12. Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
Julia
I told him last night that I’d find the truth myself if he didn’t give it to me. I meant it as a warning. I’m fairly certain he knew that.
I’ve changed outfits twice this morning anyway. Applied makeup for the first time in weeks. Spent twenty minutes achieving hair that looks like I didn’t think about it. I’m aware of the contradiction. I contain multitudes, and some of them are apparently vain.
Whether I’m dressing for the version of this morning where he shows up ready to be honest, or the one where he hands me a thermos and retreats, I’m not sure. Either way, I’m not meeting it in yesterday’s clothes.
His knock comes at precisely 8:00 AM. I open the door.
He stands perfectly straight, maintaining a careful distance that wasn’t there yesterday. Something in his eyes tells me he hasn’t slept. That, and the way his gaze drops to my lips for one unguarded moment before he looks away.
“I’ve prepared the morning healing broth,” he says, holding out a thermos.
“Thank you.” I take it without letting our fingers touch, because apparently we’re doing that now. “Would you like to come in?”
He hesitates for the first time since the day he found me under a bookcase. “I have several errands this morning. Perhaps later.”
“Of course.”
He nods once and turns to go. Just before the door closes: “Julia.”
“Yes?”
“Your appointment with Dr. Shah is at eleven. I will collect you at ten-thirty.”
I close the door.
I stand here holding the thermos and take stock of what I’m actually feeling, which turns out to be: annoyed, attracted, and annoyed about being attracted.
He kissed me with something that clearly meant something, dodged every direct question, and is now retreating behind a thermos and a pickup time.
I gave him an opening last night. This morning he took the errand route instead.
Fine. I said I’d find the answers myself. Libraries exist. So does the internet.
I look at the shelf where Rhazgar organized my cultural anthropology texts by size and color. Useless system. But I know exactly which ones I need.
At ten-thirty he knocks, and we walk to his car in the awkward silence of two people who have things to say and have agreed, without discussing it, not to say them yet. He opens the passenger door. I get in. He goes around to the driver’s side. We pull out of the lot.
“How is the ankle this morning?” he asks.
“Fine.”
Two blocks pass.
“The broth from yesterday,” he begins. “The second preparation. I should mention that—”
“I did some reading this morning,” I say.
He goes quiet. The kind of quiet that means he understood exactly what I just said.
We don’t speak again until he pulls up outside the clinic. He puts the car in park. Neither of us moves immediately.
“Tonight,” he says. “If you are willing. There are things I need to tell you.”
“Yes,” I say. “There are. Come for dinner. Eight o’clock.”
A few minutes later, Dr. Shah is examining my injured joints and putting them through range of motion and strength tests with evident satisfaction. She palpates my ribs and is unable to trigger even a twinge of pain.
“Excellent progress. The ribs are completely normal, the wrist is healing beautifully, and the ankle is coming along nicely. I’m quite pleased with your recovery rate.”
I don’t mention that my rapid healing likely has more to do with otherworldly herbs than my stellar genetics.
“So, I can return to work?” I ask hopefully.
“Not this week, but next, yes. Limited duty only,” she cautions. “Half days at most, and absolutely no heavy lifting. But yes, I think you’ll be ready for a gradual return. At home, I want you walking without crutches.”
Relief washes over me. “Thank you. I’ve been going stir-crazy.”
“I imagine so.” She smiles. “Just don’t overdo it. Your body is healing well, but it still needs rest.”
Rhazgar is waiting outside when I open the door. He sees my face before I say anything.
“Good news?”
“Back to work next week.”
Something in him eases. Not quite a smile, but close. He opens the car door.
The ride home is quiet too, but it’s a different kind of quiet than the drive there.
We part ways in the hallway.
At seven-thirty I close the laptop, look at what’s in my kitchen, and make pasta. It is from a jar. I am aware of the symbolism.
He arrives at eight. The research is still spread across the table where I left it.
After I call, “Come in,” he crosses the threshold, broth in one hand, something small wrapped in a piece of brown leather in the other.
He takes in the books, the notes, the marked pages, and whatever is happening on my stove.
He knows exactly what I’ve been doing all afternoon.
He sets the broth on the counter. The leather piece stays in his hand. He looks at the research on the table, then at me.
“Julia. I need to tell you something. Before anything else.”
I give him my full attention.
“The meals I’ve been bringing you,” he says.
“They were not… not all of them were simply healing preparations.” He looks at me steadily.
“Some of them were… courtship meals. A WarmHearth tradition. When a warrior prepares specific dishes for another, it communicates romantic intention. The recipient’s acceptance communicates reciprocation.
” A beat. “The tradition assumes the recipient understands. I did not ensure you did.”
The kitchen is very quiet.
“At first, they were simply healing foods, no courtship involved. It was on the eighth day of your recovery that I changed intentions.” He doesn’t look away. “I told myself it was the next stage of healing. That was a lie. I knew what I was doing.”
