The sudden separation was disorienting. Unnatural. Atria’s ears rang with a high note as her magic popped in her veins, thrusting itself against her flesh in an attempt to reach him again.
Go back,the lonely part of her wept.
No,the rest of her decided,I don’t deserve it. I haven’t earned it.
It was impossible to say whether Kaz noticed the difference as he pulled to a stop in front of the biggest building. She’d come to rely on feeling him to access his reactions. Without the tether, his expressions were as opaque as they’d always been.
A feeling of stark loneliness overtook her as she stared at her mate’s profile. She’d used the tether for comfort, to feel safe and close to him. With that connection severed, she felt like she was standing behind a pane of glass, unable to reach the only thing she’d ever wanted. It was both the closest and farthest it had ever been from her reach.
Atria had to hold her breath to keep those terrible feelings from erupting out. She turned her eyes away from her mate’s inscrutable expression to assess the homestead with dull eyes.
There were four buildings altogether. Each one was marked by a conical turf roof that nearly touched the ground, allowing only enough room for a doorway that was partially sunk into the earth. What she could see of the walls was all narrow slabs of stone, probably as locally sourced as the turf was. Around the buildings, the land was left mostly wild, save for what looked like an unused pasture and garden area.
It was beautiful and stark against the sweep of the sky and the rolling prairie that stretched around them in all directions, empty save for the bison, foxes, and birds that sailed far over their heads.
Kaz was right again. No one would ever find them here.
Her sense of disorientation, that great unmooring, suddenly became so acute that Atria had to blink several times to get her head to stop spinning. She felt that she was standing at the edge of the world. An invisible force hovered at her back, just waiting to push her off into the nothing that lay beyond.
“Right,” Kaz announced in that brusqueall businessvoice she disliked. “I’m going to get you settled and then I’m going to drive into town to get some food. There’s provisions in the larder, but we’ll need fresh shit, too.”
“Okay, I can come—”
“No, you’re going to stay here. I upped all the security a few years ago, so you’ll be safe while I’m gone.” He popped open his door and swung one long leg out. The sound of his boots crunching in the gravel made her flinch, as did the click of his door when he swung it shut again.
She had to take several deep breaths with lungs that felt too tight before she could manage to get her own door open. Her fingers were clumsy. They trembled when she hooked them around the handle.
A brisk wind immediately swept her hair up into a long, twisting banner. Atria clenched her teeth against the blast of cool spring air and waited by her closed door as Kaz collected their bags from the back of the SUV. She’d offered to carry her own things once, but he’d given her such an affronted look that she never bothered to do it again.
She watched him shut the hatch but lowered her eyes when he walked past her, moving at a swift clip toward the front door. Atria wrapped her arms around herself tightly and followed him.
Up close, she could see that the front door was the kind made to look like wood but was actually extremely durable, orc-forged metal. Orcs had created empires from their ability to not only harvest the most precious substances from the earth but also craft it into things both useful and beautiful.
The bulk of the Orclind’s economy — and the Iron Chain’s main concern outside of land stewardship — was the exportation of their metal goods. That included everything from pots and pans that never burnt one’s food, secure doors that blended seamlessly into a home, and the shells for m-jets, which could withstand the heat and wear of magically assisted supersonic travel.
And that was, of course, leaving out the business of precious gems, gold, and diamonds.
Atria knew all of this from school but also because the Coven Collective shared a border with the Orclind. Many of her colleagues were orcs, and a good portion of her classmates were as well. She loved hearing about their culture, even just listening to the beautiful tenor of their voices, but she never had more than cursory friendships with any of them.
One look at her wrists or ankles tended to shut things down with most people. Her past simply made them uncomfortable enough to be awkward, and usually resulted in rushed excuses and quick exits.
Atria squeezed herself tighter, her internal landscape growing bleaker, as she watched Kaz punch a code into a camouflaged monitor by the door.
A chime sounded, loud in the quiet of the wilderness, and was followed by theshnik-thunkof bolts sliding out of position. Kaz slung his bag over his shoulder and opened the door.
She followed him down a short flight of stone steps into a dimly lit room. The air was pleasantly cool and when her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see that they were in a round, stone-walled entry room built deep into the earth.
A curved couch stood against one side of the room, accompanied by a low, polished wood table and heaps of large cushions. On the other side, there was a rack and shelves for coats, bags, and shoes. A fireplace dominated the space directly across from the door. Its mantel was strewn with keepsakes: old photographs, a framed diploma, a dried bunch of wildflowers, and several beautiful, unpolished stones.
Candles, long unused, were scattered everywhere in the nooks and shelves built into the walls. Modern art was hung up as well, matching the minimalist rugs that gave the traditional architecture a sophisticated flare of color. When Atria glanced up, she saw that lights were built into the beams supporting the conical roof, and cleverly hidden skylights let in shafts of burnt orange sunshine.
The air was a bit musty, but otherwise smelled like someone had just stepped out — the echo of a woman’s shampoo, her cooking, the cleaner she preferred. It wafted from the dark doorways dotting the circular walls. Three openings stared back at them, and she knew enough to guess that they led to underground hallways connecting the other buildings, most likely a kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom.
Everything she could see was pristine, lived in. It didn’t feel like Kaz’s home. It felt like his mother had just stepped out and Atria was intruding on her home.
Her guilt tripled in weight in an instant.
Kaz didn’t bother taking off his shoes as he dropped their bags onto the floor by the couch. A flick of his fingers by the door jamb and lights came on, tastefully dimmed to suit the homey space.
