The forest surrounding Shadowhaven was not really meant to be hiked, and certainly not in a wedding dress. Why she hadn’t thought to grab something else to wear this morning she’d never know. And the fact that the forest seemed to be clawing and pawing, trying to drag her back, didn’t help. Or maybe it was her regrets that were clawing at her, after all, the dress was seemingly untouched for as many snags as she seemed to have hit.

She’d never thought of herself as a coward. Her father would be so disappointed in her. He always told her to stand and face her fears. Although why she should care what he’d think… After what he did to her mother. But somehow twenty plus years of being daddy’s little girl didn’t go away just cause he’d done something inexcusable. And now as she had also done something inexcusable, hurt someone who deserved it no more than she’d deserved her father’s betrayal, all because she was weak.

And to add insult to injury, she was hopelessly lost. Maybe Tiffany could wander around the woods and find the one thing that would make her the happiest, but Jolene didn’t have that good a sense of direction. She was fine in cities. But cities had always had street signs and graffiti and identifiable buildings, forests… have trees.

All she knew was that the thick underbrush was all but impassible, except the from the direction she’d just come from. And what the hell was she doing anyway? Where was she going to go? She knew very little about the countries surrounding Shadowcrest, and even less about living in the middle ages, outside of the weird amalgamate that was Shadowcrest. She flung herself down on a rock and stared at the still water of the pond in front of her.

“The road’s back that way, if that’s what you’re looking for.” Jolene jumped and stared. The voice wasn’t familiar, no one that she knew. And at first she didn’t even see anyone, then, out of the underbrush stepped a man. Definitely not a Shadowcrestian. His teeshirt was somewhat familiar as if she should know the reference from somewhere. And he wore jeans and battered cowboy boots.

He looked–somehow–wrong in these woods, though maybe not quite as wrong as a woman in a gown straight out of the Phantom of the Opera, so it wasn’t like she had room to talk.

“The road to where?” Jolene asked.

“Kinda depends on you.” The man said with a shrug of shoulders that looked sort of how she imagined Sawyer’s would in a few years. Used to hard work and muscled from it, but not large, not bulky. He sat on the rock next to hers.

“You sound like the Cheshire Cat.” Jolene said.

“Just cause the person giving it is crazy doesn’t mean the advice can’t be sound.” He shrugged again, turning odd slate-blue-green eyes on her. As their gazes locked, she felt oddly naked, not physically, but mentally, as if he were seeing straight into her thoughts. “It’ll take you home.”

“Pardon?” Jolene said glancing away from the man who rubbed his freckled nose.

“The road. It’ll take you home.” He said after a moment of silence had passed.

“And what if you don’t know where home is anymore?”

“I bet you do, Jolene.” She stared at him, though he didn’t seem to notice. How did he know her name? Where was she? “If you’d just listen to yourself, you’d find you know.” He reminded her of someone. It was an odd, tip of the tongue sensation. While outwardly there were things that reminded her of the man who was probably currently waiting for her to show up to their wedding, underneath there was–someone else. That calm voice with just a hint of a drawl tickled the back of her mind.

“How do you know my name?” She blurted when the corners of his lips curled up into a quarter smile that she would have sworn she’d seen on–oh who? And the quiet huff of a laugh, she could hear it overlapping a memory as he caught her eyes again.

“I could tell you that–and you would never believe it.”

“Great. I fell and cracked my head open and am dying, aren’t I?” The laugh was a bit more cynical this time.

“You aren’t going to die today.” He frowned slightly. “Or at least your heart will still be beating in a day, a week, a month from now.” This was getting weirder by the moment.

“I don’t know whether to be more weirded out by your psychic routine or the fact that you make it sound like I will die today.”

“You’re at a crossroads, Jolene. I can’t tell you that if you make the right choice you’ll live happily ever after. The future is way too changing to pin it down. So the right choice won’t get you happily ever after, but the wrong choice, well…” He glanced away.

“It’ll mean that I’ll die like Scrooge?” Jolene couldn’t keep the sneer out of her voice. He chuckled, that maddeningly familiar laugh taunting her.

