Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
“What does your future look like?” Elijah was sitting at the counter, carefully deboning fish.
Eric put the lid back on the Dutch oven which was on low heat on a back burner. He’d been cooking the sofrito base for several hours. The smell of garlic, onion, and tomato made his mouth water.
A storm lashed the castle. It had been sunny this morning, but a major storm front that had been hammering the west of Ireland was now making the Irish Sea toss and roil as thick rain lashed the Isle of Man, thanks to intense winds.
The weather had missed its cue to dramatically match his mood, but was now making up for being late with being loud and tempestuous.
Before it hit, he and Elijah had gone over to help the Spartan Guard close the heavy storm shutters over the windows of their house, which was newer than the castle.
Given the normal-thickness walls of that building, the storm shutters were necessary.
Now, he and Elijah were in Eric’s apartment making a hearty fish dish Trina used to make.
It was an odd mix of cuisines but always good on cold or stormy days.
He remembered standing beside her in their kitchen, chatting quietly as they worked together to prepare the meal. A glass container was already waiting on the counter for Dahlia’s portion, which they’d take over to her once they’d eaten.
The memory was no longer painful but instead melancholy.
Working with Elijah had also reminded him how young they’d all been. Young and still trying to find themselves while also navigating a complicated poly-relationship and living double lives with their public-facing jobs and relationship and their Masters’ Admiralty roles.
“How many bones are in this thing?” Elijah muttered.
“I did the hard part,” Eric informed him. “You’re just checking for stray bones.”
“There are a lot of stray bones.”
The whole hake had been in the freezer, and Eric had been impatient when preparing it so hadn’t deboned it as cleanly as he should have.
He was also out of practice. He was happy with a fried egg on potatoes with a bit of salted fish or pork thrown in.
It was rarely worth it to prepare fresh fish, despite the fact that they were gifted several fish every week from a local fisherman in exchange for the wool from the sheep they kept to maintain the tradition of the estate being a farm.
Usually the Spartan Guard took the fish, but he had a few stashed in his freezer.
“I used to be able to debone a fish in one pull. I’m out of practice.”
“Because you no longer eat fish?”
“I’m Danish. I eat plenty of fish.” Eric shrugged and went back to peeling potatoes. “But I mostly eat salted fish now. Easier since usually I’m cooking for myself.”
“Do you like cooking for other people?”
Eric shrugged again. “I don’t like it, but I don’t mind it.”
“Do you like people cooking for you?”
Eric eyed him. The question seemed casual, and Elijah was focused on the fish in front of him.
“Is this a therapy session?”
“No. This is conversation and—ah-ha!” Elijah plucked a bone from the white fish filet, tossing it into the small discard bowl.
Eric snorted his amusement as he rinsed the now-peeled potatoes before dicing them. “I like good food,” he said in answer to the previous question. “I think I’m the first fleet admiral not to have one Spartan Guard chosen specifically to be a private chef.”
“You get a private chef? Don’t tell Juliette.”
Eric looked up, grinning. “That’s good. I’ll use that.”
Elijah shook his head, but he was smiling. “I don’t think she has the equivalent of your Spartan Guard either.”
“She needs them,” Eric declared.
“I agree, though accepting that is heavy as it’s very tangible evidence and admission that your life is in danger.”
“Those university students are good, but not enough.”
Elijah just nodded.
“When she puts together her guard, she should consider having one of the positions be chef. It’s a legitimate security issue.”
“Why don’t you have a chef?” Elijah asked.
Eric shrugged. “And a couple of the current guards are good cooks. If we have people in the castle, they open the big kitchen downstairs and feed everyone.”
“In the future, if you have another trinity, will you get a chef?”
Eric froze, cutting board hovering over the pan. He took a moment, then pushed the diced potatoes gently into the hot pan where they immediately started to sizzle.
“I don’t have to be actively married to be fleet admiral. I was married, and was briefly admiral of Kalmar. That’s how I got stuck with this job.”
“I didn’t mean to imply you had to be married.” Elijah was quiet as he rinsed the fish in cold water then patted it dry. “But do you want to?”
“Want to what?” Eric didn’t look up from the diced potatoes he was currently turning one by one. Normally he’d just toss the pan a bit, but this gave him a reason to feign distraction.
“Let me ask it another way.” Elijah leaned back on the counter, arms crossed. “What does your life look like in ten years?”
