The room was still enormous, still scaled for someone three times my size, but somebody had clearly worked to make it mine. A set of low wooden steps had been built up against the side of the bed, sanded smooth, so I'd be able to climb in withouta running start. A footstool sat beside a chair that was otherwise far too tall. There was a lamp on the nightstand at a height I could actually reach, and a stack of folded blankets in soft, human-sized weights.
Someone had thought about this. Someone had measured a problem and quietly solved it before I ever arrived, and I didn't know what to do with the lump that put in my throat.
"Did you do this?" I asked, gesturing at the little steps.
"I built them last week." He said it like it was nothing, like it cost nothing, his tail giving one slow sweep behind him. "Wasn't sure they'd be the right size. You're smaller than I figured."
Then he shifted to let me past him into the room. The hallway was narrow, and he was so very large, and his arm brushed against my shoulder.
I went rigid. It was the old reflex, the full-body freeze, the part of me that had spent four years learning to read a man's mood from a single point of contact and brace for whatever came next. My breath stalled. I waited for the flinch in him, the tightening, the turn.
It didn't come. He'd gone still too, careful, holding himself like he was afraid any movement might spook me. The warmth of him radiated through the worn cotton of my sweater, and after a moment, without deciding to, I felt the tension bleed out of my spine.
I leaned in. Just slightly. Just enough to let myself rest against the heat of his arm for one breath, and he let me, not pulling away, not pushing, just there.
Kazan stepped back. "I'll let you rest," he said and hurried down the hall like I'd burned him.
3
MAISIE
The house was quiet.
That should have been good. Normal people liked quiet. Normal people sat in quiet rooms and read books, or took naps, or did whatever else normal people did when no one was demanding anything from them.
I had apparently forgotten how to be normal.
For four years, quiet meant I was supposed to be listening for James. Listening for the exact amount of force he used to shut a cabinet. Flinching at his footsteps. Straining for the pause before he said my name in that voice that made my stomach drop.
This quiet wasn’t like that.
Kazan had left a couple of hours ago after telling me to make myself at home, which was a ridiculous thing to say to someone who had arrived on your planet that morning and agreed to marry you before lunch. Trial marry. Maybe. Whatever the legal wording was.
I wasnotat home.
But no one was yelling. No one was watching me. No one was waiting for me to do something wrong.
And somehow that made me even more nervous.
So I found something to fix.
Well, not exactly. The kitchen wasn’t broken. It was just built for someone the size of Kazan, which meant using it was less cooking and more mountain climbing.
I stood in the middle of the room and looked around.
The counter came up almost to my collarbone, and the stove was a huge black iron thing that looked old enough to have opinions. The cabinets were hung so high that when I opened one, after jumping like an idiot, I found mugs big enough to drown in sitting on a shelf I could barely see.
“Okay,” I said. “Sure. That’s fine.”
My voice sounded small in the empty kitchen.
I hated that.
There was a kettle on the stove. It was enormous, of course, because apparently Kazan didn’t own anything that wasn’t built like it expected to survive a war. Beside it was a metal canister with a tight lid. I pried it open and sniffed.
Tea.
Or something close enough to tea that I was willing to risk it.