“No. I can’t even say that. Pinning down happiness is sort of like pinning down the wind. It’s difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. It’ll be harder to be happy.”

“So if I marry Sawyer, I’ll be happy?” She rolled her eyes.

“That also depends on you. You should know by now that happily ever after is a cheap lie. Even if you could get it, you wouldn’t want it. If you don’t work for it, it’ll never be enough for you. You can be happy if you don’t marry Sawyer, you can be happy if you do. You will regret not marrying Sawyer in a way that you won’t regret marrying him if that’s what you choose. You do have a choice, Jolene. You’ve just got to figure out what road you want to take.” The man scrubbed hands through his hair and looked up at the sky.

Then he turned and locked eyes with her again. His pupils seemed to expand, the tiny flecks of almost-silver in his irises flashing. Just for a second she thought she could see–she shook her head and blinked. His eyes were just eyes again. Sparkling, mischievous and yet sad, terribly sad.

He stood up and stretched. “It’s time for me to be movin’ on.” He started off the direction she’d come from.

“Wait, that’s it?” Jolene asked, scowling. “C’mon, even Dickens’ ghosts were less cheap than that.”

“You know what you want to do, Jolene. I don’t need to tell you that. If telling you something were gonna solve this, you’d have been settled right and tight six months ago.” The man chuckled. “I think what you needed is just encouragement to listen to yourself.”

“And you got stuck with the job?” Jolene snorted.

“More like I volunteered for it.”

“Why?” Her eyebrow shot toward her hairline as she said it.

“Indirectly, this involves someone who is very important to me. If I can pass along some sense to you, maybe down the road you can pass it along to them.” He shrugged, a rueful gesture, tantalizingly familiar in selfeffacing sort of way. “Ma’am.” He grabbed the brim of a hat that wasn’t there and nodded before turning and walking off in the direction she’d come from.

In the time it took her heart to beat three slow times, she was alone in the clearing though it had certainly taken her longer to make it through the trees than that.

Jolene looked over in the direction the man had said the road was in, and then back at the now empty clearing with no sign anyone but her had been in it–well–ever. When you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there, the cat had said.

—

Jarrett sighed wishing there was something he could say to the young man who had by now had to have figured out that his bride wasn’t coming.

“I should have known–but–I thought…” Sawyer sighed.

“Aye.” Jarrett nodded.

“Well, I suppose I should…” Sawyer shifted in his seat.

“You don’t have to.” Jarrett told him. But he would, just like Jarrett would have. That was what they both did, picked themselves up out of the dirt and went along, regardless. The sound of shoes hitting the porch boards at a run startled them both and they turned to peer at the door.

“She’s coming!” Tate exclaimed hard on the heels of bursting through the door. Sawyer’s face was awash in conflicting emotions. “His Majesty says to tell you that she says that she’s sorry she kept us waiting, but if you still wanna do this. She will.”

—

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting.” Jolene said as she stopped under the rose arbor.

“It’s alright.” He shrugged.

“I needed a little help finding the right road.” Her eyes scanned over the wedding guests with a peculiar intensity that he could only wonder at. But then Gray was taking his place and such mundane thoughts fled. Call him a romantic, but her hold his hands in hers somehow seemed to say that they would find their way to right better than any words a silver tongue could put together.

—

Adult Content warning! This scene chunk contains adult material. You were warned!

He hesitated outside the bedroom door, slowly turning the knob before releasing it only to grip and turn it again. Somehow this was–harder–than he had daydreamed this would be. Although, wasn’t that always the way it went. “You can come in, Sawyer.” her voice called though it lacked it’s usual tone of certainty. She was laying on the bed in a white shift certainly not made to impress anyone.

“Sorry.” He rounded the other side of the bed and sat down gingerly, though he’d been sleeping in this bed in this room for weeks now. He already knew the lumps in the mattress.

“I should be the one apologizing.” Jolene said. The light glinting off the ring on her left hand. “I’ve put you through a lot and now I’m asking you to be patient while I put you through more.” He was pretty sure, given the shift she was wearing, at least part of what she meant by that.