Eric carefully set down the fork he was using to turn potatoes.
“I thought this wasn’t therapy.”
“This isn’t EMDR therapy. Talking about your future isn’t the type of therapy I specialize in, but I acknowledge it is something that could come up in a therapy session.”
Eric turned down the heat on the potatoes and put a lid on the pan. They’d end up steamed rather than pan fried, but that was going to be good enough.
The silence was long and painful.
Elijah finally cleared his throat, passing Eric the cutting board with the dry, prepared fish on it. “You don’t want to talk about your future.”
He took the cutting board on reflex, taking a clean knife and cutting the fish into appropriately sized pieces before putting them into the sauce.
Eric braced his hands on the counter on either side of the cooktop, staring down at the pot and pan. He was vibrating, as if the question was a bell that Elijah had rung and the sound waves were bouncing around inside his body.
“I wasn’t supposed to have a future,” he said quietly.
“Why not?”
“I was supposed to die.” Eric hunched further, the warm, heavily scented steam somehow calming. “After my wives died and I was finally able to step down from being admiral of Kalmar, I became a mercenary.”
He needed something to do with his hands. He turned off the heat on the fish, letting it finish cooking with residual heat. “They didn’t make me become a knight again once I stepped down. After everything that happened, the territory just sort of…left me alone.”
Elijah made a soft noise that might have been agreement or sympathy.
“I didn’t know what to do with my life. I’d failed at everything that mattered, but I was a good fighter. Clever enough to handle complex situations. I signed on with a private security company specializing in international and high-risk operations.”
“A soldier for hire.”
“Yes. The company is as bad as you expect from private security, but I was a contractor and selected my jobs.”
“This is when you met Colum and Josephine.”
“Yes. I couldn’t bear to go back to the apartment in Stockholm or move back to Copenhagen. A cottage in rural Ireland felt like a good place to be left alone.” Eric snorted, taking the lid off the potatoes and turning up the heat. Maybe there was hope yet for crispiness.
“Instead, you found family.”
“A family I failed to protect.” The words came out almost as a reflex.
Wincing, he looked over his shoulder at Elijah, who raised his brows.
“I found a family,” Eric agreed. “And tragically, my adopted sister was murdered.” He turned back to the potatoes. “Then I hunted down the person who murdered her and broke her neck—I didn’t torture her first though.”
“Er, well done.”
“Thank you. I consider it personal growth. Then I found the man who orchestrated it and ripped his head off his body with my bare hands.”
Elijah sighed loudly.
Eric laughed and took the potatoes off the heat.
“At least you stopped blaming yourself for the murder…” Elijah muttered as Eric plated, spooning the sauce over the potatoes and then adding the big pieces of fish.
They carried their plates to the table, scooping up forks and napkins on the way.
They ate in silence for several moments. Elijah wasn’t watching him, didn’t seem to care one way or another if their conversation continued, but his question about Eric’s future was like an itch he needed to scratch.
“I wasn’t supposed to have a future,” Eric repeated. “I figured I would die in an alley or jungle while on a job.”
“Then you became fleet admiral.”
“Considering the last one was murdered.” Eric turned and pointed toward the large windows. “Murdered just over there actually.”
Elijah paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “What the fuck?”
Eric laughed, oddly proud of himself for getting a reaction out of the other man. “I didn’t really think I’d survive being fleet admiral.”
“But you have.”
“So far.”
“That’s all that counts. Everyone survives until the day they don’t.” Elijah forked up a potato. “I know it’s trite, but no one gets out of life alive.”
“True.”
“But, that doesn’t mean we should avoid having plans, goals, and hopes for the future.”
Eric stuffed a bite of fish in his mouth, considering the futile yet hopeful nature of existence.
“By the way, this is really good. Is this a Danish dish?”
Maybe the point of life was a meal with a new friend and fried potatoes. “Not specifically. But it’s almost a law that you must start with a base layer of potatoes.”
“A solid foundation,” Elijah agreed solemnly.
He was looking down at his plate when he casually re-asked the question that had started them down this path. “What does your life look like in ten years?”
“I don’t know,” Eric admitted.
“What do you want it to look like?”
He wasn’t sure how to go about answering that.
Elijah set down his fork. “You know what the American holiday Thanksgiving is?”
“Is that the one where you celebrate genocide and American football?”