“Yeah. Alright.” Aevrin had reached up to scratch his head. “Gramma? Thanks for letting Miss Cassia stay here, and all that.”
“I’m not doing it for you,” she’d said with a snort. “It’s what this family does. When we see someone down on their luck, we help.Wearen’t dragons. Hoarding your good fortune only makes your ledgers grow, not…”
“...your spirit,” Aevrin said along with her, smiling crookedly. He’d heard the speech at least a hundred times.
“That’s right. Now go work on getting those calves weaned so we can afford to keep paying everyone around here, you and Kazeic included.”
Now Aevrin settled the bundle of clothes in the cart bed. Cassia had gotten herself onto the driver’s bench while he did that, before he could offer her a hand. Aevrin hesitated for a moment, one palm resting on the rim of his cart’s bed, a question brewing in his mind.
So much about her was a mystery. He didn’t want to spook her by asking. Slowly he walked to the front and settled into the drivers’ seat, a thought creasing his forehead. Tiny bobbed his head wildly up and down, snorting and teasing sparks from his snout. Aevrin gathered the reins tight but didn’t snap Tiny to attention yet. The thoughts were too heavy on his mind.
“Areyoualright?” Cassia asked, peering at him. “You look serious.”
“I got a question I kinda want to ask you,” he said.
Cassia didn’t say anything. She just stared at him with her big amber eyes. Her skirt was split open over her knee again, and her golden-brown hair cascaded wildly over her shoulders, tangled from the drive there. How one woman could look so vulnerable and command so much of his attention all at once, Aevrin didn’t understand.
“Well…” he said at last, and tightened a white-knuckled hand around the loose leather reins, tearing his own gaze away from hers. “I can understand maybe you don’t wanna go back and get your things, or there’s people you shouldn’t be in touch with. Truth is, Miss Cassia, I’m inclined to think you oughta stay here and cut ties with, well, whoever you oughta. But…” he couldn’t help himself, and turned back to her, studying her mute, tight expression. “Isn’t thereanyonewho’d be worried you up and disappeared? I mean, you gotta have some folks looking out for you at home, don’t you? Your family?”
The skirt had fallen open again. Cassia looked down at her lap and tugged it back over her knee.
“No. My friends knew I was coming out west.” Her voice was clipped. He pressed on anyways.
“Still. Don’t you need to write to your folks, or…?” Aevrin tried. Cassia looked abruptly away from him. “Haven’t yougot…?” he continued in horror.
“No family.”
She’d mentioned a brother, though. He remembered that. Dead?
“Oh.” Aevrin swallowed and shook his head, feeling a sharp ache in his heart for her. “Well, I know a bit about that. My momma… she… passed, a long while back, so… if you ever wanna talk…”
He heard her sharp intake of breath.
“I’m so sorry,” Cassia said, her voice soft and full of pain. When he dared to glance over she was looking at him with compassion. He didn’t deserve that—he was fine. She was the one going through hell. “I wondered. But I can’t imagine.”
“But you said…?”
“My parents aren’t dead,” Cassia told him. “Just good as.” She frowned and shifted in her seat, then wove her left hand into her hair, as if looking for something to occupy her hands. “We, uh. We were fostered? My brother and I. Since I was about twelve and he was eight.”
Aevrin's eyebrows rose. “Saints.”
“They cleaned up their act now and then, I guess. But it never lasted more than a year before we were being pulled out of the house again and shuffled around Evaliae.”
So. She was from the territory at the heart of the Thronden Empire, the very seat of imperial splendor. It was a mighty long way to have come.
He fumbled for something to say. Some kind of assurance. He couldn’t begin to imagine what life was like, watching your parents put something else first. He’d always been blessed in that regard. Too blessed, sometimes.
“I’m sure they… I’m sure they loved you. That they tried.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s just how it is. How it’s been.” There was no warmth in her voice. She fiddled with a strand of hair, looking down at it.
He nodded slowly.
“And your brother?”
Cassia looked abruptly back away from him, her body tense, and dropped the strand of hair she’d been playing with. When she talked, her voice was clipped.
“We don’t talk anymore either. I haven’t any idea what he’s up to. So no, there’s nobody I need to write to. Nobody’s wondering.”
