Page 38 of Sunder

Respect him, possibly, but that was the extent of what she could easily imagine.

She rubbed at her chest, willing her heart to calm, and Athan moved toward her. She fully expected him to insist on feeling her pulse, on counting her breaths, but instead he poured tea into a cup and pushed it toward her. Pulled it back again just before her fingers could wrap about the mug. “One of the leaves contains a mild stimulant. Will that prove too much for you?”

She was not of such a spiteful nature that she would bat his hand away and take a sip simply to prove that she could.

Instead, she sat, hating that he had to ask it. Hating that she had to run through the mental list of all the potions and elixirs she used regularly before she gave a soft nod.

“Excellent.” He pushed the cup back in her direction, and she tried not to feel small and like the girl she’d always been.Everyone had to be so careful with her. Had to make sure she wasn’t hurting herself, had to coddle and hover and...

She was grateful. She was.

Otherwise, she would implode.

Orma stared down at the cup, and this time was her emotions rather than the bond that was a tangled knot inside her chest, pressing and wriggling and making her want to flee.

She didn’t. Wouldn’t. There was the Brum outside. Although she was rather sure if she opened the door, he’d be more interested in being inside with his companion rather than following her. And maybe he wouldn’t eat her.

Maybe.

Athan was making those exaggerated breaths again, but this time she did not follow. Merely sipped the tea, and found the flavours pleasing, and fought not to glare are him.

He’d done nothing wrong. She was being ridiculous, that was all.

She even had to fight down the urge to tuck her legs up inside the too-large shirt he’d let her borrow.

Always hiding, her mother had said, even when she was small. A cupboard. Beneath a clothed table.

She couldn’t say it, then. That the threads overwhelmed her sometimes when there were too many people about for too long. Too many shimmers, too many colours—some clashing, some not.

Athan took the seat across from her, the one that boasted the large cushion at its side. Either to rest his feet upon after a long day, or because that’s where the Brum would sit if he was invited to the table.

She took another, longer sip of tea.

He had a life here. A profession. He knew how to cook, and how to keep a home, and he’d filled it already, not only with furnishings, but with a companion.

She had nothing to offer him. She was not a skilled conversationalist. There were no household chores assigned to her. She was proficient at nothing and had neither the energy nor the inclination to change that.

“Is the tea that dreadful?” Athan asked, leaning forward and watching her carefully.

Because he could feel it all, couldn’t he? The despair creeping over her. The one that reminded her that nothing had changed, that she was still as lost and alone as ever.

A burden.

First to her parents, then to the man across from her that deserved a far better mate than she could ever hope to be.

“No,” Orma croaked out, rubbing at the bare bit of thigh the borrowed shirt revealed. Over and over. Because she could breathe, and she would, and she did not need him hovering about her to do it. “It’s fine.”

He hummed, taking a sip from his own cup. “High praise.”

If he was insulted that she did not have a greater compliment to offer, he did not betray it. “Perhaps we might visit the market together, and you can show me which stall you prefer. Then I can offer something more to your liking.”

She laughed. She did not mean to, and it was a choked, wretched sort of sound. “I haven’t been.”

It was the first time in a long while he genuinely looked surprised.

“Impossible.”

She moved her hand from her thigh to the knot in her chest, pressing tightly. The ache was more memory than reality, but it felt better to touch it. “No, it isn’t. Not when there were people to do it for us.”

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