Kiela blushed, and Larran laughed. It really was such a nice, warm laugh. She wished she could forget she was annoyed at him. But he’d invaded her privacy—a dangerous thing when she had stolen spellbooks just a room away.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” he said. She realized she must have been staring again, thinking about his laugh. “I was about ten when you moved away. I watched your family sail off from that tree over there.” He pointed out the window at a curved tree trunk that bent out over the cove.
“Glad you didn’t fall off,” she said.
“I have a good grip.”
“That’s useful,” Kiela said, and then winced inwardly. First she chased a chicken around the yard, and now she was conversing like she’d never had supper with a person before. She really, really should have practiced talking to people more in the library.
She tried to think of the last time she’d had a meal with anyone but Caz, and she came up with nothing.Huh, that’s rather sad.She’d never thought of her life in the library as sad before, and she wasn’t sure she liked that point of view.I was happy there, without anyone.There was no reason for her to need to be making friends left and right here.
“You were kind to me when others . . . weren’t,” he said. “Your parents as well.”
Kiela blinked at him. She had no memory of being kind or unkind to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t—”
He smiled. “It was a long time ago. Suffice it to say, I owe your family.” He turned toward the stove. “I think it’s hot enough.” Cracking the eggs, he whisked them and poured them into the pan. As she watched, he mixed in scallions that he produced from a pants pocket, as well as a tomato.
Caz scooted forward. “You had a tomato in there?”
Larran shrugged. “You never know when you’ll need one.”
“I think you really do know,” Caz said. “How many tomato emergencies do you encounter?”
“Actually, I’d forgotten it was in my pocket until now. I’d harvested it right before I saw all the smoke billowing up from your house. I didn’t want to take the time to put it in my kitchen.” He sounded a bit sheepish. “I thought you might be in danger.”
He’d rushed here to save her. Very neighborly indeed.
In a few minutes, he had it all assembled: egg, scallions, and tomato, on toast that he’d sliced and tossed on the hot stove while she was busy marveling at the fact that someone had come to save her. When the Great Library burned, the place where she’d spent over a decade of her life, no one had tried to help her, no one checked on her, no one warned her. If Caz hadn’t been alert, she wouldn’t have even noticed that the other librarians had fled. Not one of them had said, “You should come with us. Or at least save yourself.” But this man who had known her for all of five minutes . . . or since childhood, if that was true . . . he’d rushed here, not knowing if he’d have to pull her from a burning fire. She stared at him, unsure what to think of him, as he placed her plate, heaped with food, on one side of the table.
“One second . . .” He ducked out the back door to the garden and returned a moment later with a fistful of daisies. He plopped them into a canning jar, filled it with water, and set it on the table as a centerpiece. From one of the kitchen drawers, he produced napkins decorated with little blue flowers. He laid mismatched forks and knives on the napkins and then sat on the other side of the table. “Hope you like it.”
She stared at the daisies then at the eggs, while he began to eat. Belatedly, she cut herself a wedge of toast with omelet and lifted it into her mouth. It was nearly-but-not-quite hot enough to burn her tongue. She tasted the sharpness of the onion, the smoothness of the egg—somehow he’d managed to make it light and creamy, unlike the rubbery eggs she’d eaten in the library—and the tang of the tomato. He knew both how to fix chimneys and cook.
They ate in silence for a moment.
Kiela tried to think of what to talk about. “You said you herd merhorses?”
He smiled, and his smile lit up his face. “I do. I can show them to you sometime. You could even ride one, if you’d like.”
Half of her wanted to say no.I’m not here to make friends.She was here to lie low in a safe place, as unobtrusive as possible in case the chaos from the capital city spilled outward. She was here to hide until it all passed by. Besides, she wasn’t even sure she liked him, despite the fact he’d been helpful and friendly and was a good cook. How did he make the eggs so cloudlike? Regardless, he didn’t seem to understand the concept of keeping a polite distance and waiting to be invited.
On the other hand, what harm could it do? They were a very long way from Alyssium, and she’d always wanted to see a merhorse up close. “Thank you. Maybe sometime.”
“Great,” he said.
“That wasn’t a yes.”
“Oh. Uh—okay?”
Taking a breath, she told herself to quit being ornery. It was nice of him to invite her. Just because she was tired was not an excuse to be rude. “Sorry. I just . . . Never mind.”
He ate another bite and then gestured at the stove. “You know, the next time you need help with anything, you should just ask.”
Any goodwill she might have felt drained away. “And the next time you want to help with anything, you should ‘just ask,’” she snapped.
He blinked.
She pointed her fork at him. “I didn’t ask you to come over and tromp around on my roof. I didn’t want you here. Especially when I wasn’t home.”
