“What? You’re not going to cook for me this time?” I asked, striving for a lighter mood.
He tried on a smile, though it couldn’t quite hide the dark nature of his thoughts. “I’m afraid that between reheating tinned soup and cooking instant porridge, you’ve plumbed the depths of my culinary expertise. To say that I’m a bit rusty in the kitchen these days is an understatement.”
We were both trying too hard, but I guess that was better than giving each other the silent treatment... or breaking random furniture in the cottage with angry sex. I got out of the tub and made a point of stealing the shirt Rans had been wearing earlier to replace the one that was now missing two-thirds of its buttons.
He watched me with heavy-lidded eyes from his careless sprawl in the tub. “Vixen,” he accused, though his voice sounded tired.
“What?” I asked, wrapping a towel around my hair so it wouldn’t drip. “The other shirt is yours, too. Even if you’re not a whizz in the kitchen, you must’ve learned how to sew on a button at some point in the last seven hundred years.”
With that, I walked out of the bathroom—grateful for any small victory I could come by just now. I was still surrounded by a thousand buzzing worries that threatened to swarm me if I stopped moving long enough to focus on any of them.
What would Rans’ reckless actions with the supposedly magic crystal really mean for the two of us, going forward? If someone got to me and decided to kill me despite the nebulous threat to the peace treaty, would he literally just fall over dead? Because I could totally see Caspian saying fuck it, and taking matters into his own hands to get rid of me.
And what about my father? Despite my best efforts, I’d been rolling his listless words to me around in my subconscious all day.
Zorah? Why are you here? I don’t want you here. Go away.
What had seemed so clear when I was trapped in Dhuinne now seemed much more ambiguous. True, it wasn’t a stretch to assume that Darryl Bright was simply putting a capstone on his two decades of horrible parenting—telling me that he didn’t care about me and didn’t want to have to see or deal with me, even in such extreme circumstances as his captivity in Dhuinne.
Or else, the traitorously hopeful inner six-year-old inside me prodded, he could have been trying to warn you away from danger. He could have been saying that he knew things were bad, and he didn’t want you to get dragged into it with him.
I shook my head sharply, nearly dislodging the towel wrapped around my head in the process.
Yeah, right.
Except for that one shining moment when he’d sent me money in St. Louis, when had Dad ever played the hero? And if Rans was to be believed, he might well have only pretended to help me as a way to lure me to where Caspian and his men were lying in wait at the bus station. Who was I kidding?
I needed to stop thinking about this. I needed to stop thinking about life-bonds and treaties and the things Caspian had done to me during those awful couple of days in Dhuinne. I puttered around the bedroom, sleepwalking through my post-bathing routine. When I wandered out to raid the kitchen cabinets for more food, I couldn’t help glancing through the open bathroom door to see Rans still lying in the antique tub, his head thrown back to rest against the rim with his eyes closed, baring the pale column of his throat.
I also needed to stop thinking about Rans dying. That was a biggie.
Tearing my gaze away, I continued to the kitchen and rummaged around until I found some cereal and fruit. Even after everything else, I still got a stupid little thrill at the idea of eating gluten-rich cereal soaked in dairy, so I stood at the counter and downed a bowl of Whole Grain Shreddies with sliced bananas. ‘Delicious crispy squares with a yummy, malty taste,’ the cheerful blue box informed me.
The malty part wasn’t entirely inaccurate, but honestly, delicious and yummy might have been a bit of a stretch. I took the bowl to the table and poured some sugar from the sugar bowl into the mix, in hopes of making the experience match up to my childhood memories of Sugar Pops and Frosted Flakes a little more closely.
In a moment of whimsy, I wondered if you could buy Lucky Charms in Ireland, because that would be pretty funny, actually.
I’d heard Rans moving around while I was in the kitchen, so I figured he’d gone to one of the bedrooms to wait for me. It was telling that we both seemed to assume the aftermath of violent hate-sex and an uncomfortable conversation in a shared bathtub would involve sleeping in the same room.
But he’d told me to ‘come to bed,’ rather than ‘go to bed.’ The implication was clear enough, and when I poked my head into the room I’d claimed as mine, it was to find him already there. I’d turned off all the lights except the one over the kitchen counter. It was still relatively early, the long summer evening not quite ready to cede dusk to night.
Summer. July Fourth. Yet another thing I needed to try not to think about.
I slid in next to the shadowed form resting beneath the sheets. When I drew breath to speak, however, a fingertip pressed over my lips to keep them closed.
“Shh,” Rans said. “Not tonight. Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.”
I let the trapped breath flow out through my nose, and nodded. Deft hands unbuttoned my purloined shirt, baring my skin to feather-light caresses that traveled the same path as the bruisingly possessive touches he’d used earlier. I fell into the promise of distraction eagerly, reaching out to explore his body in return and finding
