Chapter 7 Killian
Killian
I lead her down the stairs with the sheet bundled under my arm and a cut on my finger that stings less than the image of her face when I said we need to talk about the sheets.
Clinical. Resigned. Like she'd already calculated the cost of my decency and filed it under problems I'll be punished for.
Twenty years old and she's already fluent in the language of consequence.
Knows exactly how the machinery works. Who gets crushed first, where the blame settles, how quickly a woman's body becomes the map of someone else's failure.
She didn't learn that from books. She learned it from standing in rooms with men who taught her that she was always the first expendable thing.
The kitchen is warm when we reach it. My mother is at the stove, her back to me, and the house smells like coffee and butter and bread.
This is the scent that's been the baseline of every morning in this house since I was old enough to sit at the table.
Ma cooks when she's thinking. She cooks when she's happy and when she's worried and when the world outside is burning, because Saoirse Orlov has always believed that you can't solve anything on an empty stomach.
She turns when she hears us, wiping her hands on a cloth, and her eyes drop immediately to the bundle under my arm.
She says nothing. Just looks at the sheet, then at me, then at the thin line of blood on my finger.
My mother is not a stupid woman. She raised six kids in a world that is dark and brutal, buried a husband who died badly, and managed to keep every one of us alive through a decade that should have destroyed this family. She knows what a bloodstained sheet means on the morning after a wedding.
“Let me take that for you, son,” she says gently, reaching for the sheets.
"I need this delivered to the council liaison," I say. "Today."
She nods with an encouraging smile that doesn’t reach her eyes as she takes the sheet from me.
Unfolds one corner, just enough to see the stain.
Her expression doesn't change. She dips her finger in a small glass of egg white and smears it over the bloody mark, making it run a little through the fibers. Making it look more realistic.
"I'll handle it," she says in the way that tells me she understands more than she is letting on. The way that says she can see I’m protecting Katya, and will protect her too.
"Thank you."
Her eyes shift as Katya comes up behind me, her face softening.
“Katya,” she says, placing the now folded sheet onto the very edge of the table before going to her and holding out both hands. She kisses Katya on both cheeks before pulling her into a hug. “Good morning, my darling.”
She pulls back, stroking her hands over Katya’s upper arms before pulling her to the table.
“Sit, sit. Breakfast is almost ready.”
Katya stands for a moment, looking too stunned to move, then slides into the chair I’ve pulled out for her with the efficiency and silence of someone who was taught to be seen and not heard.
“We always eat breakfast in the kitchen. Five boys teach you quickly that it’s better to eat where it’s easiest to clean.
” Ma pulls plates of bacon, eggs, pancakes, hashbrowns and sausages from where they were keeping warm in the oven, and places them on the table.
“Mind you, Iris is no better when it comes to her food.”
I watch Katya as she watches Ma move around with the ease that only comes from familiarity and routine. I watch the column of her throat move when she swallows, and I’m surprised to see the emotion in her expression.
“If you’re not hungry, you don’t have to eat,” I tell her quietly as I sit beside her. “My family can be a lot, so if you’re overwhelmed or anything, we can eat elsewhere.”
The smile she gives me is tight, and from politeness more than anything else.
She shakes her head no.
“Thank you, Mrs Orlova,” she says instead as Iris walks into the kitchen with her hair still in rollers.
“Oh, darling, no. It’s just Saoirse,” Ma says to Katya, who nods as she drops her head.
Ma notices and looks at me, realizing the thing I’ve been battling with since the Lazovski’s graced us with their presence yesterday.
Katya needs patience, kindness, space. Maybe she needs something I can’t give her.
I’ve never had to deal with such a complex situation before. But now ma has seen, she will help.
“Morning Fam,” Iris sing-songs. I keep my eyes on Katya, trying to gauge her discomfort, but something loosens in her as Iris plops down in the chair beside her.
“Good morning,” Katya responds, this time, her smile considerably more real.
And devastatingly beautiful.
Jealousy courses through me because, I realize, I want her to smile at me like that.
We get through breakfast with only half the family rocking up, thankfully. Then we help ma clean up before I lead Katya out of the kitchen.
“Your mother is—” Katya begins.
“Terrifying?” I say
“I was going to say kind,” she answers.
I think about this for a moment. But then notice her eyes flitting around, doing that thing again where she is taking information, storing it away.
"You don't have to do that here," I say.
Her eyes come to mine. "Do what?"
"Map the room. Calculate the exits. Figure out where the danger is."
A beat of silence. Then, with a frankness that catches me off guard: "I don't know how to stop."
I can see the instant she realizes what she's said. The micro-flinch, the tightening around her mouth that means she's already editing, already constructing the follow-up that will smooth over the vulnerability and restore the surface.
I don't give her the chance.
"Then don't stop," I say. "Map the whole house. Every room, every corridor, every door. I'll give you a tour."
She blinks. Whatever she expected me to say, it wasn't that.
"You want me to learn the layout?"
"I want you to feel safe. If knowing the exits helps, then know the exits." My hands are itching to take hers and guide her around the house, so I put them in my pockets. "But you should know that every door in this house opens from the inside. Including the front one."
The implication settles over her slowly. Her eyes widen by a fraction, the careful recalibration happening behind her expression as she processes what I'm actually telling her.
Every door opens from the inside.
Including the one to this marriage.
I watch her process, then her face falls into lines that tear something apart inside my chest.
Why are you being kind to me?
It's written in every line of her face. In the way she held her fork like she was waiting for someone to take it away.
In the way she glanced at me before eating, checking for what?
Permission? Approval? The particular micro-expression on a man's face that signals the food is a test and the wrong response will be noted?
Twenty years. Twenty years of a man who turned meals into minefields and kindness into currency and every ordinary moment into an opportunity for control, and now she's standing in my home unable to move without first checking whether it's safe to.
I hold her gaze, but don't smile, because she'd read it as performance. I don't reassure, because she'd read it as strategy. I just look at her, steadily, openly, the way I've been looking at her since she stepped out of that car, and I let the silence do what words can't.
You're safe here. I don't know how to prove it yet. But you are.