Chapter 12
The sound of laughter echoed through the den, and Tarek’s hands went still on the wood he was carving.
Laughter. In his home. A bright, childish sound that seemed to bounce off the stone walls and settle into corners that had known only silence for five long years.
He should have found it irritating. He should have bristled at the intrusion and the disruption of his carefully constructed solitude.
Instead, he found himself straining to hear more—listening as Dani’s giggles mingled with her sister’s softer voice, the two of them playing some game in the other room that involved, from the sounds of it, Jessa pretending to be some kind of monster.
His beast stirred contentedly in his chest. Pack, it purred. Den. Ours.
Not ours, he reminded it firmly. Temporary.
But the beast wasn’t listening. It never did, not when it came to the two humans who had somehow invaded his territory and made themselves at home.
He looked down at the half-finished drop spindle in his hands.
He’d started carving it two days ago, the morning after the storm, when Jessa had mentioned working with the sunvines.
The words had barely left her mouth before he’d found himself reaching for his carving knife and a suitable piece of wood.
Pathetic, really, how quickly he’d abandoned his principles.
He’d told himself it was simply practical. She needed to spin the sunvine fibers into thread, and spinning thread required tools. Helping her accomplish her goal meant she’d be able to leave sooner, to build the new life she’d spoken of. The spindle was just… expediting the process.
But the excuse rang hollow even to his own ears.
Especially when he considered the two additional chairs he’d built for the table.
And the small bed he’d built for himself in what had been one of his storage rooms. And the way he’d rearranged his entire den to accommodate two humans who would be gone as soon as they were able.
You’re a fool, he told himself. An old fool playing house with a woman who will leave the moment she has what she needs.
The laughter from the other room peaked, then dissolved into breathless gasps.
“Again! Do it again, Jessa!” Dani gasped.
“I can’t,” Jessa said, equally breathless. “I’m all monstered out. You’ve defeated me.”
“That means I win!”
“You always win. You’re the most fearsome monster-slayer on the entire mountain.”
More giggles, and the sound of small feet running across the stone floor.
His jaw tightened, and he forced his attention back to the spindle.
The wood was coming along nicely—a light, straight-grained piece he’d cut from a branch of silverwood, its surface smoothing under his blade.
He’d weighted the bottom with a bead of carved stone and shaped the hook at the top from a bit of copper wire he’d salvaged years ago.
It was good work. The kind of work his hands remembered from another life, when he’d shaped surgical tools and medical implements instead of furniture and household goods.
Healer’s hands, his teacher had called them. Made for saving lives, not taking them.
His teacher had been wrong about that.
“Tarek?”
He looked up to find Dani standing in the archway, her dark hair mussed and her cheeks flushed with exertion. She was wearing one of his shirts, clumsily belted at the waist, and she looked ridiculous—like a child playing dress-up in her father’s clothes.
Something in his chest clenched at the thought.
“What is it?”
“Jessa says you’re making her a spindle.” Dani skipped closer. “Can I see?”
He hesitated. He wasn’t used to sharing his work. For that matter, he wasn’t used to having anyone interested in his work. But the child’s expression was so earnest that he found himself extending the unfinished piece before he could think better of it.
Dani took it carefully, her small fingers tracing the curves and hollows with a reverence that surprised him.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “Did you make all of this?” Her free hand gestured at the den behind them. “The chairs and the shelves and the… the everything?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.” She looked up at him with wide blue eyes, unclouded by worry. “You must be really good at making things.”
An uncomfortable warmth spread through his chest. He took the spindle back, perhaps a bit more roughly than necessary.
“It’s just practice. Years of having nothing better to do.”
“Jessa says practice is how you get good at anything.” Dani hoisted herself up onto the new second chair—her chair, although he hadn’t admitted as much—and watched him work. “She practiced weaving every day since she was little. That’s why her cloth is so pretty.”
“Your sister is skilled.”
“She’s the best weaver in the whole valley. Maybe the whole world.” There was no trace of doubt in the child’s voice, just absolute, unwavering faith. “Mama taught her, and Mama was the best before that. It’s in our blood.”
He grunted. He’d seen enough of Jessa’s work over the past few days to know that her skill went beyond mere inheritance. The way she handled the sunvine fibers spoke of a talent that couldn’t be taught.
“Can I help?”
He looked up to find Dani leaning forward, eyes bright with curiosity.
“Help with what?”
