Chapter 18
LUALHATI
When I woke up, I was both extremely confused and extremely thirsty. I blinked at the unfamiliar room around me, willing my sluggish brain to cooperate and tell me where the heck I was. I turned my head, taking in the window, the small desk.
This room wasn’t unfamiliar at all. I just didn’t recognize it from this angle.
I’m in Warden Hallum’s bed.
I bolted upright and immediately regretted it. My head felt like it weighed about a billion pounds. I was surprised it didn’t go shooting right off my neck like a bowling ball.
Hangover. Great.
At least it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I remembered eating a solid dinner, and some snacks at the saloon. I didn’t feel nauseous – at least, not yet. Just tired and headachey and Jesus Christ, so fucking thirsty.
Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to just magically will water to appear in front of me, I got gingerly to my feet. I was still wearing all my clothes, though my dress was more like a shirt now, having ridden up around my hips during the night. My pants were still on.
Why the heck had I slept here? Had something bad happened to my bed? I remembered the dance. I remembered talking to Rivven and learning about why Warden Hallum had come here. I remembered… Oh, God. We slow danced.
After that, things were foggy.
Please, sweet baby Jesus, let me not have done anything too humiliating.
OK. Now I was nauseous. What if I’d tried to, like, force myself on him? Had I followed the poor man to his bed, and he’d felt too bad for me to send me back to my own?
Oh no. What if I’d puked in my bed? Or peed?
I really don’t think I was that drunk!
I ignored my thirst and went to my room first. My bed looked like it usually did. Unmade, but ultimately clean. Free from any unacceptable bodily fluids.
Huh.
We obviously hadn’t swapped beds, either. No way Warden Hallum would have left the blankets and sheets in this rumpled state if he’d slept here.
I didn’t think I could wait until he got back to ask him.
I chugged some water in the kitchen, brushed my teeth, and then had a quick dunk in the laundry/bath tub to freshen up.
After putting on some clean, comfy clothes, I had a quick bite to eat.
It stayed down alright, so I decided to venture out in search of Warden Hallum.
I found my jacket hung neatly by the door.
My knee-high boots were arranged tidily together.
I didn’t even remember taking them off. I certainly couldn’t imagine that I’d lined them up so perfectly in my likely less-than-coordinated state last night.
After putting on my jacket, gloves, and more practical boots, I exited the house, emerging into beautiful sunshine. Today felt warmer than yesterday, though not quite mild enough to cause a bunch of melting like that first morning I woke up.
There was no doubt about it, though. Spring was definitely on its way.
The hospital could be ready in a matter of weeks.
I blew out a raspberry between chapped lips. Oh, well. At least once I was all moved into my new hospital digs, I wouldn’t have any inexplicable waking-up-in-Warden-Hallum’s-bed moments.
Hopefully.
I found him in his garage, doing what looked like some routine checks or maintenance on the new ambulance.
I attempted to greet him, but couldn’t, as my tongue had very helpfully decided to stop working. He heard me coming, though, and put down the small tool he’d been holding.
“How did you sleep?” He asked. He leaned his hip against the front of the ambulance and crossed his arms over his broad chest. His gaze was keen. Assessing.
“Um. Good, I think. Except for the, ah, location.” I twiddled my fingers together in front of myself. “I don’t really remember how I ended up in your bed.”
“You were feeling the effects of Rivven’s alcohol,” he said. “You mistakenly entered my room instead of yours and collapsed onto the bed. I tried to convince you to rise and go to your own room, but you would not.”
“Oh. Ha. Yikes. Sorry about that.”
“It is no great matter,” he said, picking up a new tool for the slicer. “There is no need to apologize.”
“I just feel bad I drunkenly stole your bed!” I said. Overall, though, I was relieved. Sounded like the worst thing I’d done was fall asleep in the wrong place. “Where did you sleep?”
“After you released my arm,” he said, “I slept on the kitchen floor.”
“You should have slept in my bed! Now I feel even worse! Wait.”
What he’d said before finally made it all the way through my liquor-soaked brain cells.
“Did you just say, ‘After I released your arm?’”
“Yes.” He gave some unseen bolt a torque check while I gaped at him. “You grasped my wrist with both your hands and would not permit me to leave.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“Is that all I did?” I asked fretfully. “I didn’t try to, like, guide your hand anywhere weird after I grabbed it, did I?”
