Chapter 5
MARIS
Idon't give him time to get comfortable.
"Almost four years," I say, before he's fully through the door. "Not a word. Not a letter. You were gone before I even woke up, and now you walk into my bakery like you're just passing through on a regular afternoon."
He opens his mouth.
"I'm not finished." I set my cleaning cloth on the counter, turning to face him fully.
"Whatever you think you saw today isn’t what you think, and nothing you think gives you the right to show up here after three years of complete silence, but whatever it is, you can let it go.
I built something here. I have a life here.
I have a routine that works, and I have a daughter who is happy, and I don't need anyone walking in and turning that sideways. "
He stands near the door with his arms at his sides, watching me with that infuriating stillness.
"I kept waiting for some kind of message," I continue. "Some explanation. You had to know I'd wonder. You had to know that just — disappearing like that — " I press my hands flat on the counter. "Did it not occur to you to leave a note? Anything?"
He waits. He's been waiting this whole time, patient as stone, letting me run until I stop.
I stop. I throw my hands up.
"Well?"
He takes a breath. "I was recalled."
"Recalled?"
"To the dark elf territories. There was a campaign — a border conflict that escalated overnight.
The order came through while you were sleeping, and I had maybe half a day to make the rally point.
" He holds my gaze steadily. "I didn't have time for a proper farewell.
I'm not offering that as an excuse. I'm telling you what happened. "
I study his face. He doesn't look away, his bright eyes steady, no expression to give away his thoughts.
"You couldn't send word afterward?" I ask. "In over three years?"
"I could have." He doesn't dress it up. "I didn't know how. I didn't know if you'd want it. One night is not a standing invitation, Maris, and I had no way of knowing whether you wanted to hear from me or preferred to forget I existed."
The honesty of that sits badly because it's not entirely wrong. I pull my cloth off the counter and fold it just to have something to do with my hands.
"And the child?" His voice stays level. "I didn't know. If I had — " He stops, then starts again more carefully. "I would have come back."
"How was I supposed to tell you?"
"I know. But she is mine."
It's not a question. I keep my eyes on him for a long moment, measuring how much I want to argue a point that neither of us actually disputes. His metallic eyes are steady and certain, and they are the same eyes currently asleep upstairs above my head.
"Yes," I say. "She's yours." I hold up one finger before he can respond. "And before you say another word, understand that changes very little about the current situation. You have business in this town. Go conduct it. Whatever you came here for, it has nothing to do with us."
"It may not be that simple."
"I'm asking you to make it that simple."
He looks toward the ceiling briefly — toward the floor above us, where Elin's room sits. "She doesn't know."
"She's three,” I say flatly. "She knows she has a mother who loves her and a bakery full of bread. That's the appropriate amount of information for a child."
"And when she's older?"
"That is a question for a future I'll handle when I get there." I pick up the lamp from the back shelf and move toward the rear of the bakery, signaling the conversation toward its end. "You've said what you came to say. I've confirmed what you already knew. Now you can go."
He stays where he is standing in the middle of my empty bakery, taking up more space than anyone his size should be able to take up, and watches me with an expression I can't fully read.
"Maris."
"Good night, Kaedrin."
A long pause. The lamp flame bends slightly in the draft from the door cracks.
"I'll be in town for a few days," he says. "Longer, depending on the investigation."
"Wonderful." I set the lamp on the worktable and pick up my cloth again. "The inn on the north lane has decent rooms, or so I'm told. I wouldn't know personally."
His eyes linger for another moment.
The quiet kitchen surrounds me for a moment, and then I return to cleaning as if he isn’t there anymore.
Upstairs, Elin makes a small sound in her sleep, the way she does when she's about to wake but decides against it. I listen until the sound settles back into silence.
Then I grab the lamp and go back to cleaning.
The door hasn't been closed two minutes when I hear the stairs.
Small feet, unhurried, the rhythm of a child who has decided she is done sleeping and considers this a reasonable development regardless of the hour.
I turn from the worktable as Elin appears in the kitchen doorway, her doll tucked under one arm and her corkscrew curls loose around her face.
The scarf is gone. I left it on her nightstand when I put her to bed, and she's clearly made her own assessment of its necessity.
Then she sees Kaedrin and stops.
He hasn't left. He's still standing near the bakery, and he turns at the sound of her footsteps with an expression that doesn't have time to go neutral before she's already looking at him.
Elin studies him for a moment. "You're still here."
"I am," he says.
She comes the rest of the way down the stairs and crosses the kitchen floor toward him with the unhesitating confidence a toddler has when they have not yet learned to be wary of strangers. She stops a few feet away and looks up at him, then points.
"Your ears are pointy."
"They are."
She sets her doll on the floor, reaches up, and pulls her curls back from her ears, holding the hair away from her face so he can see. The tips of her ears catch the lamplight, small and distinctly pointed. She looks at him with the expression of someone presenting important evidence.
"Mine too," she says.
A soft smile touches his lips. He goes very still for a moment, and then he does something I did not expect. He kneels. One knee on my kitchen floor, bringing himself down to her level, and he turns his head to the side so she can see his ear clearly. The long black hair falls back from it.
Elin leans forward to inspect him. She reaches out and touches the tip of his ear with one careful finger.
"They’re the same," she announces.
"Yes," he agrees.
She drops her hand and looks at him with fresh interest, apparently satisfied. He stays where he is, at her eye level, and I watch his face while he looks at her. There is nothing practiced about his expression. It's unguarded, which is unusual for him if I recall.
I put my hand on Elin's shoulder and draw her back gently against my legs.
"It's past your bedtime, sweetheart."
"I woke up." She doesn't resist being pulled back, but she keeps her eyes on Kaedrin.
"I know you did." I keep my hand on her shoulder. "You can go back up. I'll come check on you in a minute."
She picks her doll up off the floor, considering this. Then she looks at Kaedrin again. "Will you be here tomorrow?"
He glances up at me. I don't give him anything to read.
"I'll be in town for a while," he says carefully.
She accepts this with a nod, as though he's confirmed something she already suspected, and turns and pads back toward the stairs. Her footsteps climb and cross the floor above us, and then the room settles.
Kaedrin stands slowly. His eyes find the empty staircase for a moment before he shifts his eyes to me.
My face is a mystery, even to me. I know what I'm thinking — that Elin lit up in a way I rarely see, that she showed him her ears without hesitation, without shame, and that watching her do it without fear was something I didn't know I needed to see.
I also know that none of that changes what happened.
None of it accounts for his years of silence.
"She's never seen anyone else like her," I say. My voice is steady. "She doesn't understand why she looks different from me, or why I keep the scarf on her. She just knows that she does."
He remains silent.
"You want me to believe you would have come back?
" I set my hands on my hips. "Maybe you would have.
But you didn't come back, Kaedrin. Years passed.
You had time. You had the ability to find this town again.
You'd been here before. And in all that time, you never wondered once what happened to the woman who fed you and gave you dry clothes and let you sleep in her bed?
" I cross my arms. "You never thought to check? "
He licks his lips, his brow creasing. "I wondered. Of course I wondered.” He throws an arm out to the side. “My responsibilities kept me away, kept me occupied.”
I wait for more. He doesn't offer it, and somehow that's worse than an excuse would have been.
"Go back to your inn," I say. "Let me put my daughter to bed."
He picks up his cloak from the counter and moves toward the door. He stops with his hand on the latch.
"She's not afraid of what she is," he says, without turning around. "That's because of you."
He lets himself out before I can decide what to do with that.
I stay alone in the quiet kitchen for a moment, then I take the lamp and go upstairs to check on Elin.