Blackfoot Forest [m] I think that she knows, can't keep sealed tight

Of course you didn't mean to, she thought, maybe unfairly — but it was a bitterly ironic defense made to a woman who had always been forced to face the difference between action and intention. Not that he could know. Or maybe he ought to by now; wasn't that a lesson the world taught everyone in time?

A woman fighting a war, Reverie's rejoinder was less barbed this time; this, at least, was a fair question to ask. She'd brought news of war to his home. In my own way. It isn't the news I wanted to bring to the valley - this was my home for a long time. I raised my daughters here.

And I'd burn this whole valley to ashes if I had to.

But we do what we have to. Her gaze flitted over him again, catching on the scars he wore so well. And you? What kind of man are you, following a lone woman into the woods? A note of teasing in her own voice then, perhaps cruelly so — but surely he couldn't deny how it looked.