‘Idan,’ she said, breaking into his sultry thoughts. ‘May I ask you something?’
He lifted his chin in acknowledgment.
‘Why do you speak so little out loud?’
The rhythm of Idan’s axe faltered.
He stopped mid-swing, the blade hovering for an instant before he buried the axe head into the chopping block and leaned on the handle.
‘I used to lead a vanguard division for the High Command,’ Idan rasped aloud. ‘Picture a combat zone where the enemies never stop coming, and you’re the only person commanding the battlefield. Every second required my voice. I was the leader, shouting, calling out the strategies, even subvocally, directing the battle. It was a constant output.’
He gazed out at the horizon, his eyes distant. ‘After each campaign or war, I just wanted peace, a vacuum where no one asked me for a single play. Even in the royal courts, people expected me to play a part, to pour out my thoughts like cheap wine to keep the conversation going. Many people tried to bait me out of my shell, acting as if my preference for stillness were a lock they had every right to pick. Those were moments I would have given anything just for a sliver of stillness, but never got it.’
Sheba crossed her arms, her eyes searching his. ‘Where exactly was this?’
Idan fixed his silver-gold gaze on her and huffed. ‘The truth about where I’m from belongs to a different sun. All you need to know is that while those days for me are long over, small talk still feels like a tax on the soul.’
He stepped closer, reaching out to adjust the slant of her shoulders, correcting her center of gravity for the next swing.
‘For the last few years, silence has been my sanctuary. I don’t miss the battlefields nor the parties. I don’t even think of the nobles and kings of that joy-forsaken realm. Now, if my quiet makes others uncomfortable, that’s their problem. I’m only interested in the substance, not the filler.’
‘That’s because you’re a man of substance,’ she murmured. ‘Tis rare and precious. So please never change.’
Her words and soft smile of acceptance stirred his heart.
In that moment, he got hit with the realization that it’d be a challenge to let her out of his life.
The days that followed blurred into a flow that Idan became addicted to.
He found himself studying her with quiet intensity.
Memorizing the way she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear when she fed the lamb or the purse of her lips when she blew the steam from her morningkahawa.
She began to smile more, which made him sometimes forget to breathe.
Her beauty grew on him, as did her grace that surpassed the over-polished sophistication of the deific women in his past.
He also felt a deep surge of respect for the way she navigated his need for quiet.
He used his sub-vox more, initiating conversations through the neural link between their minds, loving how she leaned into it with her own sub-vox responses.
She also didn’t buy into the myth of his divinity.
To her, he wasn’t some untouchable icon or a Sacran god; he was just a man.
She took shots at his ego, teasing him for being a total neat freak and rolling her eyes at his obsession with order.
She didn’t hesitate to call him out, either, scolding him with a wink when he tracked leather scraps across the floorboards she just swept or when he tried to act tough and ignore a nasty gash on his arm from a wire fence.
Idan also learned to pick up the tension in Sheba’s spine that preceded a spiral into her dark memories.
Without a word, he’d wrap his arms around her and rock her until her pulse rate calmed and she relaxed.
She appreciated the silent intervention and, as of late, pressed a kiss to his cheek each time, which heated him to the core at the thought that she let him care for her this way.
They navigated the small hut in synchronicity, whether prepping their shared meals and tending to the flock in cadence.
During one evening meal of smoked sea trout and greens from his vegetable patch, the baby lamb broke from its basket.
