to ask.”
“You’re not asking. I’m deciding.” He walked back to her, stopping an arm’s length away. He studied her, his gaze practical, assessing. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“We’ll be the most convincing pair of liars this village has ever seen.” He said it with a theatrical flourish, but his eyes were serious. Then, surprising her, he took her hand. His fingers were calloused from mill work, dusty with flour. He turned her hand over and pressed a dry, comically formal kiss to her knuckles. It was a performance, for anyone who might be watching. “There. Our courtship begins.”
Arya almost cried from sheer, dizzying relief. But as she looked at their joined hands, his flour-dusted skin against her own, she felt no spark, no flutter. Only a profound, grieving emptiness. This hand wasn’t the one she wanted holding hers.
Gael saw it in her eyes—the mourning for what she’d really lost. His grip tightened, not romantically, but in solidarity. “It’s just a story, Arya. We both get to live our real lives inside it.” He released her hand. “Now, we have to be seen. Go to the well. I’ll come by in an hour to carry your bucket. We’ll smile. We’ll blush. It’ll be nauseating.”
She managed a weak, grateful smile. “Thank you, Gael. I don’t know what—”
“Don’t,” he interrupted gently. “We’re helping each other. That’s all.” His eyes flicked back to the window, to the ominous ridge. The wry humor was gone, replaced by a sharp wariness. “Just know what you’re dealing with. If your prince is up there, and he sees you with me… dragons are possessive, from the stories. He might not understand the performance.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the damp mill shed went through her. She hadn’t considered that. Kaelen had left consumed by duty and loss, but the heat in his eyes, the ferocity of his claim on her… what if he looked back?
“He’s gone,” she said, trying to convince herself.
“Is he?” Gael asked quietly. Then he shook his head, slipping the mask of the easygoing miller’s son back on. “One problem at a time. Go on. Get to the well. Look mournful about your grandmother, but perk up when you see me.”
Arya left the shed, the flour-dust coating her tongue. The plan was in motion. A safe, ordinary, believable lie to cover a dangerous, extraordinary truth. As she walked toward the village well, she practiced her smile in her head. It felt like carving stone.
The performance began at the well. Old Marta saw them first, her eyes sharp as tacks as Gael, right on time, took the heavy oak bucket from Arya’s hands, his fingers lingering on hers a beat too long for propriety. He said something, too low for others to hear— “Your hair has a spider in it, don’t panic,” —and she laughed, a genuine, startled sound that sold the act perfectly.
By supper, the news was everywhere. Arya and Gael! Secretly! All this time!
It was a far better story than witchcraft or bestiality. It was familiar. It was romance. The love bite became a token of youthful passion, not a mark of the devil. Jerrick, returning from a grim day of futile searching in the lower woods, heard the new gossip and his relief was palpable, even as