"Who was she, Grayson?" Mailah whispered.
"She was not a villager," Grayson murmured, his voice tight, stripped of its warmth. He didn't turn to Mailah. He kept his eyes locked on the clay pot, which seemed to be darkening in the fading light. "No one in this valley possesses a tether that precise. She reached into my chest, Mailah. She didn't touch my skin; she touched the point where the construct of this body meets the essence beneath."
Mailah watched him, her hand still resting on the table near the pot. The wood felt cold, leaching the warmth from her fingertips. She looked at the flower she had drawn—the simple, messy sketch that had seemed so harmless moments ago. Now, in the light of Grayson's sudden shift, the drawing looked exposed, a marker for something the woman had identified.
"She was testing you," Mailah realized aloud, the implication hitting her with a sickening thud. "She wasn't talking about drainage. She was talking about the structure of you."
