“We met when I came into the city,” Xeni explains. “Cornelia, right?”
“My friends call me Nelly.”
She sits and gestures for us to eat, and the first bite makes me groan. Fluffy, buttery, and steaming, despite our delay.
“She’s the one who pointed me toward Leif, so really, she’s the reason I found you.”
“Technicallywefoundyou,” Cato points out from the sink, and Xeni pulls a face at him before returning to his breakfast.
Nelly chews for a moment before smiling fondly at Xeni. “When I saw you walking in that marketplace, you reminded me of someone.”
“Someone you knew?” Xeni asks.
She shakes her head. “Not exactly, no.” She pauses, seeming to gather her thoughts before she continues. “I’ve lived in this city my entire life and have been a part of the resistance since I was in my twenties. Back then, we were a group of people who did what we could, but we didn’t put labels on anything, just tried to help when we were able.”
“I met my wife a few years later. We didn’t understand what the marks meant for a while, but we knew to hide them.”
She pushes her sleeve up to show us a mark above her elbow. The skin is raised and bunched in a way that signifies her mate died, like a scar that’s been healed for decades.
She smiles at the mark before rolling her sleeve back down. “This apartment was a haven for mates trying to evade the military. It was used for bootlegging liquor in the world before,and the blueprints for the building never included it. It was safe, and we hid the doorway so no one would see it unless they knew it was there. We didn’t use lights at night, and were cautious of our comings and goings, but when the bakery opened downstairs, the traffic was easily overlooked. Dozens of mated pairs used this place as their sanctuary, but eventually, the resistance needed more space and moved. We loved it here, though, and my shop was doing well, so we made it a home.”
Nelly takes a bite of her breakfast, so Xeni and I do the same while she collects her thoughts.
“My wife got sick of waiting for information,” she continues. “She was always impatient and decided she would get inside the hornet’s nest, so to speak. Nothing I could say changed her mind, so I accepted it, even though I hated it. When she took that job, I had a feeling it would be her end.”
She pauses, then glances at Xeni with tears pooling in her eyes. “I don’t think she would’ve had it any other way.”
“What job did she take?” he asks gently.
Nelly smiles as she wipes a tear from her eye. “She worked for a very important officer. Small tasks at first… cleaning his house and cooking his meals. She’d serve coffee at his meetings, and collected a lot of information. The plan was for her to get out before he suspected anything, but she learned something that made her stay. I wasn’t happy about it, but I understood.”
“What did she find out?” I ask when she pauses.
For a moment, she only fidgets with the edge of her fork as she stares at her half-eaten breakfast.
“His wife was pregnant,” Nelly says, and she lifts her face to look at Xeni. “She knew that any child inside that house would have a devastating life, so she promised to stay as long as she could. We had so much love, she said, when he would have none. She was determined to show that child that there was morewaiting for him out there in the world. Eventually, she became his nanny, and she loved that little boy so very much.”
Xeni
Amillionthoughtsexplodethrough my head as I try to process the bomb Nelly just dropped on my lap.
“What?” I breathe, my breakfast forgotten as I stare at her in stunned silence.
“It would seem the Fates put us in each other’s paths for a reason,” Nelly says, her smile wobbling. “Bheera would share photos of this beautiful child with porcelain skin and tiny little horns nobs poking from his puff of white hair. He clung to her, following her around whenever she’d allow it, and she had all these wonderful stories of the mischief he’d get into. So many times, she would come home late at night, laughing because he’d invented a new game to play.”
Her eyes crinkle, and a newfound heaviness builds in my throat at the love that shines through her memories.
“They usually involved a giant mess of some sort,” she adds with a touch of teasing.
I open my mouth to say something, but how do you comfort the woman whose mate gave you your only glimpse of love in a childhood defined by hate? When she sacrificed her freedom for your happiness, and paid for her loyalty with her life?
“Do you remember the time you wanted to make snow angels?” Nelly asks before I can form a single word.
The long-buried memory surfaces, and I choke on a strangled laugh. “She read me a book about snow, but I had never seen it. I dumped flour all over the kitchen before she could stop me.”
She nods with a chuckle, the sound warm despite the sorrow threading through it. “You both were coated in it, and it took her two hours to clean up that mess when you were done.”
Guilt gnaws at my insides as I wring my hands. “I’m sorry—”