“I understand.” He murmured towards his hands.

“I–I know it’s selfish.” She began then held up a hand as he started to protest. “But I just can’t–we can’t–I can’t.”

“At least you didn’t banish me to the couch. That’s what Livvie says she used to do with her ex-husband.” Jolene smiled at that. But it faded almost before it had finished blooming.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered again. He leaned over and started to blow the candles on the nightstand out. “Wait, Sawyer.” He turned to look at her.

“I can’t–but it’s–it’s our wedding night.” Sawyer shrugged with a nonchalance that he certainly didn’t feel.

“I’m just glad you married me.” She brushed the hair from his face with one hand.

“Liar.” She said with a snicker. “Well, maybe there is something I can do.” Her hand brushed over his shoulder and across his chest, opening his pajama top and sliding it to one side before pulling the other side off his shoulder. He sat up slightly, tossing the cloth off to one side at her gesture.

She made a noise in the back of her throat and pressed her lips to his neck right over his pulse, which started raising as she nipped gently and her hand slid down his chest, to the drawstring on his sleep trews. Even without looking at the knot, she made short work of it and then her hand slid down further. Feather light touches on his hips and belly had him hard before the first finger touched him.

“Take your pants off.” She murmured in his hair, leaving him the task of trying to manage that without sitting up because her lips were still busy at his neck and the hollow of his collar bone. Though admittedly it was the light touch of her hand, much lower on his body, that was the hardest to work around. He got them kicked off though where they fell was anyone’s guess.

“Jo–” He began.

“Hush, sweetheart, or I’ll lose my nerve entirely.” She said before kissing him. A hard, wet deep thing unlike anything she’d ever done before, almost distracting him from her free hand–almost, until it wrapped around him. He gasped into her mouth and she nipped at his lower lip, which didn’t–couldn’t entirely distract him.

And then in that usual timeless rush, it was over. Him gasping for breath, eyes wide, watching his wife who shrugged ruefully.

“Good night, Sawyer.” She said shifting herself under the covers. He slid under them himself after fishing his trews off the footboard. “I wish you didn’t have to give me the time, but thanks.” He just nodded and wrapped his arms around his wife. They’d figure it out.

The idea was there, the perfect one, the one that would put to music everything he was feeling, it was like there was a miniature sun inside his breast, the light flowing through him in his very blood and bones. And somehow he had to bring all of that out and give voice to it.

But so far he had all of squat, which was why he was sitting on his bed in the little curtained off alcove thinking instead of out there proclaiming his love for all the world to see. Nothing seemed to be working, none of it. He’d used every trick both fair and foul that he knew of to tell her how he felt and she just looked at him with those blue eyes turning his knees the consistency of gruel, and laughed, or snorted, or raised one of those elegant brown eyebrows into that adorable arch.

Sawyer would never again mock the concept of unrequited love. Apparently, it wasn’t just that the would-be lover wasn’t smooth enough or suave enough or didn’t know the right tricks, sometimes the center of your universe was just stubbornly obnoxious and called you a kid. A kid. If Sawyer hadn’t loved Jolene so much that would have… Oh! He flopped back onto the bed, barely feeling the straw poke him in the back through the thick blanket.

This called for action, this called for decisiveness, this called for… putting a shirt on. The new barn was mostly free of drafts, and putting the old tapestry up over the window as Lady Tiffany had suggested, killed those that were still left, however, that didn’t make it snug and warm. The building was, after all, still a barn. It was large, allowing for space for the animals and there was only a single fireplace inside.

There was a second, outside, that they cooked on, and which added warmth by heating the stone wall it was built into, but the building was too big to be sufficiently heated by only those two fires.

The barn had been the last project before winter, Jarrett wanted some place that he could bring the livestock during the depressingly frequent snowstorms. Both Lady Kennedy and Lady Tiffany had protested. They pointed out that Jarrett was putting the welfare of his stock in front of himself. (To which Lady Peyton had murmured ‘no fucking duh.’, which apparently made sense… to someone else at least.) So they had compromised. The barn was built with a loft big enough to house Jarrett, Sawyer and Alistair for the winter.

