Page 69 of Sunder

If home held any books on cookery, they were kept to the kitchens. Where she had not been... well, perhaps she’d not been forbidden, but her mother had gently reminded all her children on more than one occasion they were underfoot when they trespassed, and then later her attention had lingered a little too long on Orma because she took longer to get out of the way than the others.

Unkind, Mama said. To keep the servants from their tasks when they were just trying to complete them in a timely manner so they could return to their own homes.

Another cupboard revealed baskets of... vegetables, she decided. They looked different. Not cooked and covered in rich sauces when she was in the dining room, nor cooked down into thin broth when she was poorly. Were they meant to look shrivelled like that? Or perhaps he’d forgotten about them and they should join a refuse pile.

She picked one up gingerly, trying to decide if it was still edible and what she might do with it. Heat it in some way. That seemed to be the primary form of cooking. Seasoning was another, but that would mean risking all those fine powders and wondering which might be medicines and which were meant for flavouring meals.

“Those are very hard on the teeth unless cooked,” Athan commented from the doorway.

Orma glanced at them, frustrated she had not been more successful in her aims. “I gathered that,” she answered primly. “I simply hadn’t decided on my method.”

He hummed, fully aware she had no skills to call upon, but he walked toward her and plucked the shrivelled root from her hand and placed it back with the others. “This cupboard might be more to your liking.”

Yet more jars, these without labels, but he pulled down a few and showed her the contents. Dried fruits, nutmeats, something that smelled like a salted cheese, rendered until it was crisp. “My peckish cupboard,” Athan explained. “Or when I’m too tired to think of anything more substantial.”

He let her make her selections before going to inspect the stove. He did not tease her about the lack of heat, only opened the door and took a scoop of something from a bucket she’doverlooked. Not logs, then. He shut it quickly enough, and she could swear the kettle bubbled the moment he did so.

She did her best not to narrow her eyes at the entire venture and huff. She’d no one to blame but herself. Or... no, that wasn’t quite true, was it? It was simply the way of things. And they’d thought she’d be mated to one from their circles, so it would never have been necessary to learn the functions of a stove and what fuelled it and how to organise a kitchen.

Athan leaned over to smell the contents of the pot, and she waited to hear she’d used something for soap-making rather than consumption. But he smiled in approval. “One of my favourites,” he assured her, and something in her relaxed.

He was... pleased.

At her effort, even if not the results. She was trying, and it had not gone unnoticed.

“Is my bed still standing?” she asked, feeling a little flustered at the feelings that flowed so freely through the bond. “Or will it feed our hearth this winter?”

There was a tiny bell that sounded as the steam in the kettle touched it and Athan poured into the waiting pot. “As if I would allow such a thing. A garden ornament, at the very least. Brum could use it for shade in the summers.”

Orma liked that idea even less, but she did not say so.

Didn’t need to, not when Athan leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. She did not know what compelled him, didn’t know they had reached a place of such easy and presumptuous affection, but when he lingered, she did not pull away from him.

She could have. Just a step backward. A reminder of who and what she was and that he should not raise his expectations too high.

And yet...

She swallowed thickly.

“Your bed is safe and sound and waiting for you,” Athan assured her, and he was the one to pull back first. Which felt like an accomplishment on her part. It was submission for the sake of it. It was... challenging herself. To see what she liked. What she didn’t. To savour the bond and the sensation of lips against skin and decide it was rather pleasant.

Might have been more so if it ended with his arms about her, but she could ponder that more tonight. Tucked away in the bed made especially for her.

“Yours wasn’t bad,” she added—then felt guilty she had not made it clear earlier.

He chuckled softly as he brought two mugs down from their hooks. “Yours is better,” he conceded. “Besides, now you can evict me when you feel like it.”

She could, couldn’t she? It should have been a comfort to her. A needed reminder she was not trapped, that they could sort out their arrangements however suited them best. But she... liked him next to her. She tested the thought slowly, poking at it and turning it about, and decided it settled rightly.

She liked it.

Liked him beside her while she slept. She didn’t know yet what it was to have him there when she woke. To look over and see his eyes flutter open. To see him smile and stretch and greet her.

But she might. Or... would. Eventually. If she could wake early enough to appreciate it.

“Would you like to go see?” Athan asked, taking in her pensive expression and trying to decide its source.

She blinked, coming back to herself. To him. “No. I think... I think I’d like to be peckish out in the garden for a while. Maybe sit on the bench together?”

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