The adrenaline from the confrontation faded quickly, leaving behind a cold, hollow ache in Elias's bones.
He stood in the center of the shack. Now that the door was closed against the wind, the smell of the room became unavoidable. It was a thick, cloying stench of stale wine, unwashed bodies, and sickness.
Elias looked at his hands. They were trembling violently. It wasn't fear; it was the body screaming for its midday fix. His mind was calm, but he was piloting a vessel that was on the verge of collapse.
Liver damage probable. Severe dehydration. Malnutrition.
He took a slow breath, forcing the lungs to expand fully.
"Leo," Elias said. His voice was rough, scraping against his throat.
The boy flinched in the corner, pulling the heavy wool blanket tighter around his small frame.
"I need to clean this floor," Elias said, keeping his tone flat and instructional. "Go to the bed. Keep the blanket on. Do not step down until the wood is dry."
Leo hesitated for a second, his eyes darting between his father and the door, before scrambling onto the straw mattress. He pulled his knees to his chest, making himself as small as possible.
Elias grabbed the bucket. He needed water.
He opened the door and stepped out into the snow. The cold air slapped him in the face, helpful against the nausea. He filled the bucket with clean snow from a drift near the side of the house and brought it back inside. He set it near the small hearth.
There was no wood. The fire was dead ash.
Elias cursed silently. He knelt and began to scrape the ash away with a piece of broken slate. He found a few half-burnt cinders. He grabbed a handful of dried straw from the edge of the mattress, ignoring Leo's reflex to pull away, and struck a spark with the flint and steel on the table. It took three tries, his shaking hands fumbling the steel, but a small flame finally caught.
He melted the snow. He didn't have a mop, so he took the knife from his belt and cut the hem off his own filthy tunic.
Then, the scrubbing began.
It was grueling, miserable work. The grime on the floorboards was layers deep. Elias had to get on his hands and knees, scrubbing with the freezing water until his knuckles turned red.
Every ten minutes, he had to stop. Black spots danced in his vision. The hunger cramps were twisting his stomach into knots. He would sit back on his heels, close his eyes, and wait for the dizziness to pass, breathing through his nose.
One board at a time, he told himself.
Leo watched him the entire time. The boy didn't move. He didn't speak. He just watched this stranger wearing his father's face scour the floor as if his life depended on it.
By late afternoon, the worst was done. The smell of vomit was gone, replaced by the scent of wet pine and cold air. The buckets of black water had been dumped outside.
Elias stood up, his back cracking audibly. He picked up the empty bucket. He needed one more load of snow to wash his hands.
He opened the door and stepped out, nearly colliding with a figure standing on the path.
It was Mrs. Gable.
She was a short, stout woman with a face weathered by wind and a perpetual frown. She held a woven basket against her hip. In Elias's memories, this woman had once brought soup to Sarah, his late wife, when she was sick. After Sarah died and Elias fell into the bottle, Mrs. Gable had become his fiercest critic. She usually spat on the ground when she saw him.
"Watch where you're stumbling, you drunkard," Mrs. Gable snapped, instinctively recoiling as if he were contagious.
Elias straightened his posture. He was pale, sweating despite the cold, and dressed in rags, but he didn't sway.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Gable," Elias said. He offered a slight nod—not a beggar's bow, but a polite acknowledgment.
Mrs. Gable paused. Her eyes narrowed, scanning his face for the telltale glaze of drunkenness.
"You're standing straight," she accused, as if it were a crime.
"I am sober," Elias replied.
"For now," she huffed. "Until the coin comes out."
She moved to step around him, intending to ignore him as usual, but her gaze drifted through the open door behind him.
She stopped.
She saw the floorboards, wet and scrubbed raw. She saw the absence of the usual piles of trash. And she saw Leo. The boy was sitting on the bed, wrapped in the wool blanket, looking clean and alert. He wasn't crying. He wasn't hiding under the bed.
Mrs. Gable's expression faltered. She looked back at Elias. She saw the red, raw skin on his knuckles and the sweat on his forehead. She realized what he had spent the afternoon doing.
She tightened her grip on her basket. She looked conflicted, her grandmotherly instincts warring with her hatred for the man in front of her.
Finally, she let out a sharp sigh through her nose. She reached into her basket and pulled out a bundle of birch firewood and two wrinkled, winter-stored apples.
She shoved them into Elias's chest.
"For the boy," she said sharply. "He's too thin. If I see you trading this wood for ale, Elias Thorne, I will call the guards myself."
