Remi 

I wanted to slap him.  

With my gauntlets on. 

Callum was acting like a warped fool, fraying at the edges. All these years, he had played the part of pulling me back from the edge. I was woefully unprepared for our roles to switch.  

His blood already seeped through my handkerchief wrapped around his wounded hand. Cal was acting like it was all okay. Like he always did. Except nothing felt okay about this. 

It hurt to see him all twisted up and agonizing over the enemy because it was pretty. 

Cal had never shown much interest in women before. Even Lady Brigitta Milici, who fancied herself his fiance, had no success with him. Cal remained an innocent, oblivious baby lamb. Even when she fawned all over him and pressed her bosom against his arm. His naivety only made her shameless attempts more fun to watch. 

It left me with room to hope, for what I knew was hopeless. 

But this little bride of the Marquis, possible child of his enemy, ignores him. Doesn’t even bat an eyelash at him. And he’s bleeding for her? 

Wicked weavings were in the air and they emanated from her.  

The girl had stirred. A muscle twitch that looked involuntary, a finger flick, her lips trembling. Whatever the weaving, it seemed it was wearing off. Hopefully, it would wear off of Cal too. 

Janyck raced into the great hall, the door slamming against the wall behind him. The boy had finesse with a long bow that could rival the greatest artist, but he resembled a big puppy trying to reconcile with the sudden size of his body. All long limbs and big feet he hadn’t quite grown into. A late teenage growth spurt. 

“I got the healer.” 

Behind him, Liola stepped into the hall. A middle-aged woman, she wore the spring green robes of a mending weaver already marred with stains, a consequence of her work. She moved with the unhurried demeanor of a tortoise as she struggled under the weight of heavy-looking saddlebags slung over her shoulder. Yet, she yanked them out of Janyck’s reach when he tried to take them from her.   

No rush. Just His Grace actively bleeding from his sword hand.  

“Who needs me?” 

“Cal,” I declared before he could point out the girl first.  

“Show me, Your Grace.” Setting the bags at his feet she must have noticed the girl kneeling awkwardly on the floor. Her head whipped around and she stared down Cal, waiting for an explanation. 

“My hand,” Cal said, holding his injured palm out to her. “And the girl has a strange weaving afflicting her. Can you make sense of it?” 

“Mmmhmmmm,” the long drawn-out sound had all the same rebuke in it that the Dowager Duchess made when she didn’t accept the story either. “Whose blade did you catch?” 

“My own,” Cal answered, looking up at the ceiling rather than the healer. 

He no doubt felt the resemblance to his mother as well. Liola and the Dowager Duchess had been friends for ages, and anything Liola saw here would sure as the Loom make it back to Her Grace’s ears. 

“Mmmhmmm.” 

She prodded the edges of his wound, and it made Cal’s fingers twitch reflexively. Most intriguingly the girl’s fingers twitched. Exactly like his, as if invisible strings tied them together.

“This will sting.” She pulled out a bottle of strong-smelling clear liquid and poured it into the wound. 

I flinched at the smell of the healer’s medicine. It wasn’t a pleasant odor, and it brought with it strong memories of old wounds. In truth, the medicines were fine. What I truly abhorred was the feeling of weaving in my body. It left me crawling in my skin for weeks. I only allowed it in dire circumstances and usually under Cal’s insistence.  

It’s why I didn’t feel guilty calling the healer for him. His hand was precious. He couldn’t waste time waiting for it to heal. I watched in leery appreciation as Liola weaved her work. She stitched together flesh with mana, thought, and a few deft moves of her fingers until only a pink line of tender new skin remained where the cut had been. Dame Liola had her faults, but she was an adept healer. 

“Hmmmm.” This was a different tone than Liola’s usual. Even though she had finished mending, she still held his hand. Pulling it so close to her face she was practically kissing it as she examined the mended wound.  

“What is it?” Cal asked awkwardly. His hand was not the cleanest from the day’s work and probably didn’t smell pretty either.  

“What did you do to that girl?” Liola asked, finally taking her nose out of his palm. Her brows were furrowed and she looked every inch the disappointed mother. 

“Cal tried to execute her, but it didn’t take,” I said helpfully. 

“What?” She glared at me, and if looks could kill… “What in the weft does that mean?” 

“I tried to kill her, but I couldn’t go through with it. I grabbed my sword with my hand to spare her, and there was a flash of light.” 

“A flash of light?” she asked, pursing her lips in contemplation. “What color was it?” 

“White,” I answered. 

“With a bit of blue,” Cal added in.  

Liola dug deep into her saddlebags. It clinked with the sound of many glass vials bouncing off each other as she rustled through its contents. She pulled out a small wooden case. Sliding the top off, she took out a round piece of glass about the size of a silver coin. Carefully holding it by the edges between her finger and thumb, she grabbed Cal’s hand again. She peered at his palm through the glass before looking back at the girl. “Hmmmmm.” 

Was that a good hmm? Liola needed to expand her lexicon of judgy noises. 

“Dame Liola, what do you see?” Cal asked in a much calmer and kinder way than I would have. 

“The girl is covered in awful heavy weavings,” she said, tilting her head this way and that as she inspected something invisible to me. She got down on her knees and crawled unladylike across the floor to the girl as if she were following an invisible string. “It’s no wonder you couldn’t harm her. You’ve been tied together.” 

“What?” The word spilled out of me louder and sharper than it should have. I could hear it bouncing off the walls of the great stone hall to mock me. 

“Everyone has their thread, and Callum, your thread is entangled with hers,” Liola said with eyes full of sad kindness. “Who is she, dear?” 

Entangled? That was the kind of silliness found in fables of the Great Loom. They were all filled with religious parables about threads being tied together, cut apart, and the great weaving of the weft. It was all a big fancy way to say we live, we die, and we leave little behind. Who would care about a single strand of thread in the grand design of a beautiful tapestry? 

It was supposed to humble, but most nobility still liked to think their thread was spun of shiny gold. Cal wasn’t one of them, of course. He took the warp and weft as guides to live a good and chivalrous life, full of noblesse oblige, and doing one's duty. He was the good kind of fool.

Entanglement was fate. Two threads, two people bound to each other on the loom and weaving their path as a pair. It could mean many things; two enemies battling all their lives or two friends working side by side. A good family was said to be closely entangled. And so was true love. 

If you believed in that kind of thing. 

“She belongs to the Earl of Verbodine,” I said when Cal continued staring at the girl, letting the silence go on too long.  

I couldn’t tell if he was stunned by the mender’s diagnosis, or making plans to marry her himself. 

“Hmph.” Liola was too ladylike to spit, so I guess that sound would do. “She belongs to you now, dear. At least, until you find a weaver who can unentangle that mess between you.” 

“Mess?” I asked. She could make a million mouth noises if she wanted, but she needed to clarify that statement. Even the girl seemed on edge, wanting to hear the answer. 

“Oh dear, how do I explain it,” she said, tut-tutting as she carefully stowed away the glass lens in its little box. “This is not a simple bond by two people who have chosen each other voluntarily. This is a forced weaving. Caused by something well beyond my understanding of the works. You don’t need a mender, you need an expert in the Loom.” 

“To do what?” My voice was rising again, that little inflection of panic I got when something concerned Cal. 

“Your Grace and the girl have been brought together under a strange work of weaving. And that weaving is wrapped and intertwined with the weaving wrought on that poor girl and the one that was laid involuntarily on you, your Grace,” Liola said, ignoring my impatience and impertinence. “It’s unnatural work and it’s not good for either of you. You will face consequences from it I’m afraid.” 

“So it was a trap.” I didn’t mean to say I told you so, but well…I was right.