9. Market
Firen had expected a room. Perhaps furnished. But just a bed and room for their trunks, and that was all.
When she’d admitted that to Lucian, he’d given her a look. The one that suggested she was willing to put up with far too little, and he did not share her agreeable disposition.
Not just anything would do.
They were handed keys. And another map. This one with all the assurances that the names were accurate, few as they were.
Because others had family homes to move into. Others had...
It didn’t matter. So their neighbours would be few—that was not necessarily a bad thing. She had to work to keep from floating when she saw the Registrar add their names to the lodging paperwork.
It felt... official.
Not that it hadn’t been. Mating needed no confirmation. It was private and known, and that was all that was necessary.
But seeing their names put together, written in dark ink with promises that all other papers would be amended as quickly as possible to maintain the utmost in accuracy...
Her wings fluttered. She couldn’t help it. And her toes might have even lifted off the ground if Lucian hadn’t brought his hand to her shoulder and pushed downward, looking at her as if she was a fledgling he’d been given to mind.
She smiled at him, and she meant it to be an apology, but she was too excited for it to be anything but what it was. A grin. A flutter in the bond that she was happy and he should be too, and it didn’t matter what the room looked like, so long as it was theirs and his father couldn’t fuss about it.
But it wasn’t just a room.
They were rows of houses, all butted up together between the largest building that made up the Hall and the two towers that overlooked it on either side. Firen didn’t ask what those were for. She’d had her fill of towers and the wonder that used to accompany them. The tidy row of houses interested her far more, not dissimilar to the shops she’d seen. Maybe there would be one down below, and they’d have quarters up above. It could be noisy if it was one that sold foodstuffs, but it was exciting all the same.
Only Lucian’s continued hold on her shoulder kept from drifting off the ground.
He let her hold the keys, but only when she relented and gave him the maps to hold with all the papers. Like the change form to indicate where his allowance was now to be sent.
He did not bother to ask where it was being given before.
The only thing that dimmed Firen’s enthusiasm was that Oberon’s relinquishment of tutelage was not amongst Lucian’s files. But that was surely an oversight, and see, there was Vandran’s acceptance letter, and no apprentice was daft enough to take on two masters.
Which was all true and untrue at once.
And there were many hums as the Registrar looked over Vandran’s notations, and she added a provisional seal over the lot of it.
For review.
Which hung over Firen, niggling and warning that she should not grow too attached to anything at all, because she did not trust Oberon to be gracious in his defeat. It shouldn’t matter, she told herself. The allowance, the housing, it was all a part of his apprenticeship, regardless of who he studied under.
This would be home.
For good, this time.
She set aside the rest of it. She’d worry about it later. Probably late at night when sleep refused to come, and she could do nothing but lie on her side and watch Lucian’s back as it rose and fell and will him to wake so he’d hold her and distract her from all the anxieties that had bundled themselves up throughout the day.
Which he would. The bond that was funny that way.
But he’d grow and grouse and she’d feel guilty for it, and promise him she wouldn’t do it anymore.
A lie, and they both knew it.
Lucian had to lead them, as he had the map. But that was all right, because she was busy looking at everything else. The cobbles that were well maintained. There were no flowers in the window boxes, but there could be. They turned off the street, and he opened a gate. She’d thought it was nothing but an alley, but they passed into a courtyard. Where there were trees and even low benches to sit and enjoy the foliage. It was a bit overgrown, but just enough to suggest that it was by choice rather than neglect.
He shook his head and nudged her to keep moving, and she hurried after him. It reminded her vaguely of the courtyard outside his family tower, and yet... not.
This was bright with sunlight except for where the canopy of the trees grew too tightly, offering welcome shade in the hotter months. Instead of rigid lines of cobbles that gave stiff expectation of walkways to take throughout, there were twining paths of crushed stone, compacted with time and use. Flower borders were already beginning to bloom in yellows and deep purples, while sage-friend grew up the trunks of the trees in swathes of even deeper blue.
She hoped to spy a neighbour on one of the benches, but it was empty. Quiet, save their own footfalls along the fine gravel.
She’d lost sight of Lucian for a moment, and she turned her head back and forth, only to find him waiting for her in a doorway. Arched, like many were, but with a metal awning, rich with patina and age. “Do you intend to keep me locked out while you wander about?”
Firen flew over, too excited to keep to her feet. Two keys, and she could not immediately tell which was the one to use. Heavy in her hands, and it would be even weightier in her pocket, but she did not mind. She fumbled with it, partly from the thrill of it but also from the lack of practice. It was so rare that her house was empty growing up that they’d rarely made use of latches and bolts. She could not even recall the last time she’d needed a key to gain entrance.
