"I said I'm fine."
Her eyes lift to mine. Steady. Patient. "You're not fine. You're bleeding and your hands are swelling. But if you want to pretend you're fine, that's your choice. I'm still going to get you ice."
She stands. Goes to the kitchen. Comes back with a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a cloth.
"Put this on your right hand," she says. "It's worse than the left."
I take the peas. Hold them against my knuckles. The cold bites, then numbs, and I let out a breath hoping it will ease the tension in my shoulders.
She's still standing in front of me. Watching me with those quiet eyes.
"Do you want to tell me what happened?" she asks.
"No."
She nods. There’s no hurt on her face, just acceptance.
"I kept dinner warm," she says. "Whenever you're ready."
She turns to go.
"It was a meeting," I say.
She stops. Looks back.
"It went badly. Someone swung at me. I dealt with it."
I don't know why I'm telling her this. I don't owe her an explanation. I don't owe anyone an explanation. But she just sat in front of me and cleaned blood off my face without flinching, and something about that makes me want to give her more than silence.
She nods again. "Are you safe?"
The question catches me off guard.
"Yes," I say.
"Good." She pauses. "Come eat when you're ready. You need food more than you need to sit in the dark with a bag of peas."
The corner of my mouth twitches. I kill it before it becomes anything.
She goes back to the kitchen. I hear her moving around, setting a plate, pouring water. Ordinary sounds. Domestic sounds. The kind of sounds that belong in a house where someone gives a damn whether you come home in one piece.
I sit in the hallway with frozen peas on my knuckles and blood crusting on my cheek and I think about the way she saidhold still. The way her hand felt on my jaw. The way she didn't ask me what I did to the other guy, because she already knows what kind of man she married and she cleaned my wounds anyway.
She's dangerous.
Not the way the council is dangerous. Not the way Feliks's nephew was trying to be dangerous. Dangerous in a way I have no defense against. Because she doesn't threaten or push ordemand. She just shows up, steady and warm and relentlessly present, and every day the walls I built feel a little less solid.
I stand up. Walk into the kitchen.
She's set a single place at the table. Stew, thick and dark, with fresh bread and a glass of water. She's at the counter, her back to me, wiping something down.
"Sit with me," I say.
She turns and looks at me. Something flickers behind her eyes, quick and warm.
"I already ate," she says.
"I don't care. Sit with me."
