“I can’t believe you’ve gone to all this trouble.”
My body stiffened. When Mama pulled back, the smallest of smiles rested on her reddened face. “You’ll want to see her, I imagine.”
I dropped my sack. “What?”
Mama pulled me along into Asha’s room, my steps uneven, my legs unsteady.
At the door, a jolt coursed through me.
Thom sat on Asha’s bed. In the year and a half since I’d last seen him, he’d grown a beard, dark and neatly trimmed. His hand pressed against Asha’s small, sweaty forehead. Kelara watched with worry between her brows. His eyes were focused, his face intent, as he lifted her wrist to check her pulse. Mama cleared her throat.
His eyes caught mine, flashing with surprise and alarm.
“Hi Lyra,” Kelara said, but my attention had been stolen by the one person I least expected to ever come to a commoner’s home.
After two heartbeats too long, he looked down. I let my gaze fall too, looking anywhere but at him. My breath shook. “Prince Thomas. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Caleb shuffled from foot to foot in the corner, and my lips curved upward. He barely noticed, hovering near Kelara with a sense of unease as she sniffled, her face blotchy and tired.
Thom wiped his hands on his robes. “I’ve returned.”
“I see that.”
Mama gave me a meaningful look, and I sent it right back. “What brings you here?”
“I…” He looked lost for words. “You might not have heard, but I returned briefly to Amouridia for the banquet at Autumnfest.” He scanned my face, sensing my lack of recognition. “It was a very brief stay. But in that time, I conversed with a fellow maid of yours, named Anna, who told me you’d quit the palace.”
“I quit a year ago,” I murmured.
“Yes,” he said. “And she told me you spent much of your time taking care of your niece.”
“My mere niece,” I teased.
Thomas’s gaze briefly dropped to my mouth before his own tilted upward.
“Yes,” he said, distracted. I pressed my lips together.
“Did you receive my letters?” he asked.
“Just a few weeks ago, actually. I… I haven’t made it through them all.”
He adjusted his spectacles. “Did you, perchance, read the final one I sent?”
I shook my head.
“The first one from Pa’abo?”
“Yes.” Heat rose to my cheeks as color tinged his own.
“I received yours.”
I raised a brow. So he knew how I had spent the year he’d been gone. How I’d grown. How I’d finally bested him, at a price I had been happy to pay.
And he knew he was in danger.
A weight I hadn’t realized I was carrying suddenly lifted.
The room fell silent. My mind spun, but no questions came to mind, no concise explanation of the thoughts and feelings I’d begun to have for him once again.
