Sullha
What did he mean?
Did he love her as a friend?
Did he love her like a sister?
The word love could apply to many situations. Sometimes, the novels in the library used the word when two characters had been through hardships and had overcome obstacles together and emerged on the other side with the deep affection that was the result of their shared experience.
The love between Yaaf and her could be that kind.
It could also be the love of two people who had grown up together like siblings, gotten separated by the demands of the cruel world they lived in, and were now trying to rebuild that connection out of the wreckage of their lives.
But what if he'd meant the other kind of love?
The kind that she had started to feel for him before he'd told her that he wasn't a singular entity but a combination of eight.
The moments between her and Yaaf hadn't actually been intimate. They had been moments between her and the collective. Every conversation, every brush of his hand against hers, all of it had been observed and shared by seven other minds.
So, if Yaaf loved her, did all of them love her as well? Or only some of them? Was the love a thing that belonged to Yaaf alone and was simply visible to the others, or was it a thing that had grown in the shared space and now belonged to all of them in some collective way she couldn't define?
She couldn't even begin to understand what it meant to be loved by eight men at once, nor did she want to.
The coward's way out was to pretend that she was interpreting his words as an expression of friendship, or to let the moment pass without acknowledging it. She could redirect the conversation, and Yaaf would thank her for it because he seemed to be regretting the words that had escaped his mouth.
He wasn't even looking at her. He was looking at the playground as if Tomek, Bianca, and Tersan were a magnet for his eyes and he couldn't look away.
She didn't look at him either. She turned to look at the bathroom door as if driven by concern for Rohilah and her prolonged stay in there.
Letting the silence stretch between them, she hoped Yaaf would realize that she wasn't going to address the elephant in the playground. The gradual easing of the tension in his shoulders signaled that he also preferred it that way.
Or maybe it was just acceptance, and he was sad because she hadn't reacted as he'd hoped she would?
It wasn't fair to him. He might not have meant to say that to her, but he had, and it rang true, and she was refusing to acknowledge that it was real. It was the kind of small cruelty that would widen the chasm between them and become harder to fix the longer she let it fester.
Nevertheless, Sullha had no answer for Yaaf, not even a platitude to ease the tension between them.
Thankfully, Tersan's return from the sandbox saved her from having to say anything.
He stopped beside the bench and looked toward the bathroom. "What is taking her so long?"
"I don't know," Sullha said. "Maybe the two stalls are occupied, and she has to wait for someone to be done."
Tersan let out a breath. "I guess her being here means that she's not a Sacred Mother. Otherwise, you wouldn't have brought her."
Sullha nodded. "Sometimes it's hard to tell because they don't have any outward markings to identify them, but I don't think she's one of them. She doesn't hum or sing, and she doesn't praise Mortdh after everything she says."
"But you're still not certain," Tersan said.
"I didn't have enough time with her to work out where she really stands, and she's not very talkative. I haven't figured her out yet."
Tersan nodded and looked at the bathroom. A boy opened the door and ran toward the back of the yard where the older kids congregated in the afternoons.
"I can vet Rohilah," Yaaf said. "I can enter her mind. I can read what's in there. I can tell you whether she's safe."
Sullha stared at him.
He could've saved her a lot of time and effort by telling her he could do that before.
Then again, she had known that he had the ability.
He'd entered her mind to ensure that she kept his secrets.
It just hadn't occurred to her that he could use his ability that way, but it must have occurred to him.
She kept staring at Yaaf for long enough that he started to look uncomfortable, and Tersan took a step back to clear the line of fire.
"You can do that?" she said.
"You know I can."
"You can just go into a person's head and find out what they really think, and you can do that with any of the mothers I bring to you?"
Yaaf nodded.
Closing her eyes, Sullha shook her head and then opened them.
Nothing had changed on the playground. Tomek was still in the sandbox with Bianca, and the boys on the climbing structure were still trying to push each other off the highest bar. The sun was still slipping toward the western wall.
What had changed was everything she'd been planning for the past two days. It had just been rendered unnecessary by Yaaf's ability, which he had forgotten to mention.
"What's wrong?" he asked, even though he probably knew.
