A Ghost on the Winding Path
The rain had been falling for three days, and Nadia Holloway’s garden had turned to mud.
She knelt at the edge of the vegetable beds, her fingers slick with black earth as she coaxed the last of the carrots free. The cottage behind her sat low and dark, its thatch roof weeping water in steady rivulets that carved small channels into the yard. She had planned to repair the drainage ditch before the autumn storms. She had planned a great many things before the war took everything she had left.
A stone mill sat at the boundary of the royal hunting grounds, half a mile through the treeline. From her kitchen window, Nadia could just see the peak of its broken wheel, still as a grave marker against the grey sky. She had avoided that path for five years. The woods around it held too many memories of a man who had promised her the world and then disappeared into fire and smoke.
The carrots came free with a wet sound. She dropped them into her basket and wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist, leaving a smear of dirt across her brow. The cottage door swung open, and a small voice cut through the patter of rain.
“Mama. I’m hungry.”
Nadia turned to find Max standing on the threshold, his feet bare against the stone step, his dark hair falling across his forehead in a tangle of curls. He was six years old and already too thin, despite her best efforts. She could see the ghost of his father in the angle of his jaw, the way his brow furrowed when he was thinking. It hurt to look at him sometimes. It hurt not to look at him.
“You know the rule about shoes,” she said, rising to her feet. The mud sucked at her boots as she crossed the yard.
“I forgot.” Max’s eyes—those impossible grey eyes, the color of a winter sea—dropped to his toes. “I’ll put them on.”
“You’ll do that. Come inside. I’ll make soup.”
She guided him back through the door and closed it against the rain. The cottage was small—two rooms, a hearth, a bed she shared with her son because there was nowhere else for him to sleep. The walls were patched with clay her father had mixed before he died, the floorboards worn smooth by generations of Holloway feet. It was humble. It was hers. She had built this life from the wreckage of the one she’d lost.
Max sat at the table while she built up the fire, his legs swinging beneath him. He was watching her with that quiet intensity he’d inherited from someone she refused to name.
“Mama,” he said, “can I go to the mill today?”
Nadia’s hands stilled on the kindling. “The mill? Why?”
“There’s a man there. He gave me an apple.”
Her blood turned cold. She turned slowly, the firelight catching the lines of her face. “What man?”
Max shrugged, unaffected by the sudden sharpness in her voice. “A tall man. He has a scar on his face. He said I looked like I needed an apple. I said thank you.” He said it with the solemn pride of a child who had used his manners correctly.
Nadia’s heart beat a sick rhythm against her ribs. The hunting grounds bordered the royal forest. Occasionally, soldiers passed through, or gamekeepers. But a tall man with a scar—that description could fit a dozen men. It could fit none. It could fit the one she had buried in her prayers five years ago.
“When did you see him?” She kept her voice even, the same tone she used when Max told her about the monsters under his bed.
“Yesterday. And the day before that.” Max counted on his fingers. “Three times. He said he likes birds.”
“Max.” She crossed to him and knelt, taking his small hands in hers. Her fingers were still stained with mud. “You must never go to the mill alone again. Do you understand? Never.”
“But he’s nice, Mama. He told me a story about—”
“I don’t care what he told you.” The words came out harsher than she intended. Max’s face crumpled, and she felt the familiar stab of guilt. She softened her grip, brought his hands to her lips, and kissed his knuckles. “I’m sorry. I’m not angry at you. But you have to listen to me. The woods are dangerous. And strangers are dangerous. Promise me.”
“I promise,” he whispered.
She held his gaze for a long moment, then released him and stood. The soup could wait. She needed to see the mill for herself, to confront whoever had been approaching her son. If it was one of the Sterling household men—if Cole Sterling had sent someone to watch her—she needed to know.
She pulled on her wool cloak, the one with the frayed hem she had been meaning to mend for two years. “Stay inside. Lock the door. Do not open it for anyone until I return.”
“Yes, Mama.”
