Osric carries our bags inside, and we follow him into a cool stone hall.
Some sort of animal darts around the corner ahead of us and hisses. I jump back into Darina, one hand pressed to my chest, my heart beating hard.
“That’s Nim,” Osric says. “A duskcat. She lives here. She’s harmless, I promise.”
“Okay,” I say. Though I’m not certain it is, in fact, okay.
However, it must be nice, I think, to have a wild thing choose you and your house as its permanent home. I was never allowed to have a pet.
He leads us up the stairs, to the second floor, and down a corridor. He stops at two doors, side by side.
“These are yours,” he says. “One each, so you have your own space. My room is at the very end of the hall.” He nods toward a door far down the corridor. “I won’t bother you. You have my word.”
Then he clears his throat, turns his head aside, and coughs into the back of his hand. He’s been doing that since we stepped through the portal – clearing his throat, coughing low, swallowing it down. I wonder what’s wrong with him. I don’t ask.
“Rest as long as you need,” he says, and he leaves us there.
I watch him walk all the way to the end of the hall, then down the stairs, and he doesn’t look back once. There are no locksturning, no instructions, no rules. I came ready to fight, and he has given me nothing to fight about.
I catch Darina’s sleeve before she reaches her own door.
“Come in with me. Please.”
My room is large and plain, with a wide bed, a carved chest, and a window facing the open desert. I make it to the middle of the floor, and then I can’t stand still anymore. I pace from the window to the bed and back, arms wrapped around myself, fighting the tears with everything I have left.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I messed up. I sold us both to the desert because I couldn’t stand one more day of my father’s marriage plans. You didn’t agree to any of it. I dragged you here, and I’m sorry.”
Darina crosses the room, pulls me in, and holds me tight. She doesn’t let go until the shaking eases. She has held me through this before – after dinners, after fittings, after Father’s announcements. She knows to wait me out.
“It will be okay,” she says against my hair. “I chose to come. You know I chose it. And he seems like a good man.”
“I don’t want a man.” My voice breaks. “I never wanted one. Not Wycliffe, not an old one, or a young one… Not any kind of man.”
“I know.” She smooths my hair back from my wet face. “I know, and I understand. At least I’m a servant girl. All I have to do is work. I’ll never have to marry unless I choose to.”
“Then you’re richer than I ever was,” I say, and she huffs a small laugh.
We stay in my room while the light through the window turns gold, then red. Darina is the one who finally says it.
“We haven’t eaten since last night. Come down with me, please. You’ll think better with food in you.”
I don’t want to sit at his table. I go anyway, because she’s right, and because she’s hungry too, and won’t eat without me.
Osric has set the table himself. There are no servants in this house – no cook, no footmen, nobody at all. There are three plates arranged with care, and food he clearly had no idea how to make for us: a platter of dark, roasted meat, dry at the edges, a bowl of pale mashed root, hard rounds of bread, and strips of some green, pickled plant sharp enough to make Darina’s eyes water. Everything is edible, but nothing is good.
We eat little, all three of us, and Osric least of all, though the portions he set out could feed ten. Only Darina works through her plate steadily, out of politeness, and even she slows down at the pickled things.
“I apologize for the food,” Osric says. “I don’t have much experience cooking. Until now, I only ever made it for myself.”
“Thank you for cooking for us,” Darina says. “It was kind of you.”
He nods, and the three of us go quiet again.
He keeps his eyes on his plate, so I study him freely.
I have to admit that his face is handsome – angular and pale, with blue marks across his forehead. His long black hair falls straight past his shoulders and looks silky. He’s young, I think, for his kind, and strong; the shell that covers him instead of skin shifts over muscle in his arms and chest whenever he moves. I wonder how that shell would feel under my fingers, smooth or rough, warm or cool, and I halt the thought right there.
I set down my fork.
