Chapter 27 Silva #2
Tate cocked his head, a mirror reaction. Silva could see the smile playing at the edge of his mouth, but he was treating the conversation as deadly serious. “How did you know?”
Aelin nodded again, as if her suspicions had been confirmed. “There was a dragon storm at our new house. I had to sit in the bathtub.”
Tate’s eyes flickered to Silva, and then he did smile. “Oh, I know all about dragon storms. Your mother is an expert.”
“Did the dragon bite you with his teeth? Is that why you have a bandage under your eye?”
His smile faded slightly, and he nodded.
“He tried. He did this with his claw,” he pointed at the wound beneath his eye.
“He stepped on me with his great foot and broke my ribs.” Tate pointed at his side, running a finger down his rib cage like a xylophone.
“Just here. He tried to bite me, but I got away.”
“That’s lucky. They can’t fix dragon bites at the hospital. We went shopping for you. Did you eat your peanut butter?”
“That was you?! I’d wondered who knew just what to buy. Did you pick out my favorite tea as well? I found it in the cupboard, and I was so happy that I didn’t need to drink from a puddle on the roof.”
Aelin cocked her head again, her eyes narrowed, giving him a skeptical look. “You could have had water from the sink.”
Tate laughed, and Silva could hear the emotion churning there, rocking like a wave. “Aye, I suppose you’re right, wee princess.”
“Don’t worry. I can make you tea.” She was already unzipping her backpack, removing the miniature tea set she’d packed. “You can pick your baby.”
“Oh, I think I know just which one I’ll choose.”
Aelin threw up her little hands, shaking her head as if he were impossible. “I haven’t even shown you yet!”
Silva opened her mouth to call out, to tell Aelin that Tate was too hurt to be able to play on the floor with her, but he was already gingerly sinking to the ground, only wincing a little.
Five years. Are you family? And now he was home. Of course we are.
She drifted to the corner where her little office set-up lived, sinking into the chair. She didn’t need to hover, and she knew doing so would only hamper what was unfolding in the living room. More time to think of her own dilemma.
Besides, Tate was good with children, had experience with them, even.
More experience than she’d had before she became a mother.
Silva, I like feral cats, very small children, and very old men, and that’s about it.
He’d laughingly admitted that babysitting Cymbeline’s two small children on Saturday mornings was far preferable to being short a hostess at Clover, that he liked the small moths better than the clientele.
There were books on the shelf, she realized.
She’d kept her work binders there previously, and in the few months she and Aelin had lived here, the shelves had been for her art supplies.
A line of children’s books filled the third shelf from the floor, picture books and faerie tales, a small sack of first readers, all varied in both age and thickness.
The shelf below it held a stack of coloring books, construction paper, fresh boxes of crayons and colored pencils, and, on the bottom shelf, a stuffed frog wearing a tiny crown, perched on a pink pillow.
Silva swiveled the chair to face the window so that her tears would not be noticeable to either of them, as Aelin chattered away, introducing Tate to her dolls and stuffed animals, who were the other guests at the tea party.
He’d made his choice, clearly.
You have to be willing to share her now.
Is that something you can do? She didn’t have an answer yet.
It would depend entirely on what sort of relationship the two of them had going forward.
Tate was reticent and guarded, but he didn’t do things in half measures.
If he’d made a choice to be present, to earn the role of father, Silva had no doubt he’d be as single-minded and efficient as he was in the running of the businesses that were once his.
They couldn’t go back to what they were.
She wasn’t that elf anymore, and she’d essentially spent the last five years of her life with her heart closed to all but her daughter. She liked being independent. He would need to make choices in that regard as well.
He colored with her, sitting on the floor with his legs folded and his spine held straight, never complaining if he was in pain.
Silva hoped there were enough good drugs left in that brown bag for after they’d left.
They put together a puzzle of woodland animals from the same bookshelf as the crayons, and Silva wondered what else he’d purchased in the last seventy-two hours. Making up for lost time.
“Can I get the princess a snack? Or is it lunchtime?”
“Lunchtime,” Silva confirmed, glancing at her phone. It was an hour that would have been generously considered brunch for most adults, but not for a preschooler. And he even knows that.