She pressed a kiss to his forehead and left.
The path to the mill wound through a stand of ancient oaks, their branches interlocking overhead to form a tunnel of green and grey. The rain had softened the ground, and her boots sank with every step. She moved quickly, her breath fogging in the cold air, her hand pressed against the small knife she kept in her pocket.
The mill came into view through the trees—a stone structure two stories high, its walls covered in moss, its wheel frozen in a permanent state of decay. The stream that had once powered it had dwindled to a trickle, barely enough to wet the stones.
And there, standing beside the broken wheel, was a man.
He was tall. He wore a dark coat that had once been fine, now mud-spattered and worn at the cuffs. His boots were good leather, built for riding. His face was half-turned from her, but she could see the scar Max had mentioned—a pale line that ran from his temple to his jaw, pulling at the corner of his mouth.
He was watching the treeline. Watching the path she had just come from.
Nadia stopped. Her breath caught in her throat. It was not possible. It could not be possible.
But the man turned, and she saw his face fully for the first time in five years, and the world tilted beneath her feet.
Xavier Voss looked at her like he was seeing a ghost.
She must have made a sound, because his expression shifted—something raw and hungry passing across his features before he controlled it. He stepped toward her, and she stepped back. The knife in her pocket pressed against her palm.
“Nadia.” His voice was rough, scraped clean of the warmth she remembered. “You’re alive.”
“So are you,” she said. The words came out flat. “The war office sent me a letter. It said you died in the retreat from Thornwall. They gave me your seal in a velvet bag.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Pain. Guilt. She couldn’t tell which. “I should have written. I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t, or didn’t?”
“Both.”
She wanted to hit him. She wanted to throw herself into his arms. She did neither. She stood rigid, her hands fisted at her sides, the rain plastering her hair to her skull.
Xavier took another step closer. She could see the exhaustion carved into his face, the new lines around his eyes. He had been handsome once, in a way that made women stop and stare. He was still handsome, but the war had taken something from him, some essential softness she had loved. In its place, there was only hard edges and an old, cold fury.
“The boy,” he said. “The one who comes to the mill.”
Nadia’s blood went to ice. “He’s my son.”
“I know. I’ve seen him. Three times now.” Xavier’s voice dropped, and she heard the tremor in it. “He has my eyes, Nadia.”
She said nothing. She could not.
“I was watching the cottage,” he continued. “For two weeks. I needed to see you first, to know if you were the same woman I left behind. And then I saw him playing in the yard, and I knew. I knew the moment I saw his face.”
“You knew nothing.” Her voice cracked. “You left. You died. I mourned you for three years before I stopped crying myself to sleep. And now you come back, with a scar and a story, and you think you can stand in the rain and demand answers?”
“I’m not demanding.” But his jaw was tight, and his hands were clenched at his sides. “I’m asking.”
“You don’t get to ask.”
“Nadia.” He said her name like a prayer. “Is he mine?”
The question hung between them, sharp as a blade. The rain continued to fall, soaking through her cloak, running in rivulets down her neck. She could feel the weight of it—the years of silence, the letters she had never sent, the child she had raised alone in a cottage that leaked when it rained and grew cold in the winter.
She opened her mouth to lie. She had perfected the lie. She had rehearsed it a thousand times in the dark of night, when Max’s small body was warm against her back and the memory of Xavier’s hands on her skin was so vivid she could barely breathe.
But the words would not come.
Because Xavier was looking at her with those grey eyes—Max’s eyes—and she could see the truth already reflected in them. He knew. He had known from the moment he saw the boy running through the mud.
“I never told you,” she said quietly. “Because I didn’t know. Not until after you were gone.”
She watched his face crumble. She watched him process the years he had lost, the son he had missed, the life that could have been. The wind picked up, howling through the trees, carrying the scent of wet earth and rotting leaves.
When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse. “He has my eyes, Nadia. Tell me the truth—did you ever write to me about a son?”