Page 29 of Into Ember

“He wasn’t even THERE. He was the one you kept looking for. You were there. You’re the one who said nest. I’m asking you.”

Across the table, Gunnar has settled back with his coffee, openly delighted. I look at him — centuries of friendship, one raised eyebrow of appeal — and he looks back at me and declines. There will be no help from that quarter. Rayner is no better. He’s watching with the peaceful face of a man who has already survived his own turn and finds joy that it’s fallen on someone else.

“Rayner was the first one through the—”

“Rayner broke my door. You’re stalling.” She leans forward, elbows on the table, and I feel the whole room tilt toward her. “Why are you stalling? You don’t stall. You’ve had an answer for everything since I met you. Even if it’s not a full one. What is a nest, Brock?”

And here is the thing I have not said out loud to anyone, that I am only now saying to myself.

I don’t want to tell her.

Not because the answer is shameful. Because the answer is enormous, and it’s hers, and she doesn’t know it’s hers, and I’m the one who left it on the table this morning like it was small. I have spent my whole life choosing what to say and when to say it and to whom, and one sleepy sentence before coffee undid centuries of choosing.

“The night we crossed,” I say. “When we came through your door. What we walked in on was—”

You were being tickled in a — you’d built a —

“You’d made — "

The word won’t come. Not the true one, which isn’t mine to detonate, and not a safe one, because I’m reaching for a safe one and there isn’t one, and I have translated dying men and lying kings and Gunnar, I have found words for everything anyone has ever meant on any side of any door broken or not, and my mouth opens twice on nothing.

“You — it was—”

“Holy shit,” Gunnar says.

I close my eyes.

“What?” Elara says.

“He stuttered.” The coffee comes off his knee. He’s sitting all the way up now, reverent, like something rare has entered the room. “I haven’t heard him stutter since we were six.”

“Since you were — how old ARE—”

“Focus,” Gunnar says, pointing at me with his mug, which is rich, coming from him. “Brock. Buddy. Take your time.”

I open my eyes. She’s still there. Worse — she’s looking at me differently now, and the difference is fascination, because the man who reads everyone just blinked, and she did it, and somewhere under the interrogation she’s keeping that knowledge somewhere safe.

Fine.

Facts, then. Those I can give her straight.

“The night we crossed, we were looking for Erik. He’d been missing for years — possibly dead, as far as we knew. We tracked him to your building. Rayner opened your door—”

“BROKE.”

“—aggressively opened your door. And inside, on the pull-out, we found Erik.” I keep my voice level and my eyes on hers, because she deserves it delivered straight. “And you. Together. Inside something you had built.”

Gunnar is grinning and I hate that he’s enjoying this.

“Built,” she says.

“Blankets layered by weight. Pillows three deep. Softened corners. A wall along the back, packed so there was no gap against the—”

“That was HOSTING.” She’s gone pink. It starts at her ears. “That was a guest bed. Erik was staying over because of — I did RESEARCH on that mattress. There was a SYSTEM. The blue one is the soft one and the gray one is the warm one and the wall was — those were throw pillows, they were for NECK SUPPORT, that is basic skeletal care—”

“Elara.”

“I was being thorough. Thorough is my whole brand.”