“I can make you anything you want, Princess Aelin. The kitchen is open for you, and you’re in luck, the cook is on duty.”
“Can you make winter soup?”
Tate was already at the refrigerator pulling out greens, pausing in confusion at the container of dark red liquid, turning to Silva with a raised eyebrow.
“We brought your soup from home, bunny. Remember? You were going to ask Tate if he wants to have some with you.”
Aelin whipped around, her hands up as if Silva had just suggested something preposterous. “He said he would make lunch!”
“I don’t know what winter soup is,” he mused, leaning over the counter to peer at Aelin questioningly. “Is that soup you eat to make it snow?”
Aelin dropped her head back, utterly exasperated with the two adults in the room. “No! It’s soup from the winter place. The winter lady gave it to me when we went to visit her. It was so good! Then she yelled at me.”
Oh no. Oh no no no. Aelin had never once mentioned anything close to the bowl of stew Silva had been given at the Court of Winter. She wasn’t even born yet!
Tate’s eyes were narrowed, not following the conversational thread, but still trying desperately to both humor and please the tiny elf before him. “What did it look like? Can you remember what was in it? And why in the world would she be yelling at such a wee pixie?”
Aelin gestured at Tate, looking back at Silva with a look of pure disdain, as if to say, “This guy, am I right?”
His composure faltered at her expression, dipping his head as he laughed silently, bending a bit too far forward and then instantly yelping in pain. “Can’t bend down, can’t bend down . . .”
“I was in Mommy’s tummy,” Aelin enunciated slowly, as if Tate were the small child. “I don’t know what it looks like! It’s the place where Moonbeam lived. Now he lives with me. The lady gave me a bowl of soup, and then she yelled at me to wake up!”
“. . . Moonbeam.”
Aelin was finished with the sheer level of ignorance surrounding her. Her tiny head dropped, chin to her throat, shaking slowly. Tate was still trying to swallow down his laughter at her antics.
“Moonbeam is her cat,” Silva supplied, if only to prevent her from clearing the ottoman of her tea set and dolls.
“Moonbean used to live here,” Aelin stressed, looking back and forth between Tate and Silva. “And then he followed my smell! But he lived in the winter place first.”
Tate’s eyes had narrowed again, and now they flicked back and forth between the little elf and Silva with no small amount of suspicion and what she feared was a dawning understanding. She gulped.
“Winter soup. Dove, where exactly were you when she had this winter soup?”
Silva pushed up from the chair. “It doesn’t matter, because we brought her soup from home to share with you.”
“We were in the winter place! It was so cold! I was shivering and Mommy was crying.”
Her daughter was selling her up the river.
Aelin was going to wind up producing a transcript of every single illicit conversation in which Silva had participated in the past five years at this rate.
Video footage from the flower market. Her receipt from Bell, Book, and Candle.
Tate looked openly suspicious now, and she knew he wasn’t going to let this go.
“Winter soup, hmmm . . . Well, I think I can guess what might be in it, little princess, but I won’t be able to make that for lunch today. It takes a rather long time. Perhaps I can make it for your dinner sometime soon.”
He was asking permission. She heard the plea in his words, letting them hang, giving her the out by adding the perhaps.
“I think that’s a good idea, bunny. Maybe we’ll have Tate come to our house for dinner. Why don’t you come sit down at the table? I brought your little mousie bowl.”
“Duck blood?” He questioned, already decanting the container into a saucepan.
“The princess is a wee carnivore. That’s my favorite sort.
Little princess, while the cook prepares your lunch, you’ll need to mind those dolls.
Look at how untidy they are. You don’t want them to go marching out the door to find a cleaner place to live. ”
Aelin scrambled to line her babies up on the sofa, putting away the box of crayons without needing further prompting. She’s going to turn into a neat freak like him.
Merely pouring the broth and chunks of duck breast into a pan for heating, which was what she’d planned on doing, was clearly insufficient.
Silva scowled as he expertly chopped celery and carrots into perfect, tiny pieces, adding an onion and a garlic clove, salt and pepper, sauteeing the vegetables until the kitchen was fragrant, adding them to the small pot of broth to simmer.