Chapter 39
MARIS
The morning rush is just settling when Kaedrin comes through the door.
I'm behind the counter wrapping an order and I see him the moment he steps inside.
He's not in his traveling cloak — just the shirt and the dark vest he wears when he's not working, the longer blade absent from his hip.
He looks like a man who has put something down and hasn't decided yet what to pick up next.
I can't read his face.
That's what stops me. I've learned to read Kaedrin Veltharos reasonably well — the slight tightening around his eyes when he's tracking something, the particular stillness of him when he's decided on a course of action, the way the controlled exterior slips by degrees when he's with Elin.
But what's on his face right now is none of those things.
It's open in a way that gives me nothing to work with and everything to worry about.
I hand the order across the counter without looking at it and move to Elin.
She's on her stool at far edge of the counter with an empty bowl and a wooden spoon, feeding Pip with the focus of someone managing an important schedule. She doesn't look up when I put my arm around her shoulders. She's explaining to Pip why she needs to finish her breakfast.
Kaedrin crosses the room and stops in front of us. He tilts his head — toward the space behind the counter, away from the remaining customers.
I ease Elin forward on her stool so she has room to do her work, and I follow him around the counter's far end. From here I can see Elin clearly and she can see me, but the nearest customer is six feet away and looking at the display shelf.
He turns to face me.
Before he can say anything, I put my hand up.
"Let me go first." I cross my arms. "Because whatever you're about to tell me, I want to say this before I hear it.
" I look into his bright, bright eyes. "Thank you.
For watching over us since you arrived. For what you did at the ruins.
" I pause. "I don't know what Fenwood would have done if you hadn't gotten to Elin first, and I don't want to know.
What I do know is that you went in alone with a knife at your daughter's throat and you got her out.
" My voice trembles at the memory. "That doesn't go away.
Whatever comes next, that doesn't go away. "
He's watching me without moving.
"And Elin—" I glance at her. She's switched from feeding Pip to explaining something to the bowl, which is a new development in the relationship.
"She drew you into our family before either of us knew what to do with that.
You earned that. You didn't ask for it, and you could have kept your distance, but you didn't." I uncross my arms and press my palms flat on the counter beside me.
"She trusts you. I trust you. So whatever news you're carrying, I need you to know that what you've done here matters.
It matters to me and it matters to her, and nothing you say in the next thirty seconds changes that. "
I stop talking.
Elin, across the counter, holds Pip up and announces that she has finished her breakfast. Then she sets the doll down and picks the wooden spoon back up and starts feeding her again from the beginning.
Kaedrin looks at her for a moment, then looks back at me.
His expression, which I still can't fully read, does something around the edges. Not a smile exactly. Something quieter than that, and more certain.
"Are you finished?" he asks.
"I'm finished," I say.
He reaches over and brushes a strand of hair back from my face.
His fingertips graze my neck on the way back and the warmth that moves through me is immediate and completely inconvenient given that there are customers six feet away.
He takes my hands in both of his. His palms are warm and dry and certain, and he holds them firmly.
He looks at Elin first. She has abandoned the spoon in favor of explaining something to Pip using hand gestures. He watches her for a moment, then looks at me.
"I've made a decision," he says.
My lungs stop doing their job. I keep my face composed and I think, distantly, that he had the right idea the first time.
Leaving without a word, before dawn, no note.
As hard as it was to wake up to an empty bed and understand what that meant — it was easier than this.
This is looking at his face and knowing what's coming and feeling the whole shape of it before he says a word.
He watched Elin with soup the other night. He said goodnight to her and crouched beside the bed and let her pat his cheek. And now he's going to tell me —
"The case is closed," he says. "I've received my orders from the court."
There it is.
Ilet him hold my hands and I don't pull them back and I don't let my face do anything I'll regret.
"Orders," I say.
"Permanent reassignment to the southern territories." His eyes are steady, but my heart isn’t. "Effective immediately."
My stomach drops clean through the floor.
Then the corner of his mouth moves.
It's small and brief and contained, but it's there — a coy lift, the first genuinely unguarded amusement I've ever seen on his face. My heart, which had been falling, does something entirely different.
"You're not leaving," I say.
He shakes his head. "No."
I stare at him. "You just told me you have orders."
"I do." He looks down at our joined hands. "I told the courier to pass a message to the court. That I'm available for commissions in this region." He pauses. "That the southern posting isn't possible."
"They could strip your rank."
"They could."
"That doesn't concern you?"
"It concerns me less than the alternative.
" He lifts his eyes back to mine. "I've been pulling myself apart since I got here.
Duty against everything else, back and forth, every day.
I'd settle on one side and something would pull me back to the other.
" He turns my hands over in his. "Then Fenwood took Elin.
And then I read the orders telling me to go somewhere I'd never see either of you again.
" He shakes his head slightly. "After that, it wasn't difficult. "
I don't have a speech for this. I've been bracing for something else entirely, and what I'm holding instead is this — his hands around mine, his eyes steady, the decision already made and behind him.
I let go of everything I've been holding since the morning he walked into my bakery. The anger and the hurt and the careful management of how much I let myself want this. All of it releases at once, and I step forward and put my arms around his neck.
He's taller than I remember accounting for, which means I have to reach and he has to bend, and he does both without comment. His arms come around me and he pulls me in close and the solid weight of him is real and present and not going anywhere.
He presses his lips to my forehead. His chin rests at the top of my head. His hands are warm through the back of my apron.
"You're sure," I say into his shoulder.
"I've been sure." His voice is low and even. "I just needed the courts to make it easy."
Across the counter, Elin makes a sound of great satisfaction — Pip has apparently finished her second breakfast. I hear the wooden spoon set down with finality.
I stay where I am for a moment longer. Then I step back and look at him, and he looks at me, and neither of us says anything because there isn't anything left to say that would improve on what's already settled between us.
"There's a flour delivery coming on Friday," I say finally. "Brennor will need help with the heavy sacks."
The corner of his mouth moves again. "I can manage flour sacks."
"Good." I squeeze his hands once before releasing them. "Stay for the lunch crowd, then."
He does.