They look at each other across the table. It’s like they have a special way of communicating, but the message I sense them passing around is one of confusion.
“Why would I be angry?” Hannah asks.
“He bought you.” I keep my voice low, but I hear the edge in it. “He brought you here and decided you weren’t the one, and that was it. He rejected you. All of you.”
Hannah puts down her bread. “I went to the bride market because I had nothing. No family, no money, and nowhere to go. I didn’t want to be married, not to Korr, not to anyone.” She picks up her cup. “When he told me the bond wasn’t there and I was free, it was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time.”
“I entered the auction because the alternative was worse,” Xenia says. “I left Korr’s quarters with money, a room, and nobody’s name on me. That’s more than I could’ve hoped for.”
“He’s a decent person,” Prim says.
Becca refills her wine. “Most of us didn’t want husbands. We wanted to survive. He gave us that and never made us pay for it.”
I sit with this for a while and eat my soup. These women all went to the bride market for the same reason I did. They had no future in the human world, and then they ended up here, fed, housed, and free. Of course they’d defend the man who’d made it possible. None of them are jealous of each other, none of them are competing.
The conversation turns lighter as my new friends – can I call them friends? – start talking about their work and homes, and the gossip they’ve heard lately. Xenia mentions a man she’s been seeing, someone who works in the Forgehalls, and the others pat her hand and giggle. Prim works for a scribe in the trade quarter, and Becca runs a fabric stall at the market. They built real lives here, and I realize that they did it together, helping each other.
I eat and listen, because that’s what I’m good at, and because I don’t have much to share with them. They seem happy, and I don’t want to upset them with my sad story and the fears that still plague me. The fact that they keep singing praises to Korr doesn’t make me less apprehensive of him. They can say what they will, but I still think the fact that he’s brought so many women to his quarters and then dismissed them is not normal.
The door to the tavern opens and a woman walks in, scanning the room until she spots us. She comes over quickly and pulls out an empty chair.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says, sitting down. “Noah needed his shirt ironed and I forgot to do it last night, so I had to rush through it before I left.” She reaches across the table and shakes my hand. “Vicky. Nice to meet you.”
“Sorina,” I say.
I’m guessing Noah is her husband.
Her sleeve rides up when she extends her arm, and I see a bruise on her wrist. She slides her hand back and tugs the sleeve down in one smooth motion, her expression unchanged.
I look at Hannah, but she’s busy studying her plate. I look at Xenia, who’s pouring wine into Vicky’s cup. They both saw what I saw, but no one says a word about it.
“What should I order?” Vicky asks, pulling the bread basket toward her and picking up a slice to munch on.
“The soup is good today,” Becca says.
“Better than yesterday,” Prim adds.
The conversation folds around the food, easy and warm, as if nothing out of the ordinary just happened. Prim asks Becca about a shipment of fabric coming up from the lowlands, then Xenia starts telling a story about a customer at her stall who tried to haggle on a price that was already marked down. Vicky laughs at the right parts, eats her food, and tucks her hands in her lap when she isn’t reaching for something. I watchher smooth her sleeve one more time, a habitual gesture she probably doesn’t know she’s doing.
I try to smile and behave like I’m supposed to, but even if I’m part of their group now – part of Korr’s harem, some women in the Narrowhalls would say – I feel out of place. It’s not these women’s fault, though. They’re welcoming and lovely. It’s my spiraling thoughts that prevent me from enjoying my time with them.
Chapter Eight
Korr
I think I’m going mad.
I sit in the living room with a book open in my lap and I can’t read a single word on the page. My eyes slide over the text and nothing sticks. I’m not here for the book. I’m here because Sorina is behind her door, ten steps from my armchair, and I want to see her so badly that my body aches from it. It’s not the ache of calcification, but something deeper, in a part of me that isn’t made of stone and can’t harden. My heart. Yes, that’s right. Her being so close, yet so far, gives me a heartache. I want to talk to her. I want to sit with her and hear her voice. If she doesn’t want to talk, and I’m fairly sure by now that she’s the quiet type, I’ll take silence. I’ll take five minutes of her breathing in the same room as me and be grateful for it.
I know what I want. I know what I need. She’s right there, so close that I can hear her through the wall. I hear a drawer opening, footsteps on the thick rug, the creak of her bed. Every sound pulls at me.
I haven’t sat in the living room since she arrived. I gave it up and left the shared space to her so she wouldn’t feel watched or crowded. I still think it was the right thing to do, but it’s killing me slowly. So, today I’ve decided that dignity can go to hell. I’ve planned this: me pretending to read in my favorite armchair, casually flicking the pages while a plate of cake waits on the table. I feel pathetic about it. A massive golem staging a casual morning in his own living room like it’s some kind of ambush, but what else am I supposed to do? If pathetic is what it takes to get five minutes with her, then I’ll be pathetic. I’ll be whatever she needs me to be.
Her door opens and she slips out, as quiet and careful as always. She freezes when she sees me.
I look up from the book as if I’ve been reading for hours, as if this is where I spend my mornings and I didn’t position the armchair to face her door.
“Good morning.”
