She lowers the knife but doesn’t put it down.
“I heard what she said. Soldiers moving north. If they’re tracking me this far into Jötunn territory, they’re not going to stop.”
“No. Probably not.”
“I should leave. I’m putting you in danger just by being here.”
“You’re not leaving.”
The words come out harder than I intend. More possessive than I have any right to be. Her chin lifts. Her eyes widen for a fraction of a second before she smooths her expression flat again.
“Thyran. If they find me here, if they realize you’ve been hiding me. You’d be in the middle of something that has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me.”
That stops her. She stares at me, and I can see her trying to work out what I mean by it, reading me the way she reads walls and ceilings and stress fractures.
I walk to the fire. Add a log. Watch the sparks spiral up. I don’t have the words for this. I haven’t used words for anything that mattered in seven years, and every sentence is work, and I don’t know how to say what I need to say.
So I say what I can.
“You organized my fish.”
She stares at me. “What?”
“The dried fish. In storage. You put them in order by size.”
“They were a mess.”
“And the herbs. You hung them by scent. Strong ones away from the mild ones.”
“That’s just practical.”
“You hum when you’re sorting grain. You talk to yourself when you find something that’s stored wrong. You comb your hair by my fire.”
She goes very still.
“I’m used to silence.” The words drag out of me. Seven years of not talking and every sentence is labor. “I’m used to cold. I’m used to this hall being empty and quiet and dead. You filled it up. With noise and mess and opinions about where the fish go. With humming and muttering and the sound of your breathing at night.”
I turn and look at her. Her eyes are wide, and her lips are parted. The knife is forgotten in her hand.
“You’re warm. And I am not ready for the silence again.”
She lets out a breath that shudders through her whole body. Her hand with the knife drops to her side.
“Okay,” she says. Soft. “Okay.”
She stands there for a moment. Then she walks to the sleeping area and slides the knife under the furs. Hidden. Within reach. She goes back to the storage shelves and picks up where she left off, and her hands are steady, and she doesn’t look at me.
After a minute, she starts humming again.
She doesn’t stop when she notices this time.
I sit in my chair and watch her work. The comb is on the table where she set it after braiding her hair. She hasn’t put it away. Hasn’t stored it with her other things. She left it out, in the open, where she can reach it.
I hold onto that.
ESELD
