“He’s a foreman in the mines. I followed in my mother’s footsteps. All of my sisters chose to work the mines with him.”
Atsadi pushed aside a tarp and stepped into a dark alcove. He paused to light a torch on the wall. “This is it.”
Fala followed first. Kai hung back to take in an incomplete archway with chisel marks and natural rock walls.
“This will be the entrance hall.” Atsadi stepped into another dark room to light more torches. “And here is the main living area.”
Fala turned inside the next room, viewing all angles. The walls were smoothed and polished to reflect the firelight, though the ceiling remained unfinished, exposing the rough mountain rock.
Atsadi lit more lights near a central hearth. “It’s not much,” he said. “I started carving it out years ago with the idea that I would one day start a family here. I’m just sorry you have to see it unfinished,” he added, hanging his head.
Fala took Kai’s hand and squeezed. “This is to be our home?”
“Someday,” he said.
Kai’s rapidly beating heart climbed into her throat, and she traced the lines of chisel marks on a partially finished wall. She and Fala lived in a single room with only their basic needs. This was already more than that and beyond all her expectations.
Atsadi motioned them to follow. “There’s more through here.”
He walked them through the kitchen area—again, only partially carved out—explaining the details as he went. There were stone counters, built-in storage areas, and an area that would later house a stone oven. The floor was uneven, and he guided them around patches of jutting rock toward even more rooms.
A small staircase climbed to hallways and connecting tunnels with what would become bedrooms for a large family. Temporary wooden beams supported everything until Atsadi could finish reinforcing the stone.
“This room,” he said at one entrance, tone full of anticipation, “is for Fala.”
The garden alcove inside glowed with bioluminescence. Water seeped from the far walls, and a small garden was already thriving underneath it.
“I have a lot of plans for this room,” he said. “Channels to guide the water and a basin. Meditation alcoves, maybe. Whatever you wish.”
“It’s like the healing pools,” Kai said, reminded of the day they met.
Atsadi met her eyes, and in them, he, too, recalled that day. “In miniature, yes.”
Fala glanced at Kai, and that brief look said everything. Fala could love him if she didn’t already.
Further down the corridor, he paused, and the gleam he had in his eyes dulled. “I thought this could be a training space. For now, it’s a prison.”
Kai tensed and pushed past him into another room of uncut stone and wooden beams. The room’s size and potential supported Atsadi’s statement.
The blond commander had been chained to the stone floor and stripped of nearly all his clothing. He shivered from where he was seated, knees pulled into his chest.
Atsadi began lighting the surrounding torches, then finally a hearth in the far corner.
The commander flashed his chattering teeth. “I was wondering when you’d come to see me.”
Kai motioned to the bandage on her side. “Someone sliced me open. I was a little busy recovering.” She would need more time before she could move without pain. His cut was deeper than she’d initially thought. “I’m here now, though. What do you think of my home?”
The question evoked pride for the man responsible for every detail within these walls, complete or not. Atsadi had done all of this for the family he would build. For Fala andher.
The Perean man made a show of taking in the room. “I heard tales of how you lived like beasts?—”
Kai’s palm stung across his cheek. “This beast will happily carve pieces from your body until she gets the answers she wants.”
“Good,” Shadi said from the entry. “You’ve started. He’s refused to talk, and I thought a couple of days in the cold dark might loosen his tongue.”
Behind Shadi came Doli, Tse, and Misae White Spirit. Fala and Atsadi hung back in the pale shadows to watch, clinging to each other’s hands.
Kai approached her family and lowered her voice to ask, “Who else knows he’s here?”
