Chapter 12
MAISIE
The plan worked until lunch.
Honestly, that was probably longer than anyone should have expected from us.
We were supposed to be careful. Separate rooms. Clean skin. Polite distance. A trial arrangement that would look perfectly boring to anyone who came to inspect it.
Then I walked into the kitchen wearing one of Kazan’s flannels and nothing else.
He’d been reading through cider ledgers at the table, and when he looked up, his body went completely still. His eyes did that molten gold thing that made all my good sense shut off.
So the plan died.
Neither one of us gave it a proper funeral.
There had been the kitchen counter, which I couldn’t look at now without my whole body remembering things I didn’t need to be remembering while holding a knife.
There had been the night I was grateful his nearest neighbor lived far enough away not to hear us.
And last night, under the fig tree in the orchard, there had been something I absolutely wasn’t going to think about right now because I enjoyed having all my fingers.
I was standing on a stool, chopping star-figs into a pan, while he leaned in the doorway and pretended he wasn’t just watching me.
“You’re in my light,” I said.
His tail moved slowly across the floorboards. Content. Lazy. Completely unfair.
“I built the window,” he said. “It’s my light.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “That’s not how light works.”
“It is in my house.”
I flicked a piece of fig peel at him. He caught it without even looking.
Show off.
The same hand that had once thrown a grown man into a freezer was now catching fruit because I was being a brat in his kitchen. I hated how much that worked for me.
I was about to say something else, probably something I’d regret, when an engine came up the ridge road.
Kazan’s expression changed instantly.
So did mine.
It wasn’t Lorkin’s truck. I knew that rattle by now. This engine was smooth, and quiet, and expensive. It came into the yard like it had permission to be there.
My stomach dropped.
Kazan straightened from the doorway. His tail stopped moving.
“He’s early,” he said.
I set the knife down very carefully. “By a whole day.”
We looked at each other, and everything we’d ignored for the past few days came rushing back. The separate rooms and the no-contact clause. The stupid, fragile lie we’d both stopped maintaining almost immediately.
I wiped my hands on a towel and stepped away from him.
It felt wrong.
It felt worse because the space between us was exactly what we were supposed to have kept the whole time.
“Platonic,” I said. “Polite. You hate the matchmaking program. I’m wary of you. We’re two reasonable people stuck in an awkward arrangement.”
“I do hate the program.”
“Good. Hold on to that.” I took a breath and made myself stand still. “Let me handle the talking if I can.”
His eyes narrowed. “Maisie.”
“I’ve had practice acting calm in front of men who think they get to decide what happens to me.”
That was the wrong thing to say. I knew it as soon as his face hardened. Before he could answer, someone knocked. Kazan crossed the kitchen and opened the door.
The man on the other side was human, which surprised me. He was narrow and tired-looking, with a gray traveling suit, a tablet, and a lanyard that made him look official in the most annoying way possible.
He looked toward Kazan first. Then up. Then up a little more.
If he was scared, he didn’t show it.
“Pell,” he said. “Off-world Compliance. You’re Kazan?”
Kazan gave one sharp nod.
“The claimant.” Pell looked past him at me. “And you’re Maisie Declan.”
“That’s me.”
Pell walked in without being invited.
Kazan’s jaw tightened, but he let him. Barely.
Pell looked around the house with quick, assessing eyes. Not curious. Not impressed. Just measuring. Like the kitchen, the table, the half-cut figs, and the coat hanging by the door were all evidence waiting to be used against us.
I made myself not look toward Kazan’s bedroom. That was harder than it should’ve been.
Pell asked questions.
A lot of them.
About sleeping arrangements.
“She’s in the guest room,” Kazan said.
His voice was flat enough to scrape frost.
Pell wrote it down.
Had the arrangement been physical?
“No,” I said. I tried to sound offended, but not too offended. Wary but not guilty. Calm, but not rehearsed.
It was an idiotic balance to try to strike.
How had Kazan treated me?
“Fine,” I said. “Respectfully.”
Did I feel coerced?
“No.”
Did I want to continue the trial arrangement?
