The afternoon stretches. I memorize room assignments, note defensive positions, pretend I'm not calculating bathroom efficiency. My shadows eventually return, carrying impressions of her explaining tomorrow's timeline to an increasingly excited guild.
"Boss?" Finn appears with a tray. Actual food on an actual tray. "She said you missed breakfast. And lunch."
There's soup. Bread. Even what might be cheese.
"When did we get trays?"
"This morning. She found them." He sets it down carefully. "The bread's fresh. I helped make it!"
His pride radiates. My enforcer made bread and wants me to know.
"Good," I manage. "Bread is... good."
"She says we'll have two kitchens at the new place. Two! We could have bread all the time!"
He leaves me with my tray and my shadows and my crumbling resistance to change.
The soup's good. Warm. Fills the hollow spaces between my ribs. My shadows pool around me, sharing residual warmth from her, and I eat in my designated corner while my guild plans a future that includes hot water and privacy.
Tomorrow we view the property. See if it meets our needs. Move toward something better.
Tonight, I eat soup made by people who protected my sleep.
This is my life now. Charts and shared shadows and the terrifying possibility of something better.
I finish the bread—Finn's bread, made with pride instead of fear—and accept what my shadows already know.
We're all being domesticated.
And maybe that's not the disaster I thought it would be.
The warehouse drips and molders around me while I study bathroom schedules by fading light. But tomorrow—tomorrow we look at something better.
My shadows curl closer, sharing memories of morning light and lavender soap and her laughter.
Traitors. All of us.
Chapter 18
Pillars shouldn't make me want to cry, but here we are.
The estate has actual pillars holding up actual architecture instead of just leaning against walls hoping for the best. I stand in front of Lord Brambleton's—our—mansion, holding a box of paintbrushes that survived the warehouse, and my brain can't quite process that we live here now. Not visit. Live. With pillars and everything.
"It's very... tall," Finn says beside me, craning his neck to see the tower rising from the east wing. He's clutching his one bag of possessions like someone might steal it, which is fair considering our usual accommodations. "Are we allowed to be this tall?"
"Height isn't illegal, Finn." Though I understand the confusion. After the warehouse with its aggressive ceiling mold, this much vertical space feels wrong somehow. "We're allowed to have pillars and windows that close and—oh look, the door has a knocker! An actual knocker shaped like a lion!"
Ruvan's already at the entrance, having shadow-traveled ahead because walking is apparently beneath him this morning. He's standing very still, which means he's either planning murder or having feelings. Same expression for both.
"You bought this without looking inside," I say, not for the first time since he announced we owned a mansion.
"The seller was highly motivated." His jaw does that clenching thing that means we're not discussing this further. "The price was acceptable."
"You terrified a merchant at his dinner table."
"I negotiated efficiently." He pushes open the heavy oak doors—they don't even squeak, just swing open like doors are supposed to when they're not broken. "Everyone inside. Establish positions."
Establish positions. Like we're occupying enemy territory instead of moving into a house with working plumbing. Though I suppose for people used to the warehouse, working plumbing might as well be enemy territory.
