23. Theron
23
THERON
I shake off the road dust as I enter my home, expecting the usual chaos that has started to fill my home. Instead, silence greets me, too much like the way it used to before Cassandra passed. My hooves click against the wooden floors, each step echoing through the empty halls.
The dining room door stands ajar. Inside, my children sit around the long table, heads bowed over their plates. No squabbling, no laughter, no tales of their day's adventures. Just the soft clink of silverware against porcelain.
My chest tightens. The scene strikes too close to memories I've tried to bury - of formal dinners where Cassandra's disapproving gaze kept everyone rigid in their seats, afraid to speak out of turn. Those blue eyes of hers could freeze a summer day.
"What's this?" I loosen my traveling cloak, letting it fall heavily across the back of my chair. "Did someone die while I was away?"
Neither of them look up. Kai - gods, he has his mother's eyes - pushes his food around his plate. Even little Mira, usually bouncing with energy, sits still as a statue.
The silence claws at me. Our home has become so much better than this quiet, the kind that followed me through my own childhood and into my marriage. Yet here it sits at my table like an unwelcome guest.
My rings catch the lamplight as I grip the back of my chair, the silver bands marking my merchant status suddenly feeling heavy. "What's going on?" My voice comes out rougher than intended, scratching against my throat like sandpaper.
I look around, searching for Lyra. But she's not here. I see Mrs. Bramble in the kitchen, her face grim.
"Papa?" Kai's voice finally breaks through the tension. "Lyra is...she's leaving."
The words hit harder than any physical blow. My fingers dig into the chair's wooden back, threatening to splinter it.
"Is she now." Not a question. I straighten to my full height, horns nearly brushing the ceiling beams.
She's leaving? Was she just waiting for me to come home to pack up her things? I hate the way I feel so blindsided, rushing all the way home to her only to find that she's trying to get away from me.
Mira's bottom lip trembles. "Don't let her go."
I force my expression neutral, the same mask I wear during difficult trade negotiations. Because I can't force her to stay. "If that's her choice-"
"But she doesn't want to!" Mira's outburst sends her into a coughing fit. Kai immediately moves to rub her back, shooting me an accusatory look with those damn blue eyes.
"Finish your dinner." I turn sharply, my hooves striking the floor with controlled precision as I head toward the study. Each step feels heavier than the last.
The door is open. Lyra kneels by her healing chest, methodically sorting dried herbs into labeled pouches. Her copper hair falls in a messy braid down her back, threaded with sprigs I now recognize. She doesn't look up when I enter.
"So." My voice comes out clipped. Professional. "You're leaving."
"It's for the best." Her hands don't pause in their work, but I catch the slight tremor in them. "I've written down all of Mira's treatments. You just have to give them to her."
"Are you just-" I cut myself off, forcing down the growl building in my throat. "Very well. I'll have your payment ready in the morning."
"I'll need one more day to finish getting everything in order, if that's okay."
"Fine." My voice is so low that it sounds like it's anything but fine. "I'll have your payment then."
She finally looks up, those green-gold eyes flashing. "Is that all this was to you? A business transaction?"
"Wasn't it?" The words taste like ash, but I keep my expression stern. Distant. It's easier this way. Safer. "I hired you to heal my daughter. You've done that. Contract fulfilled."
Her jaw tightens. She turns back to her herbs, shoulders rigid. "Then I suppose there's nothing left to discuss, Mr. Blackhorn."
The formal address stings more than it should. I give her a curt nod she doesn't see and stride out, leaving the door open behind me. Better to end it clean. Better to let her go before...before what? Before she leaves on her own? Before she realizes a human healer could do better than attaching herself to a widowed minotaur merchant with two young children?
I stalk through the darkening halls, not even sure where to go. Each step feels heavier than the last, my rings clicking. I've been restless in the hours since I've been home, avoiding everyone else as I wander, trying to place the feelings that have been tearing at me. The children should be asleep by now - another day ending without their customary bedtime stories. Another tradition slipping away.
A whispered conversation stops me outside their rooms. My ears flick forward, catching Mira's trembling voice through the partially open door.
"Did we do something wrong, Kai? Is that why Mama's leaving?"
That guts me. I stop, leaning in to listen, knowing that Mira has asked me before why Cassandra left her. But this is so much worse.
"No, silly." Kai's voice carries that forced maturity no six-year-old should need. "Lyra's not our real mama anyway."
"But she braids my fur and sings the moon song and-" Mira's words dissolve into wet coughs.
I should move. Should stride in there and comfort them, explain things properly. Instead, I stand frozen, my shadow stretching long and dark across the hallway floor.
