Includes Thea Hutcheson's "The Measure of My Portion": On the night she becomes a woman, Nia kneels at the marsh pool, and the goddess Seldona offers her a choice. She can have Derryth, the steady farmer everyone expects her to marry, or a silver-haired stranger with a smith’s hammer and a crooked smile. Nia chooses fire and love. But the goddess’s gifts come with a reckoning. Four years later, as the village finishes its sacred causeway under a blood moon, Nia must face the full measure of what her choice set in motion.
“Love freely chosen. Paid in full.”