Projo could feel a strange, jealous anger radiating off the man. He hadn't come here to try and interject himself in between whatever Mira and Thomas had, but from the look of things, Thomas was feeling threatened either way.
Projo turned and followed Mira before Thomas could try cornering him.
The atmosphere inside the farmhouse was thick with the ghosts of life that had ended just two days prior. A half-finished piece of knitting lay in a basket by a chair. A pair of worn farming boots sat by the door.
Projo and Thomas washed the dirt from their hands and faces in tense silence.
For dinner, Mira sliced one of the hams Projo had brought back, frying thick slabs of it in a pan with some potatoes from the larder. They ate at the simple wooden table, the two empty chairs a constant, screaming presence in the room. The silence was broken only by the scrape of cutlery on wooden plates.
It was Thomas who finally spoke, his voice carrying an artificial, forced cheerfulness.
"Well," he began, gesturing with his fork. "We'll need to get the rest of the apples picked before the first frost. And I'll need to ride into town tomorrow, talk to the merchants' guild, let them know that... that the accounts will be under my name now, to keep the trade going."
He looked at Mira, expecting agreement, a shared sense of purpose.
But she just slowly set her fork down, then looked up at him, her expression completely flat. "My father's name is on the accounts, Thomas."
Thomas shook his head, blinking in confusion. "Well, yes, Mira, but someone has to—"
"I will handle the accounts," she said, cutting him off with an edge of cold steel.
The tension in the room snapped taut.
Thomas stared at her, a mixture of hurt and disbelief on his face. He opened his mouth to argue, to explain, but then seemed to think better of it. He just nodded stiffly and returned to his meal. Projo kept his eyes on his plate, feeling like a man trapped between two grinding millstones.
The meal continued in a thick, suffocating silence. Every scrape of a fork on a wooden plate was unnaturally loud. Projo kept his head down, focusing on the simple act of eating, trying to make himself as small as possible. He was a foreign object in the delicate, fractured machinery of Mira and Thomas's relationship, and he could feel the gears grinding around him.
Thomas finished his meal first, pushing his clean plate away with a decisive scrape. He took a long drink of water, then set the cup down with a solid thud. He cleared his throat.
First, he turned to Projo, his tone dismissive. "It's getting late, Smith. That's a long, dark walk back to the city for a man in your condition."
Then, he turned his full attention to Mira, his expression softening into one of deep concern. "Mira. You shouldn't be alone in this house tonight. It's... it's not right."
He reached across the table, his large, calloused hand covering hers. "I can take the guest room, or even the floor by the hearth. Just to be close. You know... in case you need anything."
The allusion was unmistakable.
The words were a gentle offer of comfort, but the touch, the tone, the possessive look in his eyes—they were a claim. They obviously shared history, nights when his presence in this house was not just accepted, but invited. It was a clear attempt to re-establish an old intimacy and firmly exclude the stranger at the table.
Mira did not immediately pull her hand away. She simply went still, her gaze dropping to where his hand covered hers. She stared at it for a long, silent moment, and when she finally looked up, her face was a mask of cold clarity.
She gently slid her hand out from under his.
"Thank you for your help today, Thomas," she said, her voice polite but devoid of any warmth. "You should go home and get some rest. It's been a long day for everyone."
Then, without missing a beat, she turned her gaze to Projo. "The guest room is small, but the bed is clean. Or you can take a bedroll by the fire, whichever you prefer."
It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact. "You're in no condition to walk back tonight. You will stay."
The contrast was brutal. In a single breath, she had thanked Thomas for his service and dismissed him like the hired hand he was, offering his desired place—the role of trusted guest and protector—to the man he saw as a rival.
The air in the room grew cold enough to frost glass.
Projo took a long drink of water, head forward but eyes darting back and forth between the two of them. When he finally finished, he set the cup down and said, "I—uh. I don't want to intrude."
Walking on eggshells would have been easy compared to this.
Thomas's face flushed a dark, angry red. He pushed his chair back, the legs scraping loudly against the wooden floor, and stood up to his full, imposing height.
"Intrude?" he scoffed. He wasn't looking at Projo; his wounded gaze was locked on Mira. "I've worked this land side-by-side with your father for five years. Bled for it. Broken bones for it. This is my home."
He turned to Projo, his eyes narrowed. "This is a family matter, Smith. You've been paid for your trouble. You can go."
Mira stood then too, hands braced on the table. She was smaller than Thomas by a head, but in that moment, she seemed to tower over him.
"Yes, Thomas," she began. "You've worked hard and we've all appreciated it. But you understand the arrangement you had with Pa, don't try and twist it. Your work came with room and board in the guesthouse—that still stands if you'd like to stop running your mouth."
He gave her a look like he'd been physically slapped.
"This is my home, Thomas," Mira said, her voice dropping low and deadly. "Mine. You are a guest in it until I say otherwise—same as Projo."
Thomas sneered, looking from Mira to Projo, then back again. "You suddenly get all uppity because you got your smith friend here to watch out for you?"
Projo looked stiffly at both of them, then said, "I highly doubt she needs me to look out for her."
"Shut up," Thomas spat at him.
Mira's face contorted. "The fuck's got into you, Thomas? I ain't never seen you act like this."
"What's got into me is you need someone to help look over this farm!" Thomas pushed back. "I can be that for you! We can run it together!"
Mira's body language showed her growing disgust. "Together? Then why you offering to put your name on my accounts? On my father's accounts, it wasn't your parents who got killed, wasn't your parents we just buried."
