Chapter 10
MAISIE
The orchard was still dripping from the storm when I went looking for Kazan.
Water slid off the leaves and pattered onto the wet ground. My boots sank a little with every step, but I kept going. I’d made up my mind over cold coffee and too much thinking, and if I stopped now, I might lose my nerve.
I was going to tell him.
The audit didn’t matter. The days didn’t matter. Or they mattered, but not enough to keep pretending there was nothing between us. I didn’t want him sleeping out in the fields because he thought being near me was some kind of danger. I didn’t want careful distance.
I wanted him.
I’d practiced the words twice in the kitchen.
They’d sounded ridiculous both times.
But I was still going to say them.
“Kazan?” I called.
No answer.
Everything smelled clean and sharp after the rain. He wasn’t under the fig tree or near the fence. He wasn’t anywhere I expected him to be.
A familiar pinch tightened in my chest.
It was stupid. I knew it was stupid. Kazan wasn’t James. A man being gone for ten minutes didn’t mean I’d done something wrong. It didn’t mean punishment was coming. It didn’t mean anything.
But knowing that didn’t stop the old fear from waking up.
Then I heard something.
A low hum.
Not from the orchard. From the big barn at the edge of the property.
I went still and listened. Under the drip of the trees, there was another sound. A tool biting into wood, then stopping, then starting again.
I followed it.
The barn doors were half open. Light spilled out in a dull gray strip, and dust floated through it. I stopped just outside and looked in.
Kazan had his back to me.
He’d taken off his flannel and was wearing a sleeveless shirt, which left his arms and shoulders bare. Scars cut across his skin. Sawdust clung to his forearms. His tail moved behind him in a slow sweep, relaxed and almost happy.
He hadn’t heard me.
For a second, I forgot why I’d come.
Then I saw what sat in the middle of the barn.
It hovered.
I blinked, but that didn’t change anything. The thing was still there, low and sleek and about the size of a small car, except there were no wheels. Just a faint blue glow underneath and a hum that vibrated through the floorboards.
There was a bench seat inside. Small. Human-sized.
The controls were set low.
For me.
I must have made some sound, because Kazan went completely still. Then he turned.
His ears flattened. His tail dropped. He looked from me to the hovering machine and back again, and I’d never seen him look so caught.
“You’re early,” he said.
I stared at him.
He grimaced. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“No,” I agreed. My voice came out softer than I had meant it to. I stepped into the barn. “What is that?”
He dragged a hand over the back of his neck and left a streak of sawdust there. “A buggy.”
“It’s floating.”
“That’s what buggies do here.”
I took another step closer. The hum got stronger through my boots. “You built a hover buggy?”
His jaw tightened like he was bracing for something. “It’s not finished.”
“For me?”
He didn’t answer right away.
That was answer enough.
My throat tightened. “Kazan.”
“It’s for you.” The words came out rough.
“The ones in town are made for minotaurs. You’d need help climbing in, and the controls are wrong.
This one’s lower. Seat’s smaller. I moved the controls so you can reach them.
” He pointed like the explanation might make the whole thing less enormous.
“It can take the ridge road to New Knossos. Under an hour if the weather’s good.
It reads the ground and avoids the bad spots. ”
I couldn’t speak.
“So you can go to town,” he said, misunderstanding my silence. “Whenever you want. You won’t have to wait for me. You won’t have to ask.”
That one word hit harder than it should have.
I’d asked James for everything. To go out or stay in. To call someone. If I wanted to take longer at the store to buy things I needed with money I’d earned. By the end, I’d asked permission so often that I’d stopped noticing how small it made me.
And Kazan had built me a way out of his house.
Not a way to keep me close.
A way to leave.
My eyes burned, and I hated that he could see it. “You built me a car,” I said.
His ears twitched. “It’s a buggy. Cars have wheels.”
A laugh escaped me, shaky and wet. I pressed my fingers to my mouth, but it didn’t help.
He took one step toward me and stopped. The audit still stood between us, even in the barn. Even with sawdust on his arms and a gift hovering in the middle of the floor.
“This is what you’ve been doing?” I asked. “At night? In the field?”
He looked away. “Some of it.”
“I thought you couldn’t stand to be near me.”
His head snapped back toward me. “No.” The word was low and immediate.
“I thought maybe you were sleeping out there because of me,” I said. “That you were trying to keep your hands off me.”
His mouth tightened. “That’s also true.”
Heat rushed through me.
“But not because I can’t stand to be near you,” he added. “Never that.”
I looked at the buggy again. At the low step. The small seat. The controls made for my hands. “You were making this,” I said.
“I couldn’t make it in the house.” His mouth tilted, almost into a smile. “You’d have heard the cutter.”
That was such a Kazan thing to say that it almost broke me.
He turned and went to the workbench. For a second I thought he needed something to do with his hands, but then he came back carrying a flat wooden box. It was smooth and carefully made, the kind of thing someone built when the box mattered almost as much as what was inside.
He held it out. I took it, but he didn’t let go right away. His fingers were huge beside mine. Warm. Steady.