Elias caught the wood. It was a lifeline. They had run out of fuel hours ago.
"I won't," Elias said. He looked her in the eye. "Thank you, Mrs. Gable. For caring about him when I... when I was not myself."
Mrs. Gable blinked. Her mouth opened slightly, but no words came out. She wasn't used to gratitude from this house; she was used to curses.
She grunted, adjusted her shawl, and turned away. "Don't let the fire go out. It's going to freeze tonight."
She hurried away through the snow, not looking back.
Elias went back inside and closed the door.
He placed the birch logs in the hearth. The fire caught quickly, yellow flames licking at the dry bark. Within minutes, a genuine warmth began to radiate through the small room, chasing away the damp chill of the scrubbing water.
Elias took the small iron pot and filled it with fresh snow. He placed it over the fire.
While the water heated, he went to the wooden chest in the corner. He dug to the bottom, past the moth-eaten clothes, and found a small sack of oats. It was the only food left in the house.
He opened the sack. There were weevils in it.
Elias sat by the firelight and patiently picked the bugs out, one by one. He didn't look disgusted; he looked focused. Food was fuel.
He took the apples Mrs. Gable had given him. He used his knife to peel them, cutting away the bruised spots, then diced them into small cubes. He dropped the oats and the apples into the boiling water.
Slowly, the smell changed. The harsh scent of boiling water was replaced by the aroma of toasted oats and sweet, cooking apples.
Elias stirred the pot with a wooden spoon. His stomach gave a violent cramp of hunger, loud enough to be heard in the quiet room.
Leo shifted on the bed. He was sniffing the air.
The porridge thickened. Elias took the pot off the fire. He had two wooden bowls. He filled one to the brim, making sure it got most of the apple chunks. He poured a smaller portion for himself.
He walked over to the bed. He didn't sit on it. He placed the full bowl on the edge of the mattress, near Leo's hand.
"Eat," Elias said.
Then he retreated to the hearth, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall.
Leo looked at the bowl. Steam curled up, carrying the sweet scent of fruit. He looked at Elias. In the past, his father would eat straight from the pot, leaving whatever scraps remained for Leo to scavenge.
Leo reached out a trembling hand. He grabbed the spoon and took a tentative bite.
The sweetness hit his tongue. His eyes widened.
He began to eat frantically, shoveling the hot porridge into his mouth, barely chewing.
"Slowly," Elias said softly from the fireplace. "Or you will be sick."
Leo slowed down, but only slightly. He ate with the desperate focus of a child who didn't know when the next meal would come.
Elias ate his own portion methodically. Every spoonful was a battle against his nausea, but he forced it down. He needed the strength for tomorrow. He counted the remaining oats. Two days. Maybe three if we water it down.
The silence in the room wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't heavy with fear anymore. It was just... quiet.
Leo finished his bowl. He scraped the spoon against the bottom, trying to get the last smear of apple. He looked at Elias, then quickly lowered his eyes, pulling the empty bowl against his chest as if afraid it would be taken away.
Elias set his own bowl aside. He stood up.
Leo flinched. His shoulders hunched up, protecting his ears. The muscle memory of abuse was deep.
Elias stopped. He stood still, letting the boy see that he wasn't raising a hand. He waited until Leo's breathing hitched and steadied.
Then, Elias moved closer. He reached out.
Leo squeezed his eyes shut.
Elias didn't strike. He placed his hand gently on top of Leo's messy, soot-stained hair.
The hand was large and rough, calloused from years of holding a quill and months of holding a bottle. But it wasn't heavy. It sat there, warm and steady.
"You are full?" Elias asked.
Leo held his breath. He waited for the grip to tighten, for the shake. But the hand just rested there. A connection.
"Yes... Papa," Leo whispered.
"Good," Elias said.
He kept his hand there for a moment longer—a silent signal that the violence was over. Then he pulled back.
"Sleep now. I will keep the fire going."
Leo didn't argue. The warmth of the food and the fire was making his eyelids heavy. He lay down on the straw mattress.
For the first time in months, he didn't curl up facing the wall to protect his back. He lay facing the hearth. Through half-closed eyes, he watched the man who looked like his father sitting by the fire.
Elias had picked up the dull quill and the small knife. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. The rhythmic sound of sharpening filled the room.
To Elias, it was the sound of preparing a tool. To the boy drifting off to sleep, it sounded like a watchman repairing a shield.