Thomas stared at her, his mouth opening and closing, but no words came out. He tried to soften, tried to move a step closer around the table to offer some solace, but Mira stepped back as soon as he did.
Her rejection was absolute.
The fool tried one last time, tone deepening like he could will her into submission. "Mira—"
"Get the fuck off my property," Mira cut him off coldly.
Thomas's eyes were wide with a mixture of rage and betrayal. With a choked sound of frustration, he turned on his heel and stormed toward the door. He stopped just short of it, his hand gripping the frame. Projo saw the man's shoulders heave once, and he glanced back.
"You'd throw me out?" Thomas suddenly spat, voice thick with wounded pride. "After everything I've done for this family? For him? A stray you just met? A blacksmith's boy who got himself stabbed?"
"This has nothing to do with him!" Mira's voice was sharp, cutting through his tirade. "This is about you, Thomas! Your arrogance!" She recoiled in disgust. "Your possessiveness! My parents' bodies ain't even fully cold yet you bastard!"
His face contorted in a snarl.
He wasn't winning. He couldn't make her understand. With a roar, he spun around and grabbed the nearest thing on a side table—a simple clay water cup—and hurled it not directly at her, but at the wall just behind her.
The cup shattered against the stone hearth with a loud crack.
Mira flinched back, raising an arm to shield her face. She let out a small gasp and looked down. A shard of the broken pottery had sliced a thin line across her skin, and a bright bead of blood welled up, stark against her pale flesh.
It had finally gone too far.
In the space between one heartbeat and the next, Projo shot to his feet. Thomas, still breathing heavily from his outburst, turned just in time to see Projo closing the distance between them.
Before Thomas could even raise his fists, Projo's hand shot out, fingers wrapping around the farmhand's thick throat.
Thomas's eyes bulged with shock. He tried to swing, to pry the hand away, but it was like trying to break a band of solid iron. Projo lifted with an unnatural strength, and Thomas's heavy work boots left the floor.
He was held two inches in the air, dangling, his feet kicking uselessly. His hands clawed at the unyielding grip as choked, gurgling sounds escaped his lips. The big farmhand, strong as a bull, was completely helpless.
Projo wasn't angry.
A cold, terrifying calm had settled over him. This was a problem, and he was removing it. Without a word, still holding Thomas aloft with one hand, he strode toward the door. He carried the man outside onto the porch and tossed him backward—not hard enough to send him into the dirt, but enough to create distance.
Thomas stumbled back, gasping and wheezing, his eyes filled with a newly discovered terror. He looked at Projo like he was some kind of monster.
"Get out," Projo said, his voice a low, flat command, echoing Mira's words.
Scrambling, Thomas turned and fled into the darkness, not looking back.
Projo stood on the porch for a long moment, the cool night air doing nothing to calm the strange, cold fire in his veins. He looked at his own hand, bewildered how he had just effortlessly lifted a man twice his weight.
He turned and walked back inside, closing the splintered door behind him. The farmhouse was silent. Mira was standing exactly where he had left her, one hand holding her bleeding forearm. She stared at him, eyes wide with shock.
The silence stretched for a long, charged moment.
"Projo," she finally breathed. "What... what in the hell was that?" Her gaze dropped from his face to his hand, as if she could see the impossible strength still radiating from it.
"I'm... I'm not sure," Projo said carefully. "But I'm pretty sure it's related to what happened..." His voice trailed off, and he broke eye contact. "What uh, what happened in the woods." He risked one more nervous glance at her.
He saw the shock in her eyes give way to a flicker of understanding. She knew what he meant. But before she could respond, he took a half-step forward, his voice softening with genuine concern.
"Are you alright?" Projo asked, looking at her face, not her arm. "With... all of that. With Thomas."
Mira let out a shaky breath, the tension finally leaving her shoulders. A sad, bitter smile touched her lips. "I... I think I've known it was coming for a while," she said quietly. "Me and Thomas used to be close, but we grew apart… he never wanted to accept it."
She looked down at the bleeding cut on her arm as if noticing it for the first time. "I'll be okay."
He nodded, his gaze following hers to the thin line of red on her skin. "Is it deep?"
"No, it's just a—" She stopped, her eyes widening, and she let out a sharp gasp.
"What?" Projo asked, a knot of dread tightening in his stomach.
"You're bleeding again," she said, voice filled with alarm.
Projo looked down.
She was right. During the brief, violent exertion of dealing with Thomas, the freshly knitted wound on his chest had torn open. A dark, wet patch of crimson was already spreading across the front of his clean shirt.
"Fuck," Projo said, his hand flying up to put pressure on the wound. "Do you have a needle? And some strong thread? I can stitch it closed."
Mira didn't answer right away. Projo looked up and saw that the alarm on her face had been replaced by something else entirely.
Curiosity.
"I have an idea," she said carefully, stepping toward him.
"Here," she placed her own hand gently over his, adding to the pressure on his chest. The touch was warm, simple, and for a moment, nothing happened.
"What is it?" he asked, confused by the strange, calculating look on her face.
She locked eyes with him. "You're injured. And… close touch heals you, but for ten years, you didn't touch anybody."
She paused, letting the weight of that truth settle on him again. Her next words weren't a question, but a statement of fact.
"That means you've never been with a woman."
Projo's eyes went wide.
It wasn't that he wasn't interested—he was.
He really was.
But he had never even entertained the thought of something like that because he thought he was cursed.
He wasn't even sure what to do.
His mouth opened but no words came out, so he closed it again. His brow furrowed and he tried harder, but all he could manage to say was:
"Uhhhh."