Chapter 15
The storm came with the dawn, dark clouds rolling over the mountains like a tide of ink swallowing the sky.
Tarek stood at the entrance to his den, watching lightning fracture the horizon. Rain came down in sheets so thick he could barely see the tree line—a wall of water and fury that would make venturing outside dangerous even for him.
Trapped.
The word should have filled him with frustration.
He’d spent half the night in the forest, running until his muscles burned, trying to outpace the memory of Jessa’s mouth and her hands and the sounds she’d made when he pressed her against the wall.
He’d returned just before dawn, slipping back into his converted storage room and lying on his narrow cot, staring at the ceiling and willing his body to calm.
It hadn’t worked. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her. He still wanted her with an intensity that bordered on madness.
And now the storm had taken away his only escape route.
For the best, his beast rumbled. Running is no longer the answer.
He closed his eyes, letting the cool spray of rain mist his face. His beast was right—a terrifying admission, considering how often he’d fought against those instincts. But he couldn’t keep doing this. He couldn’t keep kissing Jessa like she was oxygen and then fleeing into the night like a coward.
She deserved better.
She deserves the truth, his beast corrected. All of it.
Not yet. He wasn’t ready for that. He might never be ready for that. But perhaps he could give her something. A piece of himself, carefully offered. A small act of trust to match the enormous trust she’d shown by coming here, by staying, and by looking at him like he was something worth wanting.
Thunder cracked overhead, shaking the mountain itself. He took one last breath of rain-scented air and turned back into the den.
Time to face what he’d been running from.
He found her already awake, standing at the stove with a cup of tea cradled in her hands. Her hair was loose around her shoulders instead of braided or pinned back, and her borrowed shirt hung nearly to her knees, leaving her legs bare.
She looked soft and rumpled and devastatingly beautiful.
“Morning,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. “Storm’s bad.”
“It will last most of the day. Perhaps longer.”
“Ah.” A pause. “Trapped inside, then.”
“Yes.”
The word hung between them, weighted with everything they weren’t saying. He watched a flush climb her cheeks and felt an answering heat stir in his own blood.
Talk to her. Tell her you’re done running.
But before he could open his mouth, a smaller voice interrupted.
“Is it raining?”
Dani appeared in the bedroom doorway, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Her dark hair stood up in wild directions, and the oversized shirt she wore as a nightgown slipped off one thin shoulder.
“Pouring,” Jessa said. “We’re stuck inside today, little mouse.”
“All day?” Dani’s eyes went wide—not with disappointment, he realized, but with excitement. “Really?”
“Really. The whole day.”
“That’s wonderful!”
Jessa laughed, the sound cutting through the tension like sunlight through clouds. “Most people don’t consider being trapped inside wonderful.”
“Most people don’t live in a den with a fireplace and games and books.
” Dani padded across the room on bare feet, stopping at Tarek’s side.
She tilted her head back to look up at him with those bright blue eyes.
“We could have a holiday. A storm holiday. We could play games and make special food and tell stories.”
A holiday.
He hadn’t celebrated anything in five years. He hadn’t seen the point, since he had no one to celebrate with. But Dani was looking at him with such hopeful expectation that he found himself nodding before his brain caught up to his mouth.
“A holiday,” he agreed. “What games would you like to play?”
Dani’s smile could have lit the darkest cave.
The morning passed in a blur of the kind of simple pleasures he’d long forgotten existed.
First they played a counting game that Dani knew, involving stones and strategy.
He was terrible at it. His mind worked in straight lines, direct paths to objectives, while Dani’s mind darted and wove with a child’s unpredictable creativity.
She beat him four times before he managed a single victory, and even that felt suspiciously like she’d let him win.
“You’re thinking too hard,” she informed him solemnly. “You have to feel where the stones want to go.”
“Stones don’t want things.”
“Everything wants things. Mama used to say that even mountains have dreams. They just dream very, very slowly.”
He looked at Jessa, who was watching the exchange with a soft smile.
“Your mother said that?”
