A month had passed since Michel Carter came to the temple.
The young man had stopped counting days sometime after the second week. They had merged into one long, endless succession of dawns and sunsets, each of which began the same way.
He woke up before dawn, when the bell rang, tearing the morning silence, and went to the well to wash with ice-cold water. The child slept in a basket placed beside his bed — narrow, hard, but now familiar. Gavin, small, dark-haired, with perpetually red cheeks, had become part of his life so naturally, as if he had always been there.
Although initially, Michel had planned to give the boy to the temple's orphanage.
"...He will be taken care of there," Brother Marcus told him on the fifth day. "We have good sisters, they look after orphans. Infants will be safe there."
Michel nodded then and even prepared to take Gavin to the wing of the temple where the children were housed. All because he himself believed he could not handle raising a child. And from the very beginning, he had not planned to do this at all. Better than anyone else, the young man knew he would make a terrible guardian.
For this reason, Michel had pondered for only a short time when he decided to give the child to other people to raise.
Nevertheless, before doing so, he decided to look into the orphanage just once. Simply out of curiosity. Or because of that strange, restless feeling that stirred in his chest when he imagined giving the boy away to strangers.
What he saw made him freeze on the threshold.
A small room. Ten beds. And a whole bunch of children. Two of them were coughing — harshly, dryly, so that it could be heard throughout the corridor. A sister, a thin woman with sunken eyes, was trying to give one boy some water, but he turned away and cried.
"Sickness," the maid who worked at the orphanage told Michel. "Two died last month. Infants. They were weak."
Michel stood with Gavin in his arms and felt something inside him break.
He simply could not do it. Not after Seyla and her husband had died protecting him. Not after he had sworn to himself that this child would survive. Even if Michel himself did not know what that oath was worth.
"I'll do it myself," he told Brother Marcus in the evening. "I will take care of him."
Although with this decision Michel was taking on an unbearable burden, he had no other choice. So from that moment on, Michel decided to truly care for Gavin, becoming his guardian.
The priest merely raised an eyebrow but did not argue.
"As you wish. But I warn you: it won't be easy. An infant takes a lot of energy, especially with the work at the temple..."
But Michel just smirked then.
"What in this life comes easy?"
And so a month passed.
During this time, Michel learned to change diapers almost with his eyes closed. Learned to tell when Gavin was crying from hunger and when from a stomach ache. Learned to rock him with one hand while sweeping the courtyard or carrying firewood to the kitchen with the other.
He became a junior assistant at the temple.
It sounded grand, but in reality it meant: "do everything others don't want to do." Wash the floors in the prayer hall. Light the candles before the morning service. Sort the grain in the kitchen. Help Brother Marcus distribute food to the refugees. But Michel did not complain.
The work was exhausting. By evening, his back ached, his hands were covered with scrapes and calluses, and his eyes were heavy with fatigue. But it was precisely this fatigue — heavy, leaving no time for thought — that saved him.
When he collapsed onto the bed, there was no room left in his head for fear or memories. Only darkness. Only sleep. And Gavin's quiet breathing beside him.
The people at the temple had grown accustomed to him.
A young guy with an eternally tired face, who almost never smiles but never refuses help. Some thought he was a fugitive debtor, others a deserter from the war, still others just a loser whom life had beaten harder than most.
No one knew the truth about his real origins.
And no one was supposed to.
Michel tried not to go outside the temple grounds. He knew that the Carter guards were still looking for him — talk of this reached even the walls of the sanctuary. But here, behind the high stone walls, he felt... not safe, no. Rather — in the shadows. Dark enough that he wouldn't be noticed.
At least, so he thought.
That day began as usual.
The bell at waking. Cold water. Prayer. Breakfast — porridge, bread, herbal tea. Gavin had woken up early and was fussing; Michel spent almost an hour calming him down. Then — chores: wash the floors in the east wing, help Brother Marcus count the donations, take firewood to the kitchen.
By midday, he already felt the familiar heaviness in his legs.
"Michel!" one of the temple's junior assistants called out to him, out of breath, his face red. "There's... there's someone here to see you."
Michel froze, broom in hand.
"To see me? Who?"
The assistant looked around and lowered his voice:
"I don't know... but he looks very important. He asked for you specifically."
Michel felt a chill run down his spine.
"Looks important...?"
A vague, unpleasant suspicion had already crept into him from these words. In truth, he had a very good idea who might be waiting for him. And yet outwardly, he tried to remain calm.
"Where is he?" Michel asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
"Waiting outside in a carriage. He said he wouldn't come into the temple. And... he said you should come as soon as possible."
Michel lowered the broom. His hands were shaking slightly. He shoved them into the pockets of the coarse robe he had been issued in the first week and forced himself to take a deep breath.
"Gavin," he said. "Look after him while I'm gone."
The assistant nodded. Michel had learned to trust this young man by now — he was only sixteen, but he had genuinely grown attached to the baby and often helped with him. All because he himself had a younger brother the same age as Gavin.
"Go, go. I'll handle everything."
Michel walked towards the temple's exit.
And for some reason, each step was harder than the last.