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She nodded. “Just thinking about some things. I’m going to go for a walk. Hopefully, it’ll help.”
She left without another word. Ùna shed her disguise and scurried over to the door. She watched Astrid before disappearing from sight.
I turned to Diego. “Ùna will monitor her. Not much trouble she can get into on the property—”
“But it’ll put all our minds at ease,” Diego said, nodding.
“What got her in that state?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. When I woke up, she was already down here, staring out the window. Ùna and Carrie both said she was there before they entered the house. And when I tried to talk to her about us speaking with Aya together about something that happened last night, she hardly acknowledged me.”
“And she didn’t react to any of you?”
Diego shook his head. “You got the most out of her.”
I pulled out a barstool and sat down. “Do you think this is related to whatever you and she were going to talk to Aya about?”
Diego shrugged and gazed at the coffee mug cradled in his hands. “Possible, but given what happened last night, it’d be hard to believe it caused such a delayed reaction.”
I waited to see if he’d elaborate, but after a few moments, I saw he had no intention to. “Did you talk to Aya?”
“Yeah, she’s off looking into it, I guess.”
An awkward silence fell over us. This was the first time I’d been in a room alone with Diego. Not even during the therapy sessions with him was I ever alone. And I was acutely aware of the reason why it was this awkward. But bringing it up…
Diego turned to me. “Looks like I’m going to be the one to initiate this awkward conversation.”
I grunted. “At least we’re on the same page of what needs to be talked about.”
“I’ll start by stating the obvious, in that neither of us is planning to concede unless Astrid tells us to.”
I nodded. Anyone could see that, but I understood the need to put every fact out in the open.
“And it’s obvious Astrid is falling into her self-sacrificing habits to avoid all this.”
I frowned. “I had hoped I was imagining that.”
Diego shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. Was she prone to this behavior back then?”
“Yes, though, from what I’m seeing, it’s worse this time around.”
He leaned on the island counter. “How different is she from back then?”
“Not much.” I thought about all the points I’d run through my head lately. “She has some traits that are different, but they’re minor. And a lot of what’s the same is actually more intense. Makes it hard to not fall into behaviors and habits as if she’d never died.”
Diego nodded, his fingers drumming. “There’s no easy way for me to segue this from that, so I’ll just outright say it. I don’t think we should make her pick, and the three of us try to make this work.”
I watched him, to gauge his conviction over the suggestion. After Astrid became immortal, I’d had this thought on and off. Mostly because of Aya’s tease the first week I arrived.
When I took too long to answer, Diego continued. “She loved Baldur, didn’t she? The reaction she had when you all told her the truth, even for someone just remembering her past, that was too strong for it to have been a close friend.”
I nodded slowly. “The two hadn’t confessed anything before she died, but their relationship was growing from close friends toward that lover stage.”
“And you were fine with that.” Diego watched me with a calculative gaze. “You didn’t put a stop to it when you saw what was happening.”
I ran my hand through my hair. “Straight forward here, it’s not common for immortals to stick with one partner for long. When you live forever, most don’t see a point. But those who do rarely only take one partner.”
I worked my jaw. “When I first pursued Astrid, I was… for lack of a better term, territorial.”
