Chapter 3
MAISIE
The house was quiet.
That should have been good. Normal people liked quiet. Normal people sat in quiet rooms and read books, or took naps, or did whatever else normal people did when no one was demanding anything from them.
I had apparently forgotten how to be normal.
For four years, quiet meant I was supposed to be listening for James. Listening for the exact amount of force he used to shut a cabinet. Flinching at his footsteps. Straining for the pause before he said my name in that voice that made my stomach drop.
This quiet wasn’t like that.
Kazan had left a couple of hours ago after telling me to make myself at home, which was a ridiculous thing to say to someone who had arrived on your planet that morning and agreed to marry you before lunch. Trial marry. Maybe. Whatever the legal wording was.
I was not at home.
But no one was yelling. No one was watching me. No one was waiting for me to do something wrong.
And somehow that made me even more nervous.
So I found something to fix.
Well, not exactly. The kitchen wasn’t broken. It was just built for someone the size of Kazan, which meant using it was less cooking and more mountain climbing.
I stood in the middle of the room and looked around.
The counter came up almost to my collarbone, and the stove was a huge black iron thing that looked old enough to have opinions. The cabinets were hung so high that when I opened one, after jumping like an idiot, I found mugs big enough to drown in sitting on a shelf I could barely see.
“Okay,” I said. “Sure. That’s fine.”
My voice sounded small in the empty kitchen.
I hated that.
There was a kettle on the stove. It was enormous, of course, because apparently Kazan didn’t own anything that wasn’t built like it expected to survive a war. Beside it was a metal canister with a tight lid. I pried it open and sniffed.
Tea.
Or something close enough to tea that I was willing to risk it.
It smelled smoky and spicy, and a little sweet. Not like anything from home, but I wasn’t home, so that made sense. My choices were to stand around feeling weird in a quiet house or make myself a drink and pretend I had any idea what I was doing.
Tea it was.
Unfortunately, making tea required reaching for things.
I opened another cabinet, hopped once, missed the handle, and glared at it.
“Don’t start with me,” I told the cabinet.
The cabinet did not care.
I found a footstool in the mudroom under a row of coats that looked big enough to use as tents. It was sturdy, wide, and heavy enough that dragging it across the floor made a horrible scraping sound. I winced, stopped, and listened.
Nothing happened.
No one came in to ask me why I was being loud or snapped at me for scratching the floor. No one stood in the doorway and made me explain myself.
I stood there for a second with my hands on the stool and felt stupidly close to crying.
“Absolutely not,” I said.
Then I dragged the stool the rest of the way into the kitchen.
Once I climbed onto it, the room became slightly less hostile. The counter was still too high, but now I could at least use it without climbing onto the actual cabinets. Progress.
The kettle was heavier than it looked. I got water into it from the faucet, though I had to use both hands and brace my hip against the counter to keep from tipping the whole thing sideways. By the time I got it onto the stove, I was breathing like I’d done something impressive.
Maybe I had. Surviving someone else’s kitchen counted.
While I was looking for cups I could actually reach, I noticed a faint violet glow coming from the pantry.
I paused.
That was probably normal.
I had been on this planet for less than a day, and so far, normal included a seven-foot alien fiancé, trees with silver leaves, and a legal system that seemed disturbingly relaxed about marriage to strangers. Glowing pantry items were hardly the strangest part of my week.
Still, I crouched down to look.
The lower shelves were lined with jars. Inside them were small, dark fruits suspended in syrup, each one glowing softly from the inside. The light wasn’t bright, just enough to paint the wood around them purple.
Star-figs.
Kazan had mentioned them on the way in. His crop. Or one of them. I had been too busy trying not to stare at his hands on the steering controls to absorb every detail.
They were pretty.
That was annoying.
I didn’t want things here to be pretty. I wanted them to be strange and inconvenient so I could keep my distance from all of it. Pretty made it harder. Pretty made this place feel like somewhere a person might accidentally get comfortable if she was foolish and exhausted enough.
I touched one jar with the tip of my finger. The glass was cool.
A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.
I’d crossed half a galaxy, signed my name onto a temporary marriage contract, and nearly had a panic attack over a tea kettle. But apparently, glowing fruit was what made my brain go, yes, this is real.
Wonderful.
That was when something shrieked outside.
I jerked upright and banged my shoulder against the edge of a shelf.
“Damn it.”
Another shriek followed, and then a chorus of bleats, high and furious. Something thudded hard enough that I felt it through the floorboards.
For one stupid second, I thought something was attacking the house.
Then I remembered Kazan had goats.
Glow-goats, because of course they couldn’t just be goats.
I climbed back onto the footstool and leaned over the sink to look out the window.
There was a pen beside the house, fenced in with thick rails. I’d seen it earlier, but I hadn’t paid much attention. Now it was full of small white animals bouncing around like someone had insulted their ancestors.
And in the middle of them stood Kazan.
He’d taken off his flannel shirt.
That was the first problem.
The second problem was that underneath it he wore a sleeveless shirt that did not hide a single useful thing. His skin was a deep terracotta red; his arms were enormous, and the scars across his shoulders and chest caught the late light in thin lines.
I should have looked away.
I knew that immediately.
