and sees him. In the glass of the shop window, Addie

History is a thing designed in retrospect.

the little house, leaving only his steps in the

Some decisions happen all at once.

“You see only flaws and faults, weaknesses to be exploited. But humans are messy, Luc. That is the wonder of them. They live and love and make mistakes, and they feel so much.

For years, she will lie awake and tell herself stories of the girl she’d been, in hopes of holding fast to every fleeting fragment, but it will have the opposite effect—the memories like talismans, too often touched; like saint’s coins, the etching worn down to silver plate and faint impressions.

You wanted to be free, says a voice in her head, but it is not hers; no, it is deeper, smoother, lined with satin and woodsmoke.

After all, the darkness only looked the way he did because of her. She’d given him that shape, chosen what to make of him, what to see.

“The old gods are everywhere,” she says. “They swim in the river, and grow in the field, and sing in the woods. They are in the sunlight on the wheat, and under the saplings in spring, and in the vines that grow up the side of that stone church. They gather at the edges of the day, at dawn, and at dusk.”