That got them out of the pavilions that Lady Kennedy had so protested them wintering in. Sawyer didn’t see why, they were actually snugger and more cozy than some of the buildings he’d wintered in. But one just did not argue with Lady Kennedy. You might talk Lady Tiffany around. Lady Peyton was stubborn, sometimes, but mostly just over wearing skirts and the length of her hair. Lady Heidi didn’t seem to voice much of an opinion on anything. (Other than she said he was adorable in the tone of a child with a puppy.) Lady Raquel really actually wasn’t all that difficult, at least she didn’t have the same stubborn willfulness as many of the other ladies.

Lady Jolene – he found himself sighing as he thought of her curls and her smile – Lady Jolene was only particularly stubborn when it concerned him. But, really, you could talk to the city walls, asking them to move, and be guaranteed of more luck than Lady Kennedy when she’d settled into a belief. And as she had appointed herself guardian of health in Shadowcrest, they were not going to get her to move a smidge.

All the more reason not to sit around without a shirt on, really. When he left his little curtained alcove, he saw Jarrett was sitting staring into the flames at the fireplace, his dark, dark eyes lost in some other time or place.

“Jarret, you, you all right?” Sawyer found himself asking. Cursing himself for being a sluggabed, if he’d known that Alistair was nowhere to be found, he’d have gotten up earlier. But of course you couldn’t depend on a nobleman to be around when you needed one, that would like expecting a guard to be around when someone was being robbed.

“Aye, jist cold. Been out a feeding an’ forgot to take me heavy cloak. Got cold out there.” The old butcher shrugged his broad shoulders, the leather of his tunic creaking.

“Aye, does that, tis winter.” Sawyer offered with a smile that faded as soon as Jarrett turned back to the fire. He was not alright, he wasn’t in spittin’ distance of alright. Sawyer just didn’t know how to fix it, maybe you couldn’t.

“Ah, well.” Jarret said, holding his big hands out to the heat. Sawyer nodded, before grabbing his shirt and tunic out of the cupboard. It took most of the afternoon, broken up by helping bring in the animals and the dozen other chores that winter falling hadn’t obliterated before Sawyer had his plan for what to do. At least about Lady Jolene. He still hadn’t a clue how to bring life back to Jarrett’s eyes. Maybe you couldn’t.

“Where are you off to?” Jarrett asked as Sawyer tromped down the stairs, it was still amazing that they didn’t creak, even though the boards were not new, they didn’t creak when you walked down them. Lady Tiffany was nearly as much a wizard as King Lachlan was. All the things he’d taken for granted about buildings, she’d managed to negate or so nearly as their existence to be negligible.

“Gonna go visit Lady Jolene.”

“Lad.” Jarrett began then obviously reined in his tongue. “You do know it’s snowing out there?”

“Tis always snowing, tis winter. Besides as Lady Tiffany says, faint hearts never won fair ladies.” Sawyer brought his chin up stubbornly.

“Aye, so she said. Sarcastically, I might add.” The old butcher shook his head.

“No, it’s true. What does it say about me that I would let a little thing like some snow stop me from courting my lady?”

“That you’re sensible?” Jarrett suggested.

“Are you gonna need me to help with the sheep?” Sawyer ignored the sensible. Love wasn’t sensible that was the whole point. But he wouldn’t go if he was needed here. Jarrett considered it for a moment then shook his head.

“Nah, go be young, lad, just don’t freeze out there, I’ve buried enough this year.” Jarrett said. Sawyer nodded and headed out the door.

“That lad is gonna get himself killed. If the weather don’t, then the being stupid will.” He shook his grizzled head.

Sawyer started the second verse, losing himself in the music, his fingers were a bit chilled and he worried about what this was doing to his fiddle, when the door cracked open. He heard a familiar exasperated sigh. The first sign of life from inside the barn other than the smoke from the chimney he’d seen since he got here.

