Lucius stirred the pot. “This is going to cook for a little bit. How about I make you some of that hot chocolate you love?”
She nodded and sat at the table, tapping her fingers across the wood.
Lucius turned on the kettle, retrieved the chocolate squares, and placed one in the bottom of a mug.
“So,” he continued, “you turned to thieving to give them a better life?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “That cottage is falling apart. It leaks. There’s only so much they can do. Any time we need to go to the village, it takes forever. Do you know what that’s like when there’s an emergency?”
Her voice wavered at the end, and he knew there was more to the story.
“What happened?”
“My father got sick,” she said. “He was always the one to go to the village, never my mother or me. Nothing in my mother’s garden could heal him. He had this awful cough and fever, and we needed stronger medicine—the kind only a medic in town would have. My father refused to let my mother go, and they fought. While they were fighting, I took whatever coin we had and ran off.”
“At first, I got lost, but I found it. My father had taken me once when I was very little, and I remembered the way.”
She took a deep breath.
“When I returned with the medicine, my father wasn’t even conscious. That medicine saved his life. If we’d lived closer, where it wasn’t dangerous to travel to town, he would have been fine. But their stubbornness, their isolation, almost cost my father his life. And for what?”
The kettle whistled, and Lucius removed it from the heat, pouring the hot liquid over the chocolate square. The fresh cream would need to be eaten all tonight since his ice box was most likely not functioning.
Scooping a large amount of cream onto the drink, he topped it off with a sprinkling of chocolate shavings.
Lucious admitted he may have gone overboard with all these extra delights, but after spending decades in dust and darkness, he was ready to splurge.
“Be careful; it’s hot,” he said as he placed the drink on the table and sat across from her.
“Thank you,” Tavia said, cupping the drink and blowing on the top, which was only cream. “You didn’t need to buy all this.”
“Of course I did,” he replied with enthusiasm. “My savior deserves every lavish gift available.”
Tavia leaned over and sipped the drink, her expression relaxing into a comforting state, as if all the burdens of the past had dissolved into that cup of chocolate.
“If I am forced to eat and drink all of this, I won’t complain. I’d hate to offend my gracious host.”
The lightness in her words flattered him. It was the first time he had seen her relax and joke—and it was absolutely enduring.
Not wanting to press her for more details about her life, he began sharing stories of all the eccentric clients he had interacted with over the years.
Tavia ate and laughed, all while wearing his robe, and Lucius felt utterly foolish for how smitten he was.
He reminded himself that it was the decades-long captivity that made him ravenous and nothing more.
Yet, with every twinkle in her eye, Lucius longed to see more.
And suddenly, he was questioning what was more important—his missing artifact or his life—because the last time he trusted a pretty female, it had been his end.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tavia screamed herself awake, sweat sliding down her chest and back. The bedroom door crashed open, splintering at the hinges, and a frenzied, shirtless Lucius stumbled in.
His eyes were wide as he searched the darkness. The only light coming from the lantern on the side table.
“My home,” she said in a shaky voice.
“What about your home?”