“Our mother said many things.” Her eyes went distant for a moment. “She saw stories everywhere. In the threads she wove, the patterns of weather, the way streams carved through rock. She said the world was always talking to us, as long as we knew how to listen.”
Like the bond, he thought. Like the thread connecting me to you, growing stronger every day.
He pushed the thought aside and focused on setting up the stones for another game.
Around midday, Jessa declared it was time for treats.
“Storm holidays require storm food,” she said firmly. “Special things you wouldn’t make on an ordinary day.”
His stores were simple—dried meat, grain, preserved vegetables, wild honey from a hive he’d found the previous summer—but she surveyed them with the critical eye of a general planning a campaign.
“Honey cakes,” she decided. “Dani, you’re in charge of mixing. Tarek, you’re in charge of not eating the batter before it’s cooked.”
“I have never eaten raw batter in my life.”
“There’s a first time for everything.” She handed him a wooden spoon with exaggerated ceremony. “Consider this your initiation into proper holiday behavior.”
He took the spoon, acutely aware of her fingers brushing his. “What’s your role?”
“Supervision. And quality control.” She swiped a finger through the bowl Dani was mixing and popped it into her mouth. “Mm. Needs more honey.”
“Jessa!” Dani protested. “You just said he couldn’t eat the batter!”
“I’m testing. That’s different.”
“It’s not different!”
“It’s extremely different. I’m the eldest. Elder privilege.”
Tarek watched them bicker with something that felt dangerously close to contentment.
His den, his lonely refuge, was filled with warmth and laughter and the sweet smell of honey cakes cooking over the fire.
Rain drummed steadily against the stone.
Thunder rumbled in the distance like a contented beast.
This is what it could be, whispered something deep inside him. This is what you gave up when you left.
No. This was not the same. What he’d left behind had been duty and politics and the constant pressure of expectation. This was…
This was Dani licking honey off her fingers and Jessa arguing about proper cake consistency and the three of them crowded into an alcove that was barely big enough for two.
This was family.
His knees actually weakened at the thought and he had to turn away, pretending to check the fire, until he could compose his features.
“Tarek?” Dani tugged at his sleeve. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he said roughly, clearing his throat. “The cakes need to be turned.”
He busied himself with the cooking, keeping his back to the room until he trusted himself to face them again.
The honey cakes were delicious—crispy on the outside, soft in the center, dripping with the last of his summer honey. They ate them gathered around the fire, Dani cross-legged on a cushion and Jessa in her chair while he sat on the floor with his back against the hearth.
“Tell a story,” Dani demanded through a mouthful of cake. “That’s part of storm holidays too.”
“Is it?”
“It is now. Jessa, you first.”
She licked honey off her thumb, considering. “What kind of story?”
“A real one. About you when you were little.”
“When I was little…” Her eyes went soft with memory. “I was a terrible troublemaker.”
“You were not,” Dani said immediately.
“I absolutely was. Mama used to say I had more curiosity than sense. I was always getting into things—climbing trees I couldn’t get down from, following the goats into the hills, trying to take apart her loom to see how it worked.”
“Did you break it?”
“Spectacularly. I was maybe seven. I’d been watching her weave for years by then, completely fascinated by how all those separate threads became cloth.
One day when she was at the market, I decided I needed to understand every single piece of the mechanism.
” Jessa laughed softly. “I got it apart in about an hour. Getting it back together took her three days.”
“Was she angry?”
“Furious. For about ten minutes. Then she sat me down and made me help with the repairs, explaining every piece as we went. She said…”
Her voice caught, and she took a breath before continuing.
“She said curiosity was never wrong, only impatience. That if I’d asked, she would have shown me. The mistake wasn’t wanting to understand, it was not trusting her to help me get there.”
The fire crackled in the silence that followed. He watched the flames dance, thinking about trust and asking for help. He thought about all the times he’d chosen to handle things alone because he couldn’t bear to burden someone else with his failures.
“Your mother sounds wise,” he said finally.
“She was.” she smiled, though her eyes were bright. “She really was.”
Dani licked the last of the honey off her fingers and fixed him with an expectant stare.