“With the spindle. Or—or with whatever you’re making next. I’m really good at helping.” A slight hesitation. “Jessa says I need to rest, but I’m tired of resting. I want to do something useful.”
Useful. His chest ached. This child, this fragile, sickly child who had nearly died in a storm three nights ago, wanted to be useful.
“Your sister is right,” he said gruffly. “You should rest.”
Dani’s face fell. “But—”
“But…” Against his better judgment, he heard himself continuing. “You could hand me tools. If you wanted. That wouldn’t require much exertion.”
Her smile could have lit the entire mountain.
The next few days blurred together.
He found himself falling into a routine, a comfortable, terrifying routine that felt less like temporary arrangement and more like the life he wanted. The kind of life he’d never expected to have again.
Most mornings he woke before dawn and built up the fire, then prepared breakfast while the others slept.
Jessa was usually second to rise, wandering out in one of his shirts with sleep-tangled hair and drowsy eyes that made his beast rumble with satisfaction.
They would eat together in companionable silence, sharing the table he’d built for one but somehow now fit three.
Days were for work. Jessa spun thread on the spindle he’d finished—her hands moving in a mesmerizing rhythm that he found himself watching more often than he should—while he carved or built or mended.
Dani helped when she could, fetching tools and sorting materials and chattering constantly about everything and nothing.
“What’s that bird called, Tarek?”
“That’s a mountain thrush.”
“It’s pretty. Do they taste good?”
“I’ve never tried one.”
“Jessa says we shouldn’t eat things that sing.”
“Your sister is wise.”
“She’s the wisest person I know. Except maybe you.”
Evenings were for cooking, a task that had somehow become shared, with Jessa working beside him at the small stove while Dani set the table and announced that she was starving with theatrical emphasis.
They ate together, talked together, existed together in a way that he had thought was lost to him forever.
But nights… Nights were the hardest.
He had moved into the cleared storage room, insisting that Jessa and Dani keep the larger bedroom with its proper bed and warm furs. The bed he’d assembled was too small, but he’d slept on worse. Much worse.
The problem wasn’t the bed. The problem was lying awake in the darkness, listening to the soft sound of Jessa breathing, and wanting something he had no right to want.
She’s going to leave, he reminded himself. Every night, the same litany. This is temporary. She has her own life to build, her own path to follow. I am not part of it.
His beast disagreed. His beast wanted to go to her, to curl around her and keep her safe, to wake up with her warmth pressed against him like that first morning on the mountainside. His beast wanted to claim her in ways that would make leaving impossible.
His beast was a fool.
“You’re staring again.”
He jerked his attention away from her hands, those clever, capable hands currently coaxing a length of sunvine fiber into submission, and met her amused gaze.
“I wasn’t staring.”
“You were absolutely staring. You’ve been staring for the past ten minutes.” She didn’t sound offended. If anything, she sounded pleased. “Is there something on my face?”
Yes, he wanted to say. Your eyes. Your mouth. Everything about you demands attention, and I am too weak to look away.
“Your technique,” he said instead. “It’s different from what I’ve seen before.”
Her eyebrows rose. “You’ve watched people spin before?”
“Once. Long ago.” The words came out before he could stop them. “On my home world. There was a woman who made thread from the silk of cave spiders. She had a similar… rhythm.”
Her face softened.
“Tell me about her?”
No. The impulse to refuse was automatic. He didn’t talk about his past. He didn’t share pieces of himself that could be used as weapons.
But she was watching him with those warm hazel eyes, and Dani had fallen asleep in her chair by the fire, and the den was warm and quiet and felt, for one treacherous moment, like home.
“She was my grandmother,” he heard himself say. “My mother’s mother. Many Vultor families retain ancestral caves in the mountains. It is our tradition to give birth there, but my grandmother chose to live there all the time. When I went to visit her, she used to tell me stories while she worked.”
“What kind of stories?”
Stories about monsters, he thought bitterly. Stories about beasts who couldn’t control their nature. Stories I should have listened to more carefully.
“Old stories,” he said instead, and it was also true. “Legends. Tales of heroes and villains and the gods who watched them both.”
She smiled. It was a small smile, barely a curve of her lips, but it sent warmth flooding through him.
“I’d like to hear them sometime. The stories.”
“Perhaps.”
Never, his mind insisted. Don’t let her any closer. Don’t let her see what you really are.
But his beast had other ideas. His beast was already planning which story to tell her first.