“What, in the name of all that is right and good are you doing?” Lady Kennedy asked, exasperation coloring her voice.

“P-playing…” His teeth started chattering and a shiver started up his spine. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea, but, didn’t women like it when you showed manly contempt for your own sake in favor of theirs?

“Well, go home.” Kennedy said, shaking her head. “Before you freeze. It’s snowing!”

“My-my lady.”

“Too late. Get in here, get warm and dry and then go home. You idiot.” Kennedy said, although he thought he heard the faintest touch of affection in her voice when she said the last word, but all he saw when he glanced at her was her pretty, tanned face with a stern expression carved into it.

She shoved him toward the fireplace. It drew him, he was shamed to say, slightly more than lady Jolene who was sitting in the chair by the door.

You hardly would have guessed that this had once been a barn. The furniture and wall-hangings had turned the bleak room into a warm cozy cottage, brightly splashed with the warm tones that Lady Kennedy favored.

“Your clothes are soaked through, Sawyer, how did you survive this long?” Kennedy said from where she was filling a tea kettle with water. “Obviously luck.” She answered her own question.

“Raquel, take Sawyer up, between you and Peyton you should have something he could wear.”

“My lady, surely.” Sawyer fell silent when he saw the expression on the face of the doctor and could only follow meekly after the girl. He hadn’t been upstairs since, really, the last of the furniture had been carted up. Lady Raquel gestured at the screened off portion of the loft.

“You really are an idiot, Sawyer.” Lady Raquel said. “There’s a blizzard out there!”

“It’s just a little snow, my lady.” Sawyer shook his head.

“You know, it’s stuff like this that just proves to Jolene that you really are just a kid.” Raquel tossed some clothing over the screen at him.

“Huh?”

“It’s not very mature or sensible, romantic, maybe, sorta, but I have to say I would be so mad at Blake if he took it in his head to walk here in a blizzard just to play me love songs. I certainly would not be impressed. It shows you still have some growing up to do. I think if Jolene wants something in a man, it’s going to be proof that he’s not going to do something utterly stupid that’s likely to get himself killed, leaving her widowed and possibly with kids somewhere down the line. Did you ever think of that?” Raquel said as he tried to figure out how to put on the clothing that she’d tossed him.

“I suppose I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, try in the future, you’re not gonna win her over by doing stupid shit.” Raquel giggled as he came out.

“What?”

“Your barn door is open.” She said. Sawyer looked at him puzzled. “On the jeans, grab the little metal tab thing and pull it up. You’re about two seconds away from flashing me. Which I am sure that my fiancé would not approve of.” Sawyer fumbled for a moment, covering his blush by looking around the loft. All of the beds and the wall behind them had been individualized. That one, he thought, looking at the pink floral spread, has to be Lady Jolene’s.

Lady Raquel left him standing there for a moment looking at the bed, and he had to scramble to catch up. Lady Kennedy pushed a chair at the dining table out with her foot and patted the table beside a cup of steaming liquid. Sawyer took the seat and she looked up at him.

“Sawyer,” She paused and sighed. “I know it’s been drilled into your head since the crib that women are impressed by men being manly men. But really, it’s not that impressive.”

“So Raquel told me.” Sawyer admitted into the cup of tea.

“Promise me, no matter how loud your heart – or hormones – are screaming at you, my boy, that you will not do this again.” Lady Kennedy said. Sawyer looked at her. “If you won’t promise me, I’ll have Jarrett lock you in the barn every time the snow starts to fall.”

“I promise, Lady Kennedy.” He said to his hands. This was so confusing.

“Thank you, now, I’m sending this home with you. Drink it, at every meal, for the next three days. And if you start to cough or feel achy, take this.” She handed him a pouch of herbs and a bottle. “I do not need you to die of pneumonia.” Lady Kennedy said. Sawyer nodded.

“Now get home, before you scared Jarrett. He doesn’t deserve it.” She shooed him like someone might shoo geese. “Men.” She said, causing the other women to laugh. The warm sound of their laughter, even at his expense, carried him home better than the lingering heat of the fire.