I took a sip and sighed. “Yes.” It was perfect.
He plated the sandwiches, tossed a towel over his shoulder, and brought them to the table.
He sat.
I claimed one of the sandwiches, cut it in half and took a bite. The contrast of toasted, buttery bread with warm, soft cheese, meat, with the vinegar tang of sauerkraut and sauce was delicious. Half the sandwich was gone in short order, and I refilled my tea before realizing we’d fallen into the kind of comfortable silence couples usually have.
Or friends, I thought. Friends could do comfortable silence too.
“I don’t remember everything clearly,” Card said. “Well, not after the tree walk. That, I remember.” He grinned into his tea. “Would do again, even if it did throw me off my game a little.”
“You passed out.”
“I was overwhelmed by my own ingenuity.”
“Face down. In the mud. You were sucking mud.”
“Communing with nature. Kissing the green, as the dryads say.”
“The dryads very much do not say that,” I laughed. “You were magic drunk, and if I hadn’t been there, that siren would have stepped on your head so she could keep the coin.”
“Naw, she was cool.”
“The hell. She wanted you dead. She didn’t like you.”
“Everyone likes me.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“They do. Even Gary likes me. Or he would have, if we’d stayed to talk to him.”
“Gary was going to smash you into chunky soup for messing with his tree.”
Card smiled. “But that tree walked. You saw it right? So good.”
“It was chaos, Card. It always is.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “It usually is.” He cleared his throat. “So I remember the walk. But not much else until the apple tree. Did Lilt Keyva force you into any despicable deals?”
“No. I made her pay what she promised us and that was that.”
“She didn’t try to tempt you into a trap? I mean, sirens gotta siren.”
“No she...just... No, nothing.”
“Something,” he said. “Was it about me? Did she offer to show you my future? My impending death?”
“I thought you said not everything is about you.”
“Ooooh. But thiswasabout me. But not my future. Hmm. What else would she offer you that she’d think you’d want?”
“Please leave it.” I finished off my sandwich, unable to look him in the eyes.
“Oh,” he said, like someone had just punched him in the chest. “Thistal.” His sister’s name fell from his lips like a prayer. “She said she’d tell you about Thistal.”
I drank tea, so I didn’t have to answer him.
“But she already told me. She said...”
