Chapter Twenty-Four #2
I sit carefully, tucking one leg beneath me more for something to do than comfort.
The warmth from the fire reaches me immediately, loosening muscles I didn’t realize were tight until they protest the release.
He watches me settle into the chair, and I know he notices the carefulness in it.
The limits of what still hurts. He notices too much.
The book is still in his hand.
“It must be good,” I say. “You didn’t even hear me at first.”
“I heard you.”
I lift a brow.
“You didn’t look up.”
“No.”
The answer is so straightforward it nearly makes me laugh again.
“You were that engrossed?”
He glances down at the closed book once, thumb still resting between the pages.
“Yes.”
The fire cracks softly between us. The room feels different now than the kitchen did.
Quieter, but not with the same pressure.
There is still tension. There will probably always be tension.
But here it sits differently. Less like something thrown between us.
More like something we are both aware of and not yet touching.
I look at the book again.
“I didn’t picture you reading novels.”
“What did you picture?”
“Ledgers. Contracts. Things with maps and body counts.”
His eyes lift fully to mine at that.
“You think very highly of me.”
“I think accurately of you.”
That lands, but not badly.
He leans back slightly, one hand moving absently along the book’s spine.
“It helps to read things where the dead are already finished disappointing everyone.”
I go quiet at that.
The line lands softer than it should. Dark, yes. Still somehow softer. Like it escaped before he had the chance to put iron around it.
“You do have a sense of humor,” I say.
“It’s selective.”
“I’m noticing.”
He studies me for a moment then, and something in his expression shifts again. Not the hard focus from before. Not the blade edge he wears when he wants a room under control. This is something quieter. More tired. More human. It should make him easier to be around.
It doesn’t.
It makes him harder to dismiss.
“You work all the time,” I say.
“Usually.”
“Usually?”
The word hangs there until he answers.
“Usually it’s easier.”
That catches me off guard.
The honesty of it, maybe. Or the fatigue under it that he clearly didn’t mean to show.
“Before I got here,” I say.
“That would be one way to phrase it.”
I let that sit for a second.
“What were you doing before I interrupted your winter campaign?”
“Reviewing roads, manifests, and the kind of mistakes men make when they start believing panic counts as planning.”
“Still sounds very you.”
“It is.”
I look at the papers on the desk again. Routes. Notes. The skeleton of whatever war he wakes up to maintain every morning. Then back at the book in his hand.
“And this is the part that isn’t?”
His gaze settles on me more directly.
“No,” he says. “This is still me.”
That does something I don’t want it to.
Because I believe him. Because the softer part of him doesn’t feel false. It feels hidden, which is worse. Hidden things always matter more.
I pull my robe tighter around myself, not because I’m cold, but because suddenly I’m too aware of how exposed I feel sitting here across from him while he looks at me with that kind of attention and a closed novel in his hand like he’s been caught doing something almost tender.
“You really do control everything from this room,” I say.
“Some things.”
“That sounds like a carefully incomplete answer.”
“It is.”
The fire pops again. Neither of us moves much. The quiet in the room feels different from the quiet in the kitchen. Less sharp. More dangerous for how contained it is.
I nod toward the book.
“And this is how you stop controlling things?”
“No.”
That surprises me enough that he sees it.
“This,” he says, lifting the book slightly, “is how I remember control fails.”
The line settles between us.
I look at him more carefully then. The rolled sleeves. The open collar. The fatigue he would never name sitting faintly at the corners of his eyes. The book held loose in one hand like an old habit he doesn’t bother hiding when no one is supposed to see him.
And suddenly I understand that this is not rest.
It is the version of vigilance he allows himself when the room is quiet enough.
“That sounds exhausting,” I say.
“It is.”
Another too-honest answer.
He notices my reaction to that one and looks almost irritated by it.
“You make it difficult to dislike you properly,” I say before I can stop myself.
That gets him.
Not outwardly, not much. But enough. A brief shift at the mouth. A change in the eyes. Something warmer and more dangerous than the near-smiles before it.
“That sounds like your problem,” he says.
I stare at him.
“That was my line.”
“It was useful.”
I should be more annoyed than I am.
Instead I’m suddenly, acutely aware that the room feels smaller than it did when I first walked in. Not because he has moved. Because something has.
Not the threat.
Not the anger.
Us.
And that, more than anything else, is what keeps me in the chair when I know I should probably go.