I count in my head. Six days since then. Six days of sitting across from him every morning and evening, thanking him, asking questions, and having absolutely no idea.
“You let me accept a courtship ritual I didn’t understand,” I say. “For almost a full week.”
“Yes.”
“And the silver thistle kiss.”
“Silver thistle is used in bonding ceremonies,” he says. “Among other things. I should have told you before it happened. I did not. That was wrong.”
I turn and look out the window for a moment. The city is doing its ordinary evening things. Someone is walking a dog. A car goes past.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” I ask. “If I hadn’t warned you that I’d research it myself.”
The silence is long enough to be its own answer.
“I would like to think so,” he says finally. “I resolved to tell you several times. There was always a reason it was the wrong moment.” He pauses. “Those reasons were real. But they were also convenient.”
I turn back. He’s watching me with an expression I haven’t seen from him before: not his usual reserve, not his formal composure, but something altogether unguarded. Just a man waiting to find out if something he cares about is going to survive the next few minutes.
“I’m angry,” I say.
“You have every right to be.”
“Not because you have feelings for me. That part I…” I stop.
“That part I can work with. I’m angry because you sat across from me every day while I thought we were building something honest, and the foundation of it was something you were hiding.
” I look at him directly. “That matters, Rhazgar. It matters to me.”
“Yes,” he says. “It should.” He sets the leather piece on my counter and unfolds it with care.
Inside is a hair comb: carved bone, worked into an intricate pattern, the carvings worn smooth from decades of use. And beside it, a folded piece of paper covered in two columns of text, one in a language I don’t recognize, one in English.
“My grandmother’s hair comb,” he says. “She wore it every day. I don’t remember a single morning when her hair wasn’t fastened up with it.
” He looks at it, not at me. “It came through the portal with her. I have been keeping it because I did not know what else to do with it. Because giving it away felt like a door closing.”
He looks up.
“The recipe is her healing broth. The full version, with the original language. I have never written it down before. It has only ever existed in my hands and my memory.” A beat.
“It is the most important thing I know. I am giving it to you because I used food as a way to tell you something I was too afraid to say out loud, and you deserved to have that knowledge freely given, on your own terms, not slipped past you in a bowl you thought was medicine.”
The room is very quiet.
“I am thirty-two years old,” he says. “I have never courted anyone. Not here, not properly on my world. There was always going to be more time, and then there wasn’t, and then eight years went by, and you were on the other side of the wall, and I didn’t know how to do this and I did it badly.
” He exhales. “That is not an excuse. It is an explanation. You asked me to be honest with you, and that is the honest version.”
“That’s a very good explanation,” I say. “I’m still deciding whether it’s enough.”
“That is fair,” he says. “I will wait.”
I look at the comb for a long moment. The carvings are intricate even though they’re worn smooth, something botanical I think, though I can’t be certain. The kind of pattern someone made by hand for someone they loved.
“She sounds remarkable,” I say finally. “Your grandmother.”
“She was.” Something in his face shifts. “She would have been furious with me for waiting this long.”
“And she would have been right.” I pick it up. It’s lighter than I expected, warm from being in his hand. “This is too much, Rhazgar. You don’t have to give me something irreplaceable to apologize.”
“I am not giving it to you as an apology,” he says. “I am giving it to you because I have been carrying it for six years waiting for someone worthy of it, and I was too busy being afraid to notice I had already found her.”
The comb turns in my hands. Then, without quite deciding to, I gather my hair, twist it up, and fasten it in place.
It holds perfectly.
I look up at him. He’s watching me like a man who has put everything on the table and is very still.
“I’m still angry,” I say.
“I know.”
“And I need you to not do anything like this again. No more withholding things because you’re afraid of how I’ll react. If we’re doing this, whatever this is, we do it honestly.”
“Yes,” he says. It comes out with the solemn weight of a man who means it completely.
I look at him for a moment. The comb is in my hair. The recipe he wrote for me is on the counter. He has given me every honest thing he has, and I can see that clearly, and I am still not ready to let it be simple.
“I need you to understand something,” I say. “The part that hurt most was you deciding what I was ready to know and when. That is not yours to decide. Not with me.”
He holds my gaze. “You are right. I will not do that again.”
“No,” I say. “You won’t. Now sit down. I made pasta. It is probably not as good as anything you have ever made, but you are going to eat it and tell me it is wonderful.”
Something moves across his face, careful, like a man testing whether ground will hold his weight.
“It will be wonderful,” he says. “I am already certain of it.”
He sits down. We eat mostly in silence. Not the comfortable kind. The kind where both of us know how much closed tonight and how much, deliberately, didn’t.
His grandmother’s recipe sits on the counter between us. The comb holds in my hair. Both things are true at once: he gave me every honest thing he has, and I am still not all the way back to trusting him.
I don’t say that part out loud. I think he already knows.