Then he released it, and I opened the lid.
There were scarves inside, five of them, folded in tissue.
I lifted the first one out. Purple silk slipped over my fingers, soft and cool. The color was deep, like the sky after a storm. The next scarf was gold, then silver, then blue, then a soft green I didn’t have a name for.
They were beautiful.
They were also my size.
Not minotaur size. Not something that would swallow me whole or need to be wrapped around me ten times. These had been made for a human woman.
For me.
“They make them in town,” Kazan said. “Drevus does the weaving. He’s old and rude and charges too much, but he’s good.”
I touched the edge of the violet scarf. The stitching was perfect. “You ordered these?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
His tail moved once.
I looked up. “Kazan. When?”
He held my gaze. He didn’t try to charm his way around it. He didn’t joke.
“Your second day here.”
The barn went very quiet, except for the hum of the buggy.
Before the kiss in the orchard. Before I’d let myself want him where he could see it.
Before any of it.
“And the buggy?” I asked.
“I had the frame before. I started changing it a week ago.” His voice dropped.
My chest hurt.
He’d been making things for me before I’d given him anything. Before he knew whether I’d stay. Before I knew whether I wanted to.
No, that wasn’t true. I’d wanted to. I’d just been terrified.
I looked down at the scarf in my hands. It was too soft. Too fine. The kind of thing that didn’t belong to someone like me. It always came with a hidden price.
“I can’t take these.” The words came out fast. Too fast. I was already folding the scarf, trying to put it back exactly as I’d found it.
“It’s too much. The buggy alone is too much.
This must have cost a fortune, and I’m not even—” My voice caught, but I forced the rest out.
“I’m not permanent. I’m a trial placement.
The audit is coming. I could be gone. You can’t spend all this on someone who might leave. ”
“Maisie.”
The way he said my name stopped me.
Not sharp. Not angry. Careful. Like he knew I might bolt if he moved wrong.
He came closer and took the box from my hands. I let him because I didn’t know what else to do. He set it on the workbench, gentle as anything, then sat on the edge of the buggy.
It dipped under his weight, then steadied.
For once, his face was almost level with mine.
“Come here,” he said.
I did. I didn’t think about it. I just stepped between his knees.
He put his hands on my waist. “Can I?”
I nodded.
He lifted me like I weighed nothing and settled me sideways across his lap. The buggy dipped again and corrected itself with a quiet hum.
I should’ve worried about the audit.
I couldn’t make myself.
His arm came around my back, holding me steady. With his other hand, he reached for the box and pulled out the purple scarf.
“You’ve got a rule in you,” he said.
I swallowed. “What?”
“A rule. When someone gives you something good, you look for the trap.” He slid the scarf around my neck, slow and careful. The silk brushed against my skin and made me shiver. “You look for what it’ll cost. You try to give it back before they can make you pay.”
I couldn’t breathe right.
“I know that rule,” he said. “Had one like it in the pits. Nothing was free there. Gifts were bait.”
His fingers worked at the back of my neck, tying the scarf loosely enough that it didn’t feel like a collar. That mattered. Maybe he knew it. Maybe he just knew me.
“There’s no trap here,” he said. “I’m not buying anything from you. You don’t owe me time, or touch. You don’t owe me staying.”
My eyes stung again.
“I made the buggy because you should be able to go where you want without asking me.” His thumb brushed the silk at my throat. “I bought the scarves because I wanted you to have something soft. That’s all.”
“That’s not all,” I whispered.
His eyes held mine.
“No,” he admitted. “It’s not all. But none of it is a debt.”
I looked down at the scarf. At the way the violet silk lay against my skin. I’d spent so long making myself need less. Want less. Take up less room.
Kazan kept handing me room.
Room to leave or to stay. Room to want.
“I deserve a scarf,” I said. It sounded small. Like I wasn’t sure.
His hand stilled at my throat. “Yes.”
I made myself say it again. “I deserve a scarf.”
His expression softened in a way that hurt. “You deserve the entire galaxy.”
There was no pretty flourish in his voice. No attempt to make it sound grand.
He said it like a fact.
That was what undid me.
I leaned into him and tucked my face under his jaw. He was warm and solid and smelled like sawdust and rain and Kazan. His arm tightened around me, careful but sure.
His thumb moved over the scarf again, stroking the silk where it rested against my collarbone. It felt reverent. Like he wanted to touch me and had decided the scarf was the only safe place to put all that want.
I lifted my head.
He looked at my mouth.
“Kazan,” I said.
His breath changed.
That was all the warning I had before he met me halfway.
The kiss was soft. Careful. Too careful, maybe, but I understood why. The audit was still there. All the rules and risks hadn’t vanished just because he’d built me a way to town and tied silk around my throat.
But his mouth was warm on mine, and his arms were around me, and for once I didn’t feel trapped by being held.
I felt safe.
I kissed him again, just a little harder.
He made a rough sound and went completely still beneath me, like moving too fast might ruin everything.
It didn’t.
Nothing hurt.
Not here with him. He would never hurt me.