My heart pounded. Did that mean he was giving me the bed? By myself? What would motivate him to do that?
Unspoken questions charged the air until he looked up from where he knelt on the blankets. “Sleep. You’ll want to be rested in the morning.”
I couldn’t call across the room because our guards would hear, but I could not take an offering like this. It would put me irreparably in his debt. I crossed the room and sank to my knees next to him on the blankets. “I cannot take the bed while I know you are sleeping on the floor.”
He fluffed a pillow. “You can.”
My heart pounded. Nobody had ever offered me a comfort at their own expense before. Not unless they expected to get something greater out of the arrangement. “I can’t. The debt would be too great.”
He didn’t even look up from the pillow he was arranging. “There would be no debt. You’re fine. Go to bed.”
“There would be!” My words came out in a strangled whisper. “If—”
“You and your fire-blasted debts!” He gripped a fistful of pillow and turned his fiery blue eyes on me. “There. Is. No. Debt. There is no room for deception in those words. We both need a place to sleep. I will be here. Do not waste the bed’s comfort.”
While my mind struggled to wrap itself around the enormity of his words, he made a shooing gesture at my knees. I retreated off his blankets and back to the bed.
There is no debt.
There is no room for deception in those words.He was right. Four words, as clear and absolute as possible. But…
Why?
I kept my clothes on in case anything happened and we needed to leave quickly, but as I slipped into bed, I threw my mind into every corner of any motivation I’d ever encountered. I couldn’t think of a good reason for Andar to give me the bed without demanding a payment. A debt. Anything.
It made no sense. My parents had taught me two lessons: Never allow yourself to be indebted to another. And enough power will get you anything you want. Those lessons had always served me well, but neither applied to Andar.
He didn’t care about my power. And he denied my debt.
A strange prick shook the walls around my emotions and stung my chest. Was it gratitude? Trying to break out and make me thankful for a kind gesture? Or guilt for the hard bed he slept on? Trying to squeeze out my effectiveness and limit my future ability to make decisions?
What did people usually do if they felt grateful? Or guilty? At least, people who hadn’t blocked their emotions with a magic layered around their heart like a crystal lattice?
Guilt probably pushed them to change their situations, but Andar wasn’t going to take the bed, no matter what I did.
And gratitude? I’d seen people express gratitude many times. Perhaps I could do that.
“Thank you,” I whispered into the darkness, testing the foreign words on my hesitant tongue.
A soft, “You’re welcome,” answered back, and the sting in my chest…
The sting faded, replaced by a pleasant warmth that spread across my heart and into my arms and hands.
A completely unexpected sensation—like a warm blanket. I didn’t need it—the cold had never bothered me—but I liked how it felt.
And I wanted to feel it again.
Chapter 15: Andar
After not sleeping for hundreds of years, my body decided the night was over well before the sun rose. I went outside, checked on our horses, and was pleased to find the inn’s stable boy had taken good care of them.
I stroked Sabir’s withers. “What do you think? I know she’s a little strange, but it could simply be because she’s never had a decent friend or family member. That would make a person do all kinds of things.”
I leaned my forehead against his neck. “I had the best Gran, and I still lost myself to a quest for power. Even knowing that—and remembering how I’d pushed aside everything Gran taught me—I still want to destroy Brintontoven for what he did to me.” The horse turned his face to me, curling his lip as if he knew I had a treat for him.
And I did. I’d pulled it out of the saddlebags when I first came into the stable. I lifted up the hard-baked snack, and he wrapped his lips around it with a soft, happy huff.
I huffed back at him. “Of course you’re more interested in that than my problems.”