But this was private. Where they had bolts and keys to keep out the rest of the world while they took to their rooms whenever responsibilities allowed it.
Firen fumbled once more, and she did not let Lucian’s sigh trouble her, not when it caught and turned and she could push open the door.
“Oh,” she breathed. “It’s like a proper house.”
Not just a bedroom for them to share. But it opened to a narrow entry, then a kitchen beckoned beyond. Doors were ajar, not locked to suggest they belonged to anybody else. There was a loft above—or perhaps an entire second storey? Where there were yet more rooms, and surely those were let by someone else.
She turned to glance at the map and no, there were not any other names.
It was all for them.
She laughed. A bright burst of relief and enthusiasm. “I thought it was just going to be a bedchamber!”
To which Lucian rolled his eyes and muttered just loudly enough that she could make out most of it. Most of which was about what sort of mate she thought him to be, how they were to take meals if there was no place to cook them, and did she imagine they’d be flying back to her mother’s kitchen whenever they wanted a crust of bread?
“Maybe,” she answered cheerfully, peeking into each room she passed. Furnished, but only just. A wooden bench in sore need of cushions to make it at all comfortable to sit upon. A wooden table in the kitchen, sanded smooth and utterly lacking in the nicks and dings that accompanied daily life. The floors were bare of rugs, the walls had no tapestries. But all that could be fixed. Would be fixed. Just as soon as they had coin enough to manage it.
She turned and thrust her arms about Lucian’s neck, her wings fluttering so that she was a little taller than him for once. “That would have been enough for me. If it had made you happy, for us just to have a room of our own and to trek all the way home for yes, just a crust of bread , I’d have made every flight cheerfully.” She kissed him full on the mouth. “Because we’d be together, and you’d be happy, and you wouldn’t have to live in my playroom.”
He glanced away from her, which was made even more obvious by their close proximities. “You should expect more for yourself.”
She shook her head, but her smile did not fade. “All right. If you say so.”
He looked at her then. Full of all the seriousness she couldn’t seem to keep. “I don’t...” he groaned, and she settled her feet back on the floor. She wasn’t nervous, not then, but she didn’t like how he seemed to struggle with his words. How to talk to her.
Always their problem.
“Don’t what?” She nudged him, not playfully, but to prompt him.
“You shouldn’t be happy just because,” he blurted out. “You should have the important things. Like a home, and...” he gestured about the rooms. “Things you like. Which we will get,” he pressed on. As if reassuring himself as well as her. “You can want things.”
Her brow furrowed, and she tried to make sense of his tangent. “You don’t think I could be happy, just with you?”
Lucian rolled his eyes. “Do be serious.” He made to pull away, but she caught his hand—the other full of papers, hers still holding the keys to their new home.
“I am.”
He didn’t glare, but it was a near thing. “Well, I am certainly not enough. There should be food on the table, and proper beds to sleep in. There should be flowers in those boxes you said you liked. The one with the windows.”
Her shoulders relaxed. “All reasonable,” she soothed, smiling softly.
While he paced.
And she let him.
Because...
He saw the life he wanted. The one he wanted for her. And perhaps it overwhelmed him, for the moment. How far they had to go.
But she was patient. Could be patient. Would be. For all those little things that mattered to her.
Like the family she planned to have.
The fledglings that would look a little bit like her, and a lot a bit like him.
Or perhaps the other way around.
It was a strange sort of assurance. That he wasn’t being cruel, but rather... thoughtful. In his unusual manner, that was simply... Lucian.
“I don’t mind your aspirations,” Firen continued, because they were silent too long and she was itching to explore the rest of their new home. “I... like that you have ambitions. That you want to provide for me.” It was what a mate did, wasn’t it? Love and sacrifice, all mingled into one. A joy to be found in both. “But it doesn’t have to happen all at once. That’s all. It doesn’t mean I’m so silly to think that I’d be all right starving as long as you were doing it with me.” She reached for him and squeezed his arm and smiled at him even as his brow furrowed and he looked at her as if she just was that foolish. “Honest. See? I’ll even amend my list. I’ll be happy with you, so long as I have hot tea in the mornings, and a warm supper in the evenings, and plenty of quilts, so we needn’t share when we take to our bed.” Her smile grew cheeky. “Better?”
“Much,” he answered dryly, but his shoulders relaxed and he drew in a deep breath as his hand ran through his hair. Just the once. “Perhaps I am impatient.”
