The question hung in the air, impossibly heavy for such a small word.
“Not forever,” he said slowly. “Your body will get stronger as you heal. Eventually, you won’t need the medicine at all. Eventually, you’ll be completely well.”
“Promise?”
His jaw tightened. Jessa could see the conflict in his eyes—the healer’s reluctance to make promises he couldn’t guaranteewarring with the male’s desperate need to reassure the child he’d come to love.
“I promise,” he said, “that I will do everything in my power to make you well. And I promise that I will never stop trying until you are.”
Dani considered this for a long moment, her expression far too serious for a child of her age. Then she nodded, apparently satisfied, and returned to her oatmeal.
“Okay. Can I have more berries?”
They spent the day together, the three of them, doing absolutely nothing of consequence.
It was wonderful.
Tarek built up the fire until the main room was warm enough that they could shed their blankets. Jessa made lunch, a simple stew from the provisions in the cold storage, while Dani supervised from her nest of furs by the hearth, offering suggestions that ranged from helpful (“more salt”) to absurd (“we should add chocolate”) to downright dangerous (“what if you set it on fire?”).
After lunch, Dani insisted on getting up for the first time. Tarek carried her to the big chair by the fire and tucked blankets around her until only her face was visible.
“I look like a caterpillar,” she complained.
“Caterpillars don’t talk back,” Tarek observed mildly.
“They might. You don’t know. Have you ever asked one?”
Jessa laughed, the sound bubbling up from some place deep inside her that had been silent for too long. Tarek looked at her,his eyes soft with something she was afraid to name, and she felt her heart turn over in her chest.
Against all odds, she’d found a home. A family. Someone to share the burdens and the joys, the ordinary moments and the extraordinary ones. She’d had that once, before their mother died, before their Uncle Gerhard came to claim his “responsibility” over them. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
“Tell us a story,” Dani demanded from her cocoon of blankets. “Tell us about the time Mama caught the fish that was bigger than her.”
“That story gets more exaggerated every time you tell it,” she protested, but she was already settling into her own chair, pulling her mending into her lap. “It wasn’t bigger than her. It was just… large.”
“Mama said it was bigger than her.”
“Mama had a flair for the dramatic.”
“Tell it anyway.”
So Jessa told it. And then she told the story of how their parents had met—a chance encounter at a harvest festival, their mother’s dress catching on their father’s buckle, the awkward dance that had followed and somehow led to marriage. And then the story of their first home, a tiny cottage in a village so small it didn’t even have a name, where their mother had learned to weave and their father had learned to garden and they’d both learned that they were terrible at cooking but excellent at making each other laugh.
Somewhere in the middle of the third story, she realized that Tarek was watching her with an intensity that made her skin prickle. She faltered, losing the thread of the narrative.
“What?”
“Nothing.” But his eyes didn’t leave her face. “Keep going.”
She tried, but the words came slower now, distracted by the weight of his gaze. By the time she finished, the afternoon light was fading into evening and Dani had fallen asleep in her cocoon, her mouth slightly open, her breath soft and even.
He rose without a word and gathered the sleeping child in his arms. She followed as he carried her to the small bedroom, tucking her in with a gentleness that made her heart ache.
“She’s so small,” he murmured, standing over the bed. “When I first saw her, I thought—” He stopped, shaking his head.
“What?”
“That she was too frail to survive this world.” His voice was rough. “I was wrong. She’s stronger than anyone I’ve ever known.”