“Anywhere weird? Like where?” He seemed truly perplexed by my question. Sweet, innocent little virgin Warden Hallum.
Or big virgin Warden Hallum. No one could possibly call any part of that man little.
“Just…anywhere weird! Like…”
Like between my legs.
“You did not attempt to do anything with my arm besides hug it in your sleep,” he said.
That was something, at least. Still embarrassing. But not life-ending.
Ready to move on from this conversation, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“Rivven told me about Xennet. About how you came here with him.”
Even though I hadn’t really meant to, I was glad I’d said it. I didn’t want him to not know that I knew.
“I told you this myself,” he said, giving another bolt a torque check. The tool clicked loudly. “It is no great secret.”
“You didn’t tell me it was Xennet.”
“Ah. No. I suppose I did not.”
“Rivven mentioned that it was common knowledge. He seemed to think Xennet wouldn’t mind me knowing.”
“Rivven is probably right. Xennet is a very open sort of person.”
“But you’re not.”
“Not particularly,” he said after a moment. Another torque check. Another loud click. “And it was not my story to tell.”
“Will you tell me, though?” I asked quietly. “Your story, I mean. You don’t have to tell me anything about Xennet’s crime. I think it’s right that you want to protect his privacy. But I’d like to know a little bit more about it from your point of view. If you’re willing to share.”
Torque. Click. Torque. Click.
“There is not much more to tell beyond what you already know,” he said. “I both turned Xennet in and represented him in court. Despite advocating for him to the best of my abilities, it was not enough.”
A muscle feathered in his jaw. His eyes were steely on the slicer.
Torque. Click.
I thought he was finished speaking and was about to leave him to his thoughts when he abruptly said.
“He was very small. Xennet, I mean. He is a tall male now, but he was not then. The courtroom seat practically swallowed him. The only big things on him were his eyes. They were absolutely huge in his little face, and pure white for the entire length of the trial. When the Imperial Justice Committee read out his guilty verdict, and sentenced him to exile, I just got this terrible sense, that…That I’d be sending this tiny child to his death.
Tiny, trembling child,” he amended. “He shook so badly that day.”
“Hallum…”
“Anyway,” he said gruffly. “I simply could not leave him. I felt as if my entire life – everything I’d strived to do, everything I’d accomplished for the empire, everything I’d sacrificed and bled for – would be meaningless if I walked out of that courtroom without him.
No.” His mouth twisted in a vicious grimace.
“Not even just meaningless. Tainted. I could not stand the fact that I’d spent so long in service to the very empire that would send a child that small away for what he’d done.
So I resigned. And I have been here with him and the others ever since. ”
He stared at the tool in his hand for a long time. Then, he put it away with the others. When he finally looked my way again, he immediately tensed.
“You are crying!”
“No, I don’t think so!”
He closed the distance between us in one determined stride. His hands sliced up to my face. But his thumbs on my cheeks were so gentle. He dabbed at my skin, then showed me the moisture on his callouses.
“Oh! I guess I am.” I was so wrapped up in his words that I hadn’t even realized.
“I’ve upset you.”
“Not at all,” I said, sniffing and trying to compose myself. “It’s just…that must have been so hard. I guess I was a bit overcome imagining it all. Xennet is very special.”
“He is,” Warden Hallum agreed at once. “They all are, in their own ways. They have changed my mind about so many things. About everything, really. It is why I have worked so hard to prepare them for the bride program. Because they deserve more than this.”
I nodded, wiping at my cheeks.
“And what about you?” I asked croakily. “Do you want more than this?”
A guarded look came into his eyes then.
“In what way?”
“A wife of your own.” My voice cracked on the word wife.
“Or maybe another job besides warden one day. Xennet is grown now. And he might be married soon. You’ve guided him – and the others – into adulthood.
But you don’t have to stay here like they do.
You could travel. Or have another job one day. ”
“I will die at this post.”
He said it like a vow.
His gaze went past me then, to the sunlit property beyond the open garage door.
“I have been monitoring the weather data from the comms signal tower,” he said, a subject change so rapid that it sent my poor head spinning.
“There is no more snow forecast to fall. The hospital construction will begin.”