"I've been racking my brain coming up with excuses for why I was meeting with the women on the list you gave me and ways to vet them as quickly as possible because we were running out of time.
I was willing to take risks so it could be done before the deadline, while all along you could have made it so simple for me. "
"You knew that I could thrall."
"It hadn't occurred to me that you could use your ability to read thoughts. You didn't tell me that."
"I thought it was self-explanatory."
"In your world it might be, but not in mine. I don't live among immortals. I don't know what they are capable of. I need to be told that you can rummage through human brains."
"I'm not rummaging," he said.
"I don't care what you call it." She glared at him. "The point is that you can do it, and you didn't tell me, and I have been losing sleep over a problem you could have solved in five minutes."
Yaaf had the decency to look sheepish.
"You still need to find these women and bring them to me, and that probably requires all those tricks you came up with. I can only provide a shortcut with the vetting so you won't have to spend hours assessing them."
He was right about that, and his logical argument doused the fire that had ignited within her when she'd thought he was being inconsiderate.
"Fine. From now on I'll bring the candidates to the playground for you to read."
"I'm sorry I didn't suggest that before."
She accepted his apology even though she was still annoyed, because anger was easier to deal with than talk about love.
"When Rohilah returns, read her and tell me and Tersan what to expect from her."
"I will." Yaaf glanced at the children playing in the sandbox. "Tomek is very patient with Bianca."
Sullha had a feeling that he was trying to change the subject, and she was fine with that.
"She's adorable. Very sweet, and Tomek loves being in charge, even if it's being in charge of a little girl. He takes it very seriously."
"He looks like he's enjoying it."
"He is. He keeps glancing at me to make sure I'm watching him doing a good job. He's earned many points from me today."
Tersan was listening to their conversation, which she realized he would have done even if he weren't within hearing distance. Everything she said to Yaaf was shared across eight minds.
It was weird, and it made her more self-conscious about what she said to him.
"Rohilah hates sand," she said. "She told me when I brought them over here that she has never let Bianca play in the sandbox, and the entire time we were sitting together, she kept looking at Bianca with this expression like she was witnessing a disaster in slow motion.
I told her to stop looking and just resign herself to the fact that the girl will get dirty, and that all the dirt will come off in a bath later on. "
"I played in the sand all the time as a boy," Tersan said. "She didn't seem to mind that much."
"Mothers treat boys and girls differently," Sullha said. "Boys can get away with a lot more dirt, scraped knees, and scraped elbows. Mothers are more protective of daughters. They think of them as fragile."
Tersan nodded sagely as if her argument had been perfectly logical.
It might be, but she'd made it up. Her mother had never cared if she played in the sand or got dirty, or had scraped knees and elbows, and that wasn't because she hadn't loved her. It was because kids needed to be kids and get dirty when their play involved dirt.
The bathroom door opened again, and this time it was Rohilah.
"You need to retreat," Yaaf told Tersan. "I'll start as soon as she is seated."
The woman didn't see the men when she walked past them, and she didn't see them when she sat back down on the bench beside Sullha.
"I'm sorry it took so long," she said. "One stall was occupied by a boy who was in no hurry to come out, and the other was out of order. I had to wait."
"I saw the culprit come out," Sullha said. "Perhaps he's been hiding in the bathroom."
"Or maybe he had a stomachache." Rohilah smiled. "I heard him groan and strain, so I didn't say anything about him hogging the only functioning toilet."
"Poor kid," Sullha said. "We should let the guard know that a toilet is out of order."
Rohilah let out a breath. "I wonder how long it will take them to fix it this time. They are never in a hurry to make life easier for us."
Sullha stifled the urge to let out a relieved breath. To say things like that in the enclosure was risky. They were not supposed to complain. They were supposed to accept everything with gratitude and appreciation and submit without question.
That was what Mortdh's teachings demanded from women.
She glanced at Yaaf, and when he nodded at her, she didn't know if it meant that he'd caught the same response or was actively reading the woman's mind.
She turned her attention back to Rohilah. "Bianca is adorable. Even Tomek is charmed, and just so you know, he's not a big fan of girls other than his mama."