I hesitated just long enough to look uncertain.
“Yes,” I said. “For now.”
Kazan didn’t move, but I felt him react. Like the air beside me had gone hot.
Pell kept typing.
The questions went on until I was sure I’d crack my own teeth from clenching them. But then he lowered the tablet and rubbed a hand over his face.
“All right,” he said. “Between us, this is mostly procedural.”
Relief hit me so hard I almost swayed.
I locked my knees.
Pell didn’t seem to notice. “The complaint is real. The flag is real. But I’ve seen the file.
It looks like a breach-of-promise claim from an Earth-side ex with a grudge.
You’ll need a tribunal judge to dissolve the prior claim formally, then this match can be evaluated on its own terms.” He tucked the tablet under his arm. “I don’t see a major problem.”
For one stupid second, I believed we were safe.
Then his comm chimed. Pell glanced down, frowned, and lifted one finger. “Excuse me.” He stepped outside onto the porch.
I waited until the door clicked shut, then moved to the window.
“Maisie,” Kazan warned softly.
“I know.”
But I had to look.
Pell stood on the porch with his comm to his ear. Out in the yard, one of Kazan’s seasonal workers waited near the drive, hat in his hands, and walked up to Pell.
I’d seen him a couple of times. Never spoken to him. He had the hunched posture of a man trying to look smaller than he was.
Kazan came up beside me. His shoulder brushed mine before he remembered we weren’t supposed to touch and pulled back. I hated that too.
The farmhand kept his eyes down as he spoke. Pell ended his call and listened.
I couldn’t hear the words through the glass, but I didn’t need to. It was bad news. I understood the way a man’s posture changed when he’d just been handed power.
Pell’s back straightened. He turned and looked at the house. Not at Kazan. At me. Kazan made a low sound in his chest.
“Don’t,” I said immediately.
His hands curled at his sides.
“Kazan. Don’t.”
Pell shook the farm hand’s hand, and he walked away.
I wanted to run after him and shake the truth out of him. I wanted to scream.
Hell, I wanted to do anything except stand in that kitchen and wait for my life to go wrong again.
The door opened.
Pell came back inside, and the bored politeness was gone. Now he looked awake. Worse, he looked interested.
“Well,” he said. “I have some more questions.”
Kazan didn’t speak. Neither did I.
Pell set his tablet on the table. Right next to the star-figs. Like he belonged there.
“I have a witness,” he said. “One of your own laborers. He’s prepared to testify that the no-contact clause has been violated repeatedly over the last week.”
My mouth went dry.
“That’s a lie,” I said.
Pell looked at me. “He was specific.”
My face burned.
Kazan took one step forward.
I moved before I thought and put myself partly between them.
“It’s his word against ours,” I said.
Pell’s expression didn’t change. “That’s for the tribunal to decide. Until then, the match is suspended.”
Suspended.
The word landed like a door slamming shut.
“No,” Kazan said. And he meant it.
I had seen Kazan angry before. I’d seen him when the hunter grabbed me in the cidery. That had been fast and brutal and over almost before I understood what was happening.
This was different, slower. This was Kazan in his own home while a stranger told him he could not keep what was his.
He moved toward Pell, not lunging, not rushing. That almost made it worse. He was seven feet of muscle and horn and barely contained violence, and Pell suddenly looked very human.
“You’re leaving,” Kazan said. “Now.”
Pell swallowed, but he lifted his tablet like it could protect him. “Interfering with a compliance officer is a serious violation. Threatening one is worse. If you force this, you could lose the land contract, the match claim, and any chance at appeal.”
Kazan didn’t stop.
“Kazan.” I stepped fully in front of him and put both hands on his chest. “Look at me.”
His eyes were fixed above my head.
“Not him. Me.” For one awful second, I thought he wouldn’t hear me.
Then his gaze dropped. There he was. Still furious. Still dangerous. But there.
And mine.
I let out a breath I hadn’t meant to hold.
“If you hurt him, they win,” I said quietly. His chest moved hard beneath my palms.
“He’s taking you away,” Kazan said.
