“Us? You told them about us?”
“I blurted it out as I was choking Gunner. I know it wasn’t the way we planned.”
While choking his brother? Hardly. I sighed and rubbed my temple. My head still ached. “I suppose nothing’s gone quite the way we planned.” I lifted his hand to my lips and kissed his knuckles. I smiled against them. “But I guess that’s how good thieves keep all their fingers. They slip into the cracks. They find shadows. They make a new plan when the last one utterly fails.”
He stared at me like he was still absorbing everything, just as I was. How close we had both come to never seeing each other again. “Right now my only plan is to kiss my wife. And I am fairly certain not even the gods can derail that.” He leaned forward, and his hand slipped behind my head.
There was a sharp rap at the door, and a voice called through it. “Supper, Patrei? Should I bring some bowls?”
Maybe the gods couldn’t stop it, but soup and a waiting family could.
“We should join everyone,” I said.
“Are you sure? If you don’t want to go out there, I understand. I know what happened, Kazi. You don’t have to—”
“I have to face them sooner or later.”
* * *
Jase had his arm around me as he escorted me out. I was still shaky. On top of being poisoned, I hadn’t eaten in days, at least not that I could remember. When we walked into the kitchen, the room grew quiet and heads turned. Some set their spoons aside. A few stood as if uncertain what to do. The room was full, not just with Jase’s family, but with others who had taken refuge in the vault too, employees I recognized from the houses and tunnel. It was more overwhelming than I expected. I wasn’t playing a role anymore, or here among them under a pretense. I felt naked. I didn’t know who to be.
“Keep eating,” Jase told them, guiding me toward a table. A man stepped in front of us, one of the stable hands. He knelt on one knee and kissed my hand, but then seemed too flustered to say anything and scurried away. Another took his place, a woman who placed a rough woven amulet in my hand. “Hear you got that devil in the chops nice and good.” She vigorously nodded her approval before someone else stepped forward.
“You saved the Patrei and the little ones. We are in your debt.” Similar sentiments rose from the others who moved into our path. Jase nodded and thanked each one. I was too stunned to say anything. I was Ten, the girl who stayed in the shadows. It felt dangerous to be openly acknowledged this way. Before we reached our seats, Vairlyn stood and intercepted us. She pulled me into her arms. Her grip was fierce, and I noted the bulge in her belly for the first time. A baby? Jase forgot to tell me that part of the story.
She pulled back and cupped my face in her hands, her sapphire eyes glistening. “My daughter.”
The word snatched away my thoughts and I couldn’t speak.
Vairlyn seemed to understand. “I was not always a Ballenger,” she whispered. “Trust me, it will get easier.”
The healer embraced me next, but not before she wagged her finger at me. “No more dogs for you, understand? Twice is my limit.”
I nodded. “My limit too,” I answered. “Thank you.”
Jase pulled out a chair for me at last and I sat. Wren and Synové seemed to be studying me. Was it worry, or were they as uncomfortable as I was, and waiting to follow my lead? The last time we had all been gathered around a table with the Ballengers, we had slipped birchwings into their food to knock them out.
I stared at the bowl of soup set at my place. Did revenge lurk there? But they had saved my life. All of them. Jase had told me so. It was still sinking in. I would take a chance on the soup. I didn’t see Gunner in the room, but Priya and Mason sat at the end of the table. I couldn’t bring my eyes to meet theirs. The soup was my savior. Soup I knew what to do with, and luckily it didn’t send sideways glances at me. I was suddenly ravenous. I tried not to eat too quickly, and Rhea cautioned me to take it slowly. I sipped the broth a slow spoonful at a time. There was a long, difficult silence, everyone absorbed with their dinner, but then suddenly conversation erupted in a rush.
“Venison and wild leek soup. It’s pretty much all we eat these days,” Titus said.
“Breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” Aram added.
“Gods’ glory, what I wouldn’t give for one small potato,” Priya moaned.
“If only the forest had potatoes—and maybe some parsnips too,” Samuel agreed.
“We bake flatbread every few days,” Vairlyn reminded them. “And have you forgotten about the dates? We have a lot of those.”
Mason sighed. “No one can forget about the dates.”
“I like them,” Synové said.
Mason ignored her.
Judith banged her spoon against the large pot on the hearth like it was a bell. “That all you got to talk about? Soup?”
Silence returned to the kitchen. The heavy undercurrent that had been circling below the surface was now thick between us. Priya stood, hesitating, her chin tucked and her lashes lowered, then finally she lifted her eyes to meet mine. “The truth is some of us don’t know what to say. Thank you is not enough. Apologies are not enough. Until the day I die, I will live with the shame of what I did to you. When you told me that you loved Jase—” Her voice wobbled and she closed her eyes. She nodded as if she was trying to encourage herself to keep going, then opened her eyes and continued. “When you said you loved him, I knew. I knew you were telling the truth. I should have at least listened, but I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to watch you suffer, the way we had, like that would somehow solve everything. I was wrong.”