"She makes Papa smile." Mira's voice comes smaller now. "He doesn't smile like that at anyone else."
"Stop it, Mira." Kai's tone sharpens, so like his mother's it makes my chest ache. "You'll just make yourself sick again. Lyra's leaving, just like-" He catches himself, but the unspoken comparison hangs in the air.
Just like everyone else leaves us.
The wall creaks under my grip. I force my fingers to relax before I put a hole through the paneling. My children shouldn't have to comfort each other in the dark. Shouldn't have to brace themselves for another loss.
But what can I offer them? Empty promises? Pretty lies about how everything will be fine? I've seen what false hope does to a household, watched my own father retreat further behind his ledgers each time my mother's disappointment carved another piece from him.
I retreat from their door like a coward, my hooves silent now on the thick carpets. The familiar path to my study offers no comfort - every shadow, every corner holds some memory of Lyra. Here's where she scolded me for working too late. There's where she balanced precariously on a chair to hang drying herbs, refusing my help with that stubborn tilt to her chin.
The study door creaks as I push it open. The scent hits me first - the herbs tangled together in a symphony that makes my throat tight. She's marked this space as surely as if she'd carved her name into the walls. Even my leather-bound ledgers carry traces of her presence, small dried petals pressed between pages where she'd absently tucked them while we talked late into the night.
I sink into my chair, the wood groaning under my weight. The lamp casts dancing shadows across my desk, illuminating the careful organization she's brought to my chaos. Each quill lined up precisely, ink bottles grouped by color, even my trade manifests sorted by date instead of scattered wherever I'd dropped them.
My fingers brush the small tin of healing salve she insisted on keeping here "for emergencies" - meaning the paper cuts and ink stains I regularly collected. The metal is cool against my palm, but I swear I can feel the warmth of her hands from the last time she cleaned and dressed a particularly nasty slice across my knuckles.
"Honestly," she'd muttered, her small fingers so gentle against my rough hide. "For someone so skilled with numbers, you're remarkably careless with sharp objects."
The memory twists like a knife. I shove the tin away, but her presence lingers in every corner. In the cushion she added to my chair - "Your back will thank me" - in the fresh water pitcher she never let run dry, in the dried rirzed herb sprigs tucked into my letterbox - "To help you sleep, you stubborn man."
A bitter laugh escapes me. Even now, hiding in my sanctuary like the coward I am while my children comfort each other down the hall, I can't escape her. She's woven herself into the fabric of our lives so thoroughly that trying to remove her will leave us all in tatters.
I see in the family portrait that is laid on my desk, drawn in Mira's wobbly hand. Five figures - she included Mrs. Bramble - stand in a row, but my eyes keep returning to how she drew Lyra. The copper-haired figure holds hands with my hulking black form, her stick-figure smile reaching past the page's edges. My daughter even added tiny herbs in Lyra's hair, green squiggles that somehow capture the healer's habit of tucking sprigs into her braid.
I grab my ledger, the leather binding creaking under my grip. Numbers. Numbers are safe. Numbers don't leave. They don't weave themselves into your life with gentle hands and fierce determination, don't teach your daughter to braid ribbons into her fur or help your son overcome his fear of thunder.
The columns blur before my eyes. Where there should be neat rows of figures, I see Lyra perched on my desk's edge, lecturing me about working too late. The way she'd tap her foot when I tried to argue, completely unfazed by my size or status. How she'd sometimes fall asleep in that oversized chair by the window, medical texts open in her lap, copper hair catching the lamplight like living flame.
My quill snaps between my fingers. Ink splatters across the page, obscuring last month's shipping manifests. I shove the ruined ledger aside, but my gaze catches on Mira's drawing again. She drew us all holding hands, a chain of stick figures with me in the middle. Even on paper, I tower over Lyra's small form, yet somehow she looks like she belongs there. Like she's always belonged there.
The rings on my horns catch the lamplight as I lower my head into my hands. I could ask her to stay. Three words. That's all it would take. But the words stick in my throat, tangled with memories of Cassandra's cold disdain, of my father's quiet desperation as he watched my mother retreat further into her noble pride.
Better to keep my distance. Better to let her go now, before she realizes what a mistake it would be to tie herself to a widowed merchant and his half-broken family. Before the whispers start about the minotaur merchant who couldn't keep his noble wife alive, now trying to replace her with a human healer.
I reach for another ledger, but my hand betrays me, brushing against the tin of healing salve instead. Her voice echoes in my memory. "You can't solve everything with numbers, you stubborn man."