Oughtn’t she rest and pay off her debt while she figured out her next move? The big house seemed cozy, with its messy tables and multi-generational family. It made Cassia’s heart ache for a life she’d never known and spent her whole life wanting.
“Maybe just for a few days,” she said slowly, warring with herself.
“That’s a fine idea,” Prisca said dryly.
“I’ll earn my keep,” she promised.
“You won’t have a choice.”
“I’ve never ranched.”
“Neither have half the ranch hands we get over the summers. That’s not a problem. There’s plenty to do.”
Cassia nodded and finished the rest of her carrot, which, despite being disgusting, was physically much easier to eat. Most of the meat remained on her plate.
“You have a problem with griffon?” Gramma Prisca asked.
She blinked down at the cut of meat on her plate and tried not to let her disgust show.Griffon? Had she ever seen that in the butcher shops? No, certainly not. Was italwaysthat tough, or was it how the ranchers prepared it that made it so horrible to eat? Despite herself, Cassia’s fingers itched to find out.
“It’s a little difficult to chew right now,” Cassia said softly. “I don’t mean to waste it.” Truth and a lie: the meal belonged at the bottom of a garbage heap.
“You hungry? You want me to heat you up a little soup?”
She hesitated to wonder how horrific the soup would be, with how Aevrin had cooked everything else.
“Not so hungry, no.”
“To bed with you, then. You need some good rest. Come on.”
Gramma Prisca filled a cup with water from one of the kitchen reservoirs and pushed it into Cassia’s hands. Then she led the way back to the foyer and a creaky wooden staircase. Upstairs a long blue rug ran down a hallway with doors on either side, most of them closed. As she followed Gramma Prisca past more sketches and a smaller landscape painting, she found herself wondering where Aevrin slept.
They’d reached a door near the end of the hall. Prisca pushed it open to reveal a bedroom that was neat and cluttered at the same time.
“Ashelle’s room, yours for now. She’s not back for her university break for another two months.”
That was no problem. Cassia would be long gone by then. Though she did wonder, for a moment, that a ranch girl was off studying at a college. It had always seemed like the purview of the distant and wealthy to Cassia.
She peered in. A single bed, covered in a dozen pillows, sat on a woven rug. The dresser was crowded on top with jewelry boxes and tiny wooden painted figurines in orderly rows. The closet doors were open, the closet itself overflowing to the point that clothes hung over the backs of the door and off the door knobs. Strings of pennants and beads covered the walls. An eight-stringed mandolo sat on a stand in the corner.
“Are you sure she won’t mind?” Cassia asked nervously, clutching the cup of water as she surveyed the decorations of another girl’s life. A girl who, by the looks of things, had owned and left behind more possessions than Cassia Clarek ever had to her name.
“It’s my house,” Gramma Prisca informed her tartly. “You help yourself to anything you want, if it fits. The girl has too many clothes.”
Cassia was not about to start taking someone else’s clothes, but she nodded anyways, too sensible to contradict Gramma Prisca.
“This door—” Gramma Prisca stepped back into the hallway and rapped on the door just left of Cassia’s. When nobody answered, she turned the knob and pushed it open to reveal a narrow room. A privy sat against the far wall, marked with magic and vine-powered against smell and disease. The vanity had a straight razor, a jar of shaving mousse, and a cup with one tooth scrub in it. “—Is the necessary.”
“I see.”
“You share with Aevrin. He’s the room just over,”Gramma told her.
“...Alright,” Cassia said, wide-eyed. She didn’t think she could share a necessary with Aevrin. That was far, far too personal. She wasn’t sure how she felt about having neighboring rooms, either. It made her feel flushed. She hoped the walls between them were thick. What if she snored, and he heard? Could he hear them talking right now?
“I’ll put some more things in there for you, a face towel and tooth scrub and the like. I think Ashelle left some blood products under the sink, but you check before you’ll need them and let me know if not. Now, when you’re ready to shower, that’s outside. The stall’s right next to the well. Aevrin will help you.”
“Help? I assure you, I don’t need—” Cassia sputtered.
Gramma snorted and closed the door to the necessary.
