Excerpt from All Our Yesterdays by Joel H. Morris, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Chapter One

In my husband's eyes I see a hunger. In their gleam is a longing to know. We lie together, pale in the milky half-light, half ourselves, half each other's.

It is our wedding night.

He rises on an elbow, considers my face. His eyes dwell on each feature—mouth, nose, cheek, and chin. I am a book he desires to read. He wishes that I would teach him how.

"Tell me," he says.

I grin. He is a poor student of anything apart from the battlefield. There he is practiced, studied. But he has not yet learned to apply his art to life—or to love.

"My noble lord," I say. "You tell me. Describe what you see."

He considers. Where to begin?

"Your lips," he says, "are red as roses."

I sigh. "It's a start. A schoolboy's, but a start."

"Oh?" He is not used to being thwarted. "Let me try again. Your rose-red lips are full of mirth."

"Too easy." I grin. "You cheat."

"But when you laugh, your smile is slightly crooked on one side. Here, on the right."

I smile again.

"Just so," he says. He brushes the tip of his finger across my lips, and I cannot stifle a laugh.

"My lord, that tickles."

"And because this side lifts slightly higher, when you laugh—truly laugh—you reveal this tooth. I have never seen one so pointed."

My wolf's fang. I know it. My entire life I've felt its shame.

"It is a beautiful tooth," he says. "The other one is not so sharp."

I blush, tightening my lips.

"I've offended?" He frowns. "And now you'll hide the tooth I love?"

"I have not given you permission to love my flaws."

"Are they flaws if I love them?"

"Do you?" I search his face. "Honestly?"

"Gentle Lady, I do." His eyes are giving. It was their kindness that drew me to him, allowed me, that night, to knock at his door. "But," he says, "you have not let all your secrets be told."

"Only because I have no secrets, my lord."

"No?"

"No."

"I believe I shall find them out."

"You may try." I crane my neck to kiss him. He withdraws.

"Only once I've discovered them," he chides.

I pout. I enjoy playing like children. Who would blame us on our wedding night? I wonder if the gentlewomen of the house are gossiping, whispering in the castle corners, behind their veils: It's an unholy union, marrying Macbeth. She has her dead husband's blood on her hands.

He touches my cheek, just below my eye, and continues his quest. "When you laugh, too, your right eye squints closed." He touches my lashes.

"It does not."

"It does. The instant you smile you must be blind in one eye."

"And you must be half blind in both."

He ignores my joke. "Your eyes," he muses. "Yes. I see. There's the mystery."

"Oh?" I settle in the bedsheets, banish my fears of castle gossips. "Tell me. What is my mystery?"

He gleans my face, reading once more. "There is love there. I see love."

"For you, I suppose?"

"Mmm." His brows knit in concentration. "And honesty."

I feel bold. "Oh, I am honest."

"You are." He pauses, rapt, a realization growing. "But you are practiced in that honesty."

My laugh is uneasy. I didn't expect him to learn so quickly. Outside our chamber the moon is full. The dark forest quakes, strains, desires to know what my husband already knows.

"What do you mean?"

I accept the gentle brush of his thumb across my cheek, the wiping of mist from a pane. He steadies his gaze; his face is a book whose page has just turned.

He speaks. "It is not that you are not honest, but that you have learned to use that honesty. Like an equivocator."

"An equivocator?" I scoff, seize his wrist. It is meant in jest, to deliver a bite to his thumb, but his muscles coil. I see the roped tendons in his neck; I sense the sudden force that might spring on its enemy, beat him down with a fist or sword. I let go, but now his hand takes mine. I feel his sinews slacken, relax, even as he presses my hand to the bed, holds me there. "My worthy thane," I protest.

Excerpted from All Our Yesterdays by Joel H. Morris. Copyright © 2024 by Joel H. Morris. Excerpted by permission of G.P. Putnam's Sons. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.