“You made out alright?” Tasha asked as I re-entered the building. It was an interesting kind of place. Not really a house. More like a restaurant, with wooden chairs, a few tables, and a long, gleaming, polished bar.
“Yes, thanks.” The bathroom situation had been more of an outhouse situation. Luckily, a path had been shovelled from the side door of this big dining room to the little shack outside. I hadn’t realized before just how much snow was on the ground out there. The drifts on either side of the path to the outhouse easily reached my hips.
“I just need to wash my hands,” I told Tasha, rubbing them together. My fingers felt like they were about to fall off.
“Right over here,” she said, leading me around the bar to a small sink with a somewhat oily but sudsy and serviceable hand soap. “I’m so glad to see you’re up and about this morning!”
“The sleep helped a ton. And I took a painkiller to hopefully stay ahead of things.”
“Excellent,” Tasha said. She’d braided her long hair this morning. It shifted with the movement of her head. In the corner of the room were the remains of where she and the warden – herhusband – had slept. A tube that I thought was a packed bedroll and some folded blankets.
“Where did Rivven sleep?” I asked with a frown as I patted my hands dry on my pants. I didn’t see any other rooms. At least, not from here.
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” Tasha replied. “He was still awake when Tenn and I got our little campsite set up in the corner. And he was awake before us this morning, too.”
“Well, maybe I can camp like you guys tonight,” I said. “I don’t wanna take the man’s bed two nights in a row.”
Tasha laughed, her cheeks bunching prettily.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” she said, still chuckling. “I can tell you right now Rivven would rather sleep outside, using an icy snowbank as a pillow, than let you sleep on the floor when a bed was available. Especially when you’re not feeling one hundred percent.”
“So you’re telling me that he’s a gentleman.”
The last gentleman I’d interacted with…
Had probably been my own father.
Suddenly, my mind was back on those stairs. Standing at the top with Rivven offering me his arm.
“Yeah,” Tasha said. “I suppose I am.”
“A gentleman convict.”
Her smiled twisted, turned to a grimace.
“We can talk about all that stuff now, if you want. We have some privacy. Rivven’s in the kitchen, and Tenn is outside having a call with Warden Hallum about their progress digging out. The others got snowed in, otherwise they would have been here yesterday.”
Well, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Wasn’t like I’d been in any sort of shape to talk to that many people when I’d arrived. I’d basically fallen straight into bed.
Rivven’s bed.
His cozy, nice-smelling, clean bed.
“Here. Let’s have a seat.” Tasha pulled out a chair for me, then sat in one across the table. “So. Yes. This is a penal colony for convicted murderers. We’ll just get that out of the way now. I assume you read the background I provided in the packet?”
“I did,” I confirmed, though I didn’t admit that I’d probably cared about it a lot less than I should have. And I’d barely glanced at the information on the Zabrian males and their anatomy. But Tasha must have been worried that I was skittish about it all. Because she had a very serious look on her face now. Earnest and determined. Like she was ready to go to bat for Rivven and the other guys.
“All the men here – apart from the wardens, of course – were convicted as children. I believe Zohro was one of the oldest at the time of his conviction, if not the oldest, and he was about the equivalent of a human fourteen-year-old. They basically all killed in self-defence, or in the defence of someone else.”
“Rivven too?”
Huh. Why was I asking about him specifically? I hadn’t bothered to ask about the other two men who hadn’t arrived yet.
Then again, I supposed it made sense to ask specifically about the murderer whose bed I’d spent the night in.
The same murderer who’d brought me a snack and then crashed into a piece of furniture because his eyes were closed so that their light wouldn’t bother me.
“I don’t know the specifics of Rivven’s case, but from what I understand from Warden Hallum, yes. And, just so you know, once I found out about the convictions, I immediately hightailed it down here. I interviewed all the unmarried men, and honestly, they all impressed me with their generosity and kindness. Even the grumpy ones, like Zohro. He saved my husband’s life,” she said.