The crack in his voice hurt worse than his anger.
“I don’t like it either,” I told him. “I hate it. But if I leave with him, we get a tribunal. We get a judge. We get a chance to show that my ex is exactly the kind of pathetic bastard who’d pull this.” I swallowed. “If you throw Pell through a wall, we get nothing.”
Pell shifted behind me.
Kazan’s eyes flicked past me.
I pressed my hands harder against his chest. “No. Stay with me.”
His attention came back.
Good.
“I know how to survive men like him,” I said. “I know how to be calm when everything in me wants to run or fight. Let me do this part.”
“I should be protecting you.”
“You are.” My voice shook, and I hated that, but I kept going. “By not giving them an excuse to take everything.”
He looked like he wanted to argue. He looked like he wanted to rip the universe apart until there was no one left who could touch me.
I understood the impulse.
But we needed him free. We needed his land intact. We needed a home to come back to.
I turned my head just enough to speak to Pell. “I need two minutes.”
“That isn’t—”
“Two minutes,” I snapped. “You can wait on the porch or you can explain to the tribunal why you refused me a private goodbye in the claimant’s own residence.”
Pell’s mouth tightened. For a second, I thought he’d refuse just to prove he could. Then he picked up his tablet and walked outside.
The door shut behind him. The kitchen went quiet.
The star-figs sat half-chopped on the counter. The storm outside rolled closer over the ridge. Everything looked the same as it had ten minutes ago, but nothing was the same.
Kazan sank down until he was crouched in front of me, bringing his face closer to mine. He did that sometimes. Made himself smaller for me.
It always undid me a little.
I put my hands on either side of his face. His skin was warm. The curve of his jaw was rough beneath my palms. His horns framed my face.
“I’ll fix this,” he said. “I’ll find the worker and talk to Lorkin. Nezara will know what to do. I can—”
“You can keep your hands clean,” I said. “That’s what you can do.”
His mouth shut.
“I mean it.” I leaned my forehead against his. “No threats or hunting him down in the dark. Don’t terrify Pell until he writes up more violations. We do this the boring, legal way.”
“I hate the boring, legal way.”
“So do I.”
That almost got a smile out of him.
“I’m coming back,” I said. “Do you hear me? I’m going to town. I’m going to sit in whatever awful Agency room they put me in. Then I’m going to walk into that tribunal and tell the truth. And when this is done, I’m coming back up that ridge.”
His hands came to my waist. Careful. Like he was afraid that if he held too tightly, he wouldn’t let go.
I had more to say. Smart things. Practical things. A list of what he needed to do once I was gone.
Instead, what came out was, “I love you.”
The words startled me.
They startled him, too.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moved.
I hadn’t planned to say it like that. I hadn’t planned to say it at all, not with Pell standing outside and a tribunal hanging over us and my whole future balanced on a lie someone had been paid to tell.
But it was true.
And I was tired of hiding true things because someone might take them from me.
Kazan’s hands rose to cup my face. His thumbs brushed my cheeks, so gently it made my throat ache.
“Maisie,” he said.
Just my name. That was enough.
He kissed me, slow and deep and not remotely platonic. I kissed him back because Pell was outside and the tribunal could choke on it. When Kazan pulled away, his forehead stayed against mine.
“Say it again when you come home,” he said.
My heart squeezed. “Bossy.”
“Yes.”
That did make me smile, even though my eyes were burning.
I reached toward the hook on the wall and grabbed the purple scarf. I looped it around my throat. Kazan watched me do it, his expression going painfully soft.
“I’ll be waiting,” he said.
“You better be.”
“Always.”
I wished I could stay there. I wanted to crawl into his lap and refuse to move.
I wanted the whole stupid galaxy to go away and leave us alone in the kitchen with the figs and the storm and the house that had started feeling like mine.
But Pell knocked once on the door.
Time was up.
I stepped back before Kazan could touch me again, because if he did, I wasn’t sure I’d be strong enough to leave.
“I’ll see you soon,” I said.
His face went hard with the effort of letting me go. “Yes.”
I straightened my spine and walked to the door.