Giving him a narrow-eyed look, she replied, “I know what phones arefor.”
Taevas stuck a knuckle in his eye again. “Then why don’t you have one? What if there’s an emergency? What about your business?”
“If there’s an emergency, I can go to the Thompsons’ farm.And I do business how my grove always did it: through the mail. The atelier sends me the orders and the supplies, I send the order back to them, and they forward it to the client. Easy.”
He looked quite keen then, though she hadn’t a clue as to why. There was an avid gleam in his eye when he muttered, “That— I want to talk about that later. I have to stay on track right now, butlaterI want to hear everything about your business.”
“Okay,” she replied, openly dubious.
“Back to the phone— What if you want to talk to someone who doesn’t live in Birchdale? Most people don’t write letters anymore.”
That was an easy one. Alashiya took a slow sip from her tea before answering, “I don’t talk to anyone.”
“What? No family? No friends?” He didn’t sound like he thought she was a liar, exactly, but it also didn’t feel like hebelievedher.
“I never had many friends,” she explained, “and the few I had left Birchdale decades ago. We exchanged letters for a while, but you know how things go — you travel, you have babies, you get busy. All untended things wither in the end.”
The ball of his throat bobbed with an audible swallow. “And family?”
Alashiya’s gaze roved around the kitchen, where her grandparents, her parents, her cousins, and all the members of her grove had once cooked, eaten, loved, cried. As she often did, she imagined what would happen to it and the rest of the home when she joined them by Grim’s riverbank.
All untended things wither.
It was not a sorrowful mantra, but one of studied release. It was a beautiful thing to wither. To fade. To return to the earth and be remade.
She took a sip of her tea. “My family is dead.”
Chapter Fifteen
Taevas staredat the ceiling of the room Alashiya had given him, unable to sleep. He could scarcely close his eyes. Everytime he tried, the darkness closed in on him, the shadows seething with everything he’d learned, every worry that bit and scoured his mind.
He needed tofocus.His people needed him more than anything, and getting back to them was his first priority.
But he couldn’t stop circling the mystery of his artisan, hismetsalill.She stood in his mind, unmoving, while he went around and around her. He’d spent so long imagining her that now he felt over-full, as if he’d gorged on a feast he had no right to touch. But his hunger hadn’t been sated. A bone-deep craving gnawed at him to keep going, to knoweverything.
Perhaps it was the fact that her real life was so far removed from his imaginings that threw him off-kilter. He’d pictured a free-spirited creature in a New York apartment surrounded by eclectic decor and a social circle of artists. He pictured a woman of boundless creativity and curiosity living her life unchained, unwilling to be pinned down by even his admiration. He pictured exactly the opposite of Alashiya.
She was lush and golden and vital and rooted to the earth. She didn’t live in a small city apartment, but a half-rotten house being slowly consumed by nature. She didn’t have friends. She didn’t havefamily.
Where had all the money he’d paid her over the years gone? It was easily a quarter of a million dollars, though he’d long since stopped keeping track. It certainly hadn’t gone into her home or anything else he could see. And why didn’t sheknowhim? If not as Isand, then she ought to be familiar with his name, his requests, his many, many gifts.
But he’d seen none of those gifts around the house. Most notably, the custom chair and workbench he’d sent her was nowhere to be seen. She was forced to wedge flattened cushions behind her back as she worked, and often had to stop to stretch when the discomfort became too much.
Had she sold his gifts? It was possible she had some incredible debt or other expenses, but that seemed a less likely conclusion than the obvious: that nothing, including the vast majority of the money he’d spent over the years, had ever gotten to her.
Rage tightened the powerful muscles of his jaw. It wasn’t the time or place to be worrying about whether a skilled embroiderer had been properly compensated. His priority couldn’t andshouldn’thave been Alashiya.
And yet he stared at the ceiling, the pain in his wings almost unbearable, and strained to listen to the softest sounds of her breathing from the next room, as he had every night since the drugs began to wear off. Taevas was a protector by nature, so it was one of the great challenges of his life, learning to prioritize everything and everyone who needed his help.
His people, the ’Riik, had to come first. Usually he could, after some small internal struggle, accept that. But now…
Alashiya could not be put aside.
She’s part of this now,he decided, as something of a compromise with the ravenous beast in him.My presence here puts her atrisk, which means she’s owed my protection. I can get back to my people and take care of her. I’m motherfucking Isand. I can multitask.
He’d get back to his people, and he’d satisfy the thing that drew him to Alashiya. At the very least, he owed her for her hospitality, reluctant though it might’ve been.
His decision didn’t make it easier to sleep. A nagging sense of unease demanded he get out of the old, musty bed to check on her. A permeating sense ofwrongnessdidn’t just seep from the sad little room Alashiya had tried in vain to make nice for him with fresh linens and a quick cleaning. It came from the closed door. The six feet of hallway. The nest on the floor, unguarded, unscented, unclaimed by him.