Firen drew closer now that he was calming. Set the keys on the table. Took the papers still in his hand and set those beside. Only after did she put her arms about him, and waited for him to return her embrace before she answered him. “You want to take care of me,” she murmured into his chest, and she said it so warmly that it could not be taken as anything but a compliment. Hoped he couldn’t.
His hand settled on the back of her head, and he leaned down to press his cheek against her hair. “I do not want you to leave.”
Her brow furrowed. She’d hoped—no, she’d thought they were beyond that. But perhaps those fears were too deeply ingrained to simply disappear with a single conversation. No matter how sincere the promises made had been. “I do not want you to want to leave,” he amended.
She sighed and nestled closer. “Quite a pair we make. So certain the other is only here by duress.”
He hummed, but did not correct her. “Are we supposed to do something about that?”
“Probably.”
But neither offered a solution, not when they were personal doubts that likely only ebb with time. With affection. With constantly choosing what the other needed. Some of what they wanted.
Lucian pulled away first, and she was sorry for it. Their first embrace in their own kitchen. Where she could kiss him if she wanted without fear that her mother would walk in. Where Lucian might actually return that kiss because it was theirs.
She grinned at him, but his back was to her, already heading back into the hallway.
Then toward the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked, already thinking of heading up to the loft and investigating more of their new quarters.
“To your mother,” Lucian answered. She hadn’t noticed him swiping the keys until he dangled them from this forefinger. “To thank her for her help.”
Why that meant so much to her, she couldn’t begin to say. But it did. “Without me?” she posed, her wings drooping a little lower as she tried to look downcast. She wasn’t. She wanted to beam at him and thank him for being...
Well...
Who she’d hoped he’d be.
“You can come if you like, I suppose.” He rolled his shoulders and opened the door, as if he was perfectly willing to go off without her. Maybe he was. It was a visit he felt the need to make for his own sake, even if it was her family he would be seeing.
“I could be persuaded,” she called back, already hurrying down the hallway. “You’d make a mess of my trunk, anyway.”
He snorted as he shook his head and locked the door behind them. It was a lie, and they both knew it. His was all crisp folds and tidy edges. Hers was... just as she liked it. A contained chaos, her mother would say with a grim face and a tone of disapproval.
Eris was worse. She let the contents spill out onto the floor. And any other surface she could find, for that matter.
Firen could invite her over. Could invite any of them, any time she pleased.
She hesitated, catching hold of Lucian’s arm as he was about to ascend. “I can...” she swallowed and tried again. “My family can come here, yes? For suppers and visits?”
He must have seen something in her expression, because he did not tease her for her doubt. Just allowed his eyes to soften ever so slightly. “You are mistress here,” Lucian answered. “To invite whomever you please.”
“They should have a manual of some sort,” Firen complained, allowing him to pull her up behind him as they breached the boughs of the courtyard trees. “Rules about common areas and how many visitors we are allowed. That sort of thing.”
Lucian shook his head, and she wondered what was so silly about that. She wanted to be courteous. Although the map suggested there would be no one to share the courtyard, the other buildings standing tall and empty.
Which was a fine thing if one liked privacy. Which she did, occasionally. But she also liked neighbours to chat with, as she tended to the little mundane tasks that took up an entire day. Someone to hang the laundry with to warm in the suns.
That sort of thing.
She wondered what it meant. If the other workers in the Halls merely had other accommodations provided by their families—as was usual.
Expected.
Or...
She thought of Vandran’s daughters. Who had no interest in following their father into his trade. Of study and long days with books and cases. Anything else that made up the actual work to manage an entire city and its people.
Of his query, if she would care for employment, as well.
She’d dismissed it readily enough, for it had never occurred to want it. And perhaps...
Perhaps fewer did.
When there was coin enough to be made with small crafts. Or the trades outside the walls. Crops and livestock. Where days were managed by the weather rather than masters and books of governance so thick they had to make up multiple volumes.
“Could you see me as a lawmancer?”
She knew better than to try to talk in the air. Lucian knew she’d spoken, but his quizzical look made it clear he hadn’t made out the words. Which was fine. It was a question for herself more than for him.
She hated to study. Wanted a life much like her mother’s. With children and a place in the market. With people all about her that she knew and knew her in return.
She did not want to be locked away with books and men like Oberon.
Maybe that made her a coward. Made her like all the rest that chose other pursuits over the noble—and necessary—rule of law.
She’d have to be like Vandran. Trust that Lucian would look out for her. For the people like her.
Which did not seem so daunting a prospect as it once had.
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