There were rules about this sort of thing. Probably. I didn’t know the customs here, but I was fairly sure spying through a kitchen window while your new almost-husband played with livestock wasn’t polite.
I kept watching anyway.
One goat reared up and planted its front hooves on his thigh. Kazan didn’t even wobble. He scratched it between the horns, and it leaned into him like it had never been denied anything in its life.
Another goat charged him from behind and rammed into the back of his knee.
Kazan staggered.
Not because the goat had enough force to move him. I was pretty sure a small vehicle would have trouble with that. He staggered because he was pretending, and then he laughed.
The sound came through the glass, low and rough and so easy that it made my chest feel strange.
I didn’t like that either.
The goat that had attacked him looked extremely proud of itself. It bounced sideways, shook its little head, and came back for more. Kazan bent down, scooped it up under the belly, and tossed it.
Not far. Not hard. Just a gentle little lift through the air.
The goat landed, froze for half a second, and then ran straight back to him.
He did it again.
And again.
The ridiculous creature loved it.
A different goat had gotten hold of the hem of his shirt and was chewing on it with deep determination. Kazan reached down without looking and scratched its head too.
He was surrounded. Completely outnumbered. A massive warrior-looking alien being bullied by fluffy glowing livestock, and he seemed happier than I’d seen him all day.
I put my hand over my mouth.
Not because I was going to laugh.
Because I might have made a sound I didn’t want to examine.
James would have hated them.
The thought came out of nowhere and hit hard enough that my good mood cracked straight down the middle.
He would have hated the noise. The mess.
The way they demanded attention without caring whether it was convenient.
He would have stood there with that flat look on his face until I stopped smiling.
He would have made some comment about how childish it was, and I would have pretended not to care, and then later I would have cared in private.
My fingers tightened on the edge of the sink.
No.
He didn’t get to be here.
James didn’t know where I was. He didn’t know about Kazan, or the cottage, or the goats, or the star-figs glowing in jars.
He didn’t get to stand in this kitchen with me and ruin things that had nothing to do with him.
Outside, the fat goat charged Kazan again.
This time he didn’t pick it up. He opened his arms and let it slam into his chest. Then he made a dramatic grunt and dropped to one knee like he’d been defeated.
The goat put both front hooves on his shoulder and bleated in triumph.
I laughed.
I couldn’t help it.
The rest of the goats swarmed him. They climbed over his legs, chewed his shirt, and shoved their noses into his hands. He let them. He just knelt there in the grass, laughing under a pile of small, obnoxious animals that clearly adored him.
Something inside me went soft in a way I didn’t trust.
He was too big. Too strong. Too much. Everything about him should have made me nervous. It did make me nervous. I wasn’t stupid enough to pretend otherwise.
But he was gentle with them.
Not performatively gentle. Not careful because someone was watching. Or at least, I didn’t think he knew someone was watching. He handled them like he knew exactly how much strength he had and exactly how little of it he needed.
That was dangerous information.
Not dangerous like James had been dangerous. Not sharp. Not cruel.
Worse, maybe.
Because part of me was filing it away. Kazan laughing and scratching a goat between its horns. Tossing one into the air softly enough that it came back begging for more.
Evidence.
I hated that my brain used that word.
Evidence that a man could be enormous and not use that as a threat, that hands big enough to crush things could also be careful.
Maybe I had stepped into something I wasn’t prepared for at all.
“Oh, no,” I whispered.
One of the goats hopped onto Kazan’s bent knee, slipped, recovered, and bleated like the whole thing had been someone else’s fault.
I should have moved away from the window.
I didn’t.
Kazan looked up, right at me.
For a second, I froze with both hands gripping the sink and one foot on the stool like a criminal caught halfway through a very stupid burglary.
There was no pretending I hadn’t been watching. My face was practically pressed against the glass. The kitchen lights were behind me. I might as well have waved.
The goats kept bleating. One was still chewing his shirt.
Kazan smiled.
Not a polite smile. Not an embarrassed one. He smiled like he was pleased to see me there. Like catching me spying on him through his kitchen window was somehow the best thing that had happened all day.
His eyes crinkled at the corners.
My face went hot.
Absolutely not.
I dropped down from the footstool too fast. My heel caught the edge of it, and I nearly went sideways into the stove. I grabbed the counter, saved myself, and knocked the kettle lid crooked with my elbow.
It clattered loudly.
I stood there, breathing hard, as if I’d just escaped mortal danger instead of eye contact.
“Nope,” I said.
The stove sat there, black and silent and judgmental.
“Nope,” I told it again, because apparently I needed backup.
Outside, the goats were still making a racket. Underneath the noise, I heard Kazan laugh again.
That did not help.
I righted the kettle lid, then picked up the footstool and set it back on all four legs because leaving it tipped over felt too much like an admission.
My hands were still shaking a little, which was ridiculous.
I had survived an interstellar transport, a contract marriage office, and years with James.
But Kazan smiling at me through a window while covered in goats was what did me in.
Great.
Wonderful.
Excellent survival instincts, Maisie.
I pressed both hands to my burning cheeks and stared at the glowing jars in the pantry.
The star-figs glowed back, unhelpful as anything.
“What,” I whispered to the empty kitchen, “have I gotten myself into?”