“Your turn.”
He went still. “I don’t have stories.”
“Everyone has stories. Jessa just told one. Now you.”
“Dani—” Jessa started.
“It’s okay.” The words came out before he could stop them. He looked at the fire, not at the two faces watching him. “I will tell you… something. From before.”
They waited patiently.
Where to begin? What can I give them that won’t reveal too much?
“When I was young,” he heard himself say, “younger than you are now, I had a teacher. A mentor. His name was—” Carmet. Carmet who believed in me when no one else did. “—not important. He was very old, and very wise, and he had no patience for children who didn’t pay attention.”
“Were you a good student?”
A rough sound escaped him, not quite a laugh.
“No. I was… difficult. Angry, most of the time. I didn’t like being told what to do.”
“That hasn’t changed,” Jessa murmured.
He shot her a look, but her expression was teasing rather than critical and he relaxed a little.
“It has not,” he admitted. “But this teacher—he understood that. He never demanded obedience. He asked questions. Terrible questions, the kind that made your head hurt because there were no easy answers. ‘Why should a healer—’” He caught himself, and continued carefully.
“Why should someone with power use it gently when force would be faster? Why should the strong protect the weak when the weak could not return the favor? Why should anyone show mercy when the world showed none?”
“What were the answers?” Dani asked, rapt.
“That was the point. There were no answers, at least not ones he would give me. I had to find them myself.” He stared into the flames, seeing another fire, another time.
“It took me years. I argued with him constantly, convinced I was right and he was a foolish old male clinging to outdated ideas. But eventually…”
Eventually I understood. Eventually I chose mercy over violence, healing over harm. And eventually that choice destroyed everything I had built.
“Eventually what?” Dani pressed.
“Eventually I learned that the questions mattered more than the answers. That sitting with uncertainty, with not-knowing, was its own kind of strength.” He paused. “He died before I could tell him I understood. I have never stopped regretting that.”
The fire popped, sending sparks spiraling upward. He realized his hands had clenched into fists and deliberately relaxed them.
“That’s a sad story,” Dani said softly.
“Yes. It is.”
“But not all sad.” She moved, shifting across the floor until she was pressed against his side. Her small hand found his, curling around his fingers. “The teacher sounds like he loved you. And you loved him. That part isn’t sad.”
He looked down at her—this fragile, fierce little human who had decided he was worth trusting despite every reason not to. His eyes stung.
“You’re right,” he said quietly. “That part isn’t sad.”
Dani yawned, enormous and unself-conscious. “I’m glad you told us. Now we all have stories together.”
Stories together. As if the sharing had woven them into something connected.
She curled against his side like a cat seeking warmth, and within minutes her breathing had evened out into sleep.
He sat very still, afraid to move and disturb her. Afraid to examine too closely the feeling expanding in his chest—the warmth, the ache, the desperate want for something he had no right to claim.
“She trusts you,” Jessa said softly.
“She shouldn’t.”
“And yet she does. So do I.”
He made himself look at her and see the truth in her steady hazel eyes.
“That’s dangerous.”
“Maybe.” She rose from her chair and crossed over to them. She knelt beside him, gently brushing a strand of hair from Dani’s sleeping face. “But maybe some things are worth the danger.”
Thunder rolled overhead. Rain continued its steady assault on the roof. And he sat in the firelight with a sleeping child against his side and a woman who looked at him like he was something precious, and wondered if he could learn to believe her.
He carried Dani to bed when her sleep deepened enough that moving wouldn’t wake her.
She weighed nothing, less than nothing, really, her thin body as fragile as a bird’s. He laid her on the bed with exaggerated care, tucking the fur blanket around her shoulders and pausing to watch her breathe. In sleep, the shadows under her eyes seemed deeper.
She’s getting stronger, he told himself. The medicine is working. The mountain air is helping.
But worry gnawed at the edges of his thoughts regardless.
He closed the door and returned to the main room, expecting to find it empty. He expected Jessa to join Dani and leave him alone with the dying fire and his tumultuous thoughts.
Instead, she was waiting for him.