She placed the book face-down on the window seat and watched the rain trace slow lines down the glass, her chin resting on her knees, her mind doing what it had been doing for three days now with a persistence she was beginning to find exhausting.
Going back to the tower.
Not the stars, not the cold air, not even the things he had said, though those replayed often enough. Just the moment after. The careful way his hands had tied her laces. The way she had reached back for him without deciding to.
She pressed her forehead against the cool glass and willed herself to think about something else.
“Ye’ve got that face again.”
Ava turned.
Caitlin stood in the doorway with a bundle of fresh linens balanced on one hip, her head tilted at the angle she wore when she was about to say something she had already decided she was going to say, no matter how it turned out.
“What face?”
“The one where ye’re starin’ at nothin’, and yer ears go pink.”
Caitlin deposited the linens on the chest at the foot of the bed and settled herself uninvited into the chair by the fire with the ease of someone who had decided they were friends weeks ago and hadn’t seen any evidence to the contrary.
“Want to tell me what’s got ye twisted up, or shall I guess?”
“There’s nothin’ to tell.”
“I see.” Caitlin tucked her feet beneath her. “Is it a male-shaped nothin’?”
Ava opened her mouth, then closed it.
“Aye,” Caitlin said, satisfied. “That’s what I thought.”
“I daenae ken what to do with…” Ava stopped. Tried again. “I daenae understand how anyone manages it. Males. They’re just...” She waved a hand. “Confusin’.”
“Oh, deeply,” Caitlin agreed with feeling. “Deeply and completely and with nay apparent awareness of the confusion they’re causin’. It’s a talent, really.” She paused. “Though some are worse than others.”
Ava said nothing, which apparently said everything.
“Ye ken,” Caitlin began, in the tone of someone settling in for a proper story. “Fiona in the laundry had the same problem nae three months past.”
“I’m nae sure me situation is the same.”
“Her fellow, Dougal, he’s one of the outer gate guards—very broad shoulders, ye’ve probably seen him around. When they first started circlin’ each other, it was an absolute disaster. He’d say somethin’ clumsy, she’d take it the wrong way, she’d say somethin’ sharp, and he’d go quiet for a week.”
Caitlin shook her head with the mournful pleasure of someone recounting a very satisfying catastrophe. “There were tears. There was a period of approximately a fortnight during which they refused to look each other in the eye. Old Morag from the kitchen said she’d never seen two people work so hard to be in the same room without acknowledgin’ it.”
Despite herself, Ava felt her mouth twitch. “What happened?”
“He brought her a bunch of heather he had picked on his rounds. Didnae say anythin’. Just left it outside the laundry door.” Caitlin spread her hands. “And that was that. Smooth sailin’ ever since. They’re to be married come spring.”
Ava looked back at the rain-blurred window. “That’s lovely. For them.”
“It is. Things have a way of workin’ out, is what I’m sayin’.”
“Nae for everyone.”
“Why nae for ye?”
The question was gentle enough that Ava almost answered it directly. She caught herself in time, but not before the actual thought surfaced, flat and certain in a way she couldn’t argue with.
Because Fiona and Dougal are the same kind of thing. Two people from the same world, the same station, the same life. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
