44. Briar
brIAR
Dinner runs late. The dining room is full, the guests still need feeding, and us have to work beside one another before any of us is ready. For the next two hours, that requirement is useful.
Rhys works the floor with his public smile back in place, but I have watched him long enough to see the effort in it.
Soren sends out soup and bread and apologizes to every table for the delay.
Gideon peels potatoes at the end of the prep counter.
Each time he finishes one, Soren sets another in front of him without looking up.
Gideon does not object or leave. I carry plates, refill water and clear the pass.
Nobody assigned me any of it. I need the work because it keeps us in the same room while the guests provide ordinary questions and ordinary needs.
Rhys asks for two more bowls. Soren tells him where to stand.
Gideon brings up another sack from stores.
We manage dinner before we try to manage one another.
At the third table, a child drops a spoon and begins to cry.
Rhys replaces it with a clean one and distracts her with the story of the carved fox above the fireplace.
Soren alters a bowl for an allergy without breaking stride.
Gideon carries a tray when my hands are full, but he asks before taking it from me.
I say yes. The exchange lasts two seconds.
He does not treat it as forgiveness, and I do not have to correct him.
By the time dessert goes out, we have completed a service together without one private decision being made on another person’s behalf.
After the last guest goes up, Soren locks the dining room doors and puts four bowls on the kitchen table, and we eat, elbows in, nobody performing.
It’s Gideon who breaks the quiet, and he aims it at Rhys.
“Your petition. The one you filed in the autumn, behind my back, with the county.” A breath. “It was the only honest filing this house had made in years. You were right.”
Rhys sets down his spoon. “Say it again.”
“You were right.”
“Once more. I may need it recorded.”
“You’ll abuse it.”
“Extensively, and for the rest of our lives.” Rhys’s eyes fill over his soup. He lets us see it. Gideon looks back at him and does not lower his own eyes. Nobody jokes the moment away.
I take my bowl to the sink. Before I go upstairs, I tell all three men what I need. I want no private interpretations and no later claims that they misunderstood me.
“I’m going up. Gideon, you’re not sleeping in the chair outside my door tonight.”
His face closes before he can stop it.
“You’re also not leaving the house,” I go on.
“The far woodline does not need you at midnight in a thaw. You will not invent an inspection, sit outside my door or spend the night walking the property. Sleep in your own bed. I can feel when you are awake through the bond, and tonight I need eight hours without wondering whether you are punishing yourself.”
“I can do that,” he says.
“That’s what I needed to hear.”
“Briar.” He stops himself. Then, carefully: “Thank you for staying.”
“Don’t thank me. Listen.” I dry my hands and make him meet my eyes.
“Staying is not forgiveness. I want this pack, and I am not leaving it to make your guilt easier. I do not trust you yet where my safety is concerned. That changes only if you tell me the truth, ask before deciding for me, and continue doing it after the hearing is over. You will know I am still considering a future with you because I will still be here.”
Rhys catches me at the foot of the east stairs. His hands are in his pockets, his voice quiet and his usual performance for the guests completely gone.
“Company or quiet? No wrong answer. I’m told I’m restful.”
“You’ve never been restful for one minute of your life.”
“I’ve been told I’m decorative, then.”
“Quiet, tonight.” I take his hand anyway and hold it, watching the worry go out of him through the contact. “Ask me again tomorrow.”
“Quiet tonight,” he agrees. “I’ll ask again tomorrow, and you can give me a different answer or the same one.”
The tray’s already outside my door when I get there. Chamomile from the plant with my wing’s name on its stake, and the good bread with honey. There is no note. Soren knows I don’t need one. I take the tray in and eat every crumb of it out of spite at how thoroughly that man has me measured.
The nest’s edge is still torn open from this morning, when I read a county filing that described me as a victim and pulled the wool apart with both hands.
I rebuild it slowly. Rhys’s flannel goes back on the left, where I reach for it in my sleep.
Soren’s spare apron goes on the right, cedar still caught in the cloth.
I add the pillow Rhys carried in during the storm and the blanket Soren warmed by the fire.
The arrangement is familiar now. I know which scent calms me and where each piece belongs.
That knowledge would once have frightened me.
Tonight I let it comfort me. I smooth the torn edge rather than hiding it underneath.
The damage is still visible, and that feels honest. I put my own cardigan in the center, not because the men’s things need anchoring but because the nest is mine as well.
The room smells of cedar, clean wool, bread, and the faint juniper Gideon leaves on everything he wears.
None of those scents decides what I do tomorrow.
They are simply the people I chose to keep near me tonight.
And then there’s the sweater.
Gray, his, taken during my fever and never returned.
It has been beside my pillow since midwinter, smoke and juniper worked deep into the wool.
I stand holding it in the suite Gideon warmed before there was any requirement to do so.
I am angry enough to carry it to his room, put it in his hands, and tell him exactly what he nearly lost. I am also tired enough to know that conversation should not happen tonight.
I fold the sweater once and put it back where I sleep.
I keep it near my pillow.
The bond is quiet when I settle. Gideon is in his own bed, doing what I asked.
One night of compliance does not repair the trust he broke.
It does give me one new fact about what he may be capable of next.
I fall asleep with my hand in the gray wool, still angry, still attached to him and unwilling to lie to myself about either condition.