“What are your intentions toward my daughter?”

We were in the mayor’s living room, seated at a table that for me was uncomfortably short. Esmelda had gone to prepare tea for the three of us, and neither Tipple nor Gastard had expressed any interest in being around when we told Boffin the good news. Esmelda had given him the short version of everything that had happened since she came to warn me about Otto, and he had looked like a man being read a death sentence.

“Getting married was her idea,” I said, way too defensively. That was not a good way to get this conversation headed in the right direction. “I mean, I didn’t plan for this. It was supposed to be a way for us to keep Godwod’s men from seeing me as an invader. If she wants to get it annulled, I’ll go along with that. I don’t want to make life more difficult for either of you.”

“Annulled,” Boffin repeated the word like it was an insult. “Marriage is sacred. The vows are sacred. It is not undertaken on a whim, or dismissed because it has become an inconvenience. Are you telling me that you married my daughter, and you don’t even want to be married to her?”

Shoot. “That’s not what I meant. Esmelda is amazing. I’d be lucky to be with someone like her. But we barely know each other. When she suggested this, I thought of it as more of a formality.” There was no such thing as a Green Card wedding in this world, was there?

“A formality.” Boffin frowned so deeply that it looked like the parentheses around his mouth were going to split apart his face. “Do you love her?”

“I…could.” That was a weak answer, but what did he want me to say? Declaring my undying devotion to Esmelda at this point would have been dishonest, and not believable. She was absolutely someone I could see myself falling in love with, but that didn’t happen overnight. Infatuation did, and I’d confused infatuation for love more than once in my past, but I knew myself too well to think that just because my heart sometimes beat faster when I looked at her it meant that we were in love.

There was silence between us until Esmelda returned with the tea. She sat down beside me and smiled at both of us.

“So good to see you getting along,” she said.

Was that a joke? Esmelda seemed to be the only person in the room who was not uncomfortable.

I fought for words. “I was just saying, it looks like the situation with Otto resolved itself. And if you don’t want to be married to me, you don’t have to be.”

“Marriage is sacred,” she said, echoing her father. “If I hadn’t meant my vow, I wouldn’t have made it. Our union may have been one of convenience, but that doesn’t mean it is any less binding. And the issue of Lord Godwod is anything but resolved.” She looked at me over her cup. “Are you trying to leave me, Will?”

It seemed like she was teasing me, but it was a crazy moment to be doing so. I felt like I’d been tricked into agreeing to something I didn’t fully comprehend, even though I’d been a fully conscious participant. I skipped over her question.

“You think Otto is coming back?” I asked.

“Maybe not Otto,” Esmelda said. “But I don’t trust him not to say anything to Lord Godwod about you, even if he doesn’t tell him the truth. And if he reports that you were nowhere to be found, the Lord may send someone else looking. Accusations of sorcery are very serious in the Free Kingdoms.”

“How would he know what I can do?” I said, then looked at Boffin. “You didn’t write about any of my abilities, or the appearance of monsters in the area, did you?”

“No.” The old man looked much older than the last time we’d spoken. “Have you shown anyone else your miracles?”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

“Pastor Tipple,” I said, “he brought a man named Dongle to meet me.” And we had been in the middle of the street. There had been witnesses, and any one of them could have run off to tell the local lord what they had seen. This was my fault.

“Dongle is in Henterfell now,” Boffin said. “I would not put it past him to spread rumors while he was there, even if he meant no harm by it.”

“How far away is Henterfell?” I asked.

“A day’s ride, two by foot.”

We didn’t have much time before Otto made his report. There was a lot of work for me to do before then. My base needed to be rebuilt, and I wanted more iron and a hundred other things.

“Maybe I should have left,” I said. “I could still leave. Go into the wilderness and try to master my gifts somewhere I wouldn’t bring more trouble for all of you.”

“You should have,” Boffin said. “But it’s too late for that now. Even if Otto says nothing of your connection to us, we can hardly trust his men to show the same discretion. As much as it pains me to say it, you are my daughter’s husband. You have a responsibility to her, and our village. You aren’t going to walk off into the wilderness now, especially if it meant that she was going with you.”

“You wouldn’t have to go with me,” I said to Esmelda.

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “I will not be an abandoned wife.”

Looking between them, a part of me had to wonder if this had been some kind of set-up. Esmelda believed I was a hero, and that my presence was critical for some impending calamity. She had brought up marriage as a reasonable option for managing a difficult political situation, but it apparently came along with the obligation to remain with the village rather than running off to pursue my personal ends. That being said, Boffin looked genuinely miserable, and I couldn’t imagine him being a part of any plot that involved me being wed to his daughter.

A part of me wanted to simply leave and start over. I had enough resources and skills to survive now. But that was probably just belated cold feet. Making this kind of commitment was scary, but I’d already made it, and in any case, I didn’t want to be alone. My other life was gone, my family, but I had an opportunity to have a new one in this world. It had essentially been dropped in my lap.

“What do you think we should do?”

Boffin rubbed his forehead. “If only either of you had asked me that an hour ago.”

“If someone is accused of sorcery,” I said, “is there a trial? Do they torture me until I confess?”

“We don’t do anything like that here,” Esmelda said. “In Drom, they worship Gotte, and his priests would address any form of heresy, or an accusation like this. They believe that magic is a tool of the shadow alone, though I am sure they had heroes of their own in ages past. I’m not sure what a trial would look like, but it is hard for me to imagine them showing you leniency.”

Boffin looked down at the steam rising from his untouched cup. “Torture is a possibility,” he said. “It depends on the nature of the accusations, and who made them. We can speak on your behalf, but Godwod has never taken us very seriously. He thinks our people are amusing.” His lip curled. “It would be up to the whims of the priests, but they might be open to payment of some kind. A donation to their temple to expiate your alleged sins, or to prove our good faith and honesty. The accuser would be punished if their claims were deemed false.”

“I can make valuable things,” I said. “Payment shouldn’t be a problem if we have some lead time. If worse comes to worst, I can always die. They won’t come looking for a sorcerer if they already have his body.”

Esmelda’s face pinched in concern, and Boffin looked dumbfounded. “There is no need for you to give your life,” he said. “Whatever I may think of this union, you are still one of Mizu’s chosen. Whatever purpose you are meant to serve has yet to come to pass.”

“I’m not looking forward to it,” I said. “But death isn’t permanent for me. I would wake up the next day back at the place where I entered this world, and we could figure things out from there.”

“You’re sure?” Esmelda said. “Is there no limit? No cost?”

“Uh,” my memories, maybe more than that. If there was a hard limit to the number of times I could come back to life, my System had failed to mention it. Then again, it failed to mention a lot of things. But if Minecraft was any guide to how this worked, then I would presumably be able to respawn indefinitely. That opened up some nightmare scenarios, like if someone covered my spawn point in lava, or something, but that was a separate issue. “I’m not clear on the rules, but I’ve died twice already since I’ve been here, and I seem to be fine.”

Boffin sat back in his chair, stunned. “You truly are an equal to the Dark Lord.”

“Not yet, but hopefully, someday, yeah.” I took a sip of the tea. Warm, bitter, faintly alcoholic. “Hey,” I said, looking up, “do you have any books written in Sprache?”