I breathed out a short laugh, though it wasn’t exactly funny. “You sound like me. That’s how I was before coming here.”
“You aren’t from Bremloc?”
“No. I’m from… somewhere else. A kingdom far away from here.” I gathered a pepper and a sliver of chicken on my fork. “Connecting to other people has always been hard for me, so I shut out the world. Like you said, it was easier.”
“What changed?” he asked.
“Good question. Back home, I was a total wallflower who went unnoticed. And I liked it that way. Here in Bremloc, I’m still awkward and the same old dorky Evan. I guess the difference is I’ve found people I don’twantto shut out. People who make me feel like I belong.”
The confession stirred in my heart. Then, like the sun breaking through an overcast, stormy sky, the answer became all too clear. A part of me had known it all along.
I didn’t want to return to my world. I wanted to stay in this one. With Maddox and Briar. With Callum, Kuya, Thane, and all the knights who had become my friends.
Expression pensive, Lake took another bite. The rest of the meal passed in silence. After we were finished, he carried our dishes to the sink and rinsed them out.
I stood from the table and rested my hands on the back of my chair. “Thanks again for the meal. It was really good.” The thought of going back out into the dark forest, alone, made me uneasy, but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. “Do you want me to help you clean up before I go?”
“Go?” He blinked at me before understanding lit his eyes. “Oh. That’s right.” His gaze returned to the fork. He’d washed it several times. “No. I can clean everything myself.”
He was even more awkward than me, which was saying a lot. But where mine came from me being an introverted goofball, his stemmed from something else. Fear. An aversion to people.
“Okay.” I stepped away from the chair. “Thanks again. If you ever come to town, maybe I can repay the favor and bake you something. Not to brag, but I make the best muffins.”
When he didn’t say anything, I started toward the door. There was a soft sloshing of water behind me.
“Evan?” I turned to see Lake staring at me, ears tall and a furrow in his brow. Soap suds covered his hands. “I… I think you should stay. You don’t know the way back, and the forest is a dangerous place to wander at night if one doesn’t know where to tread.”
“But earlier you said I needed to leave after eating.”
“Perhaps I changed my mind.” His eyes darted away from mine. “You are unlike other humans I’ve met. You’re… kind.” He shut off the spout and wiped his hands on a cloth. “I have a spare room. You may sleep here tonight and leave at first light.”
My swarming anxiety subsided, and I breathed a sigh of relief. No dark forest for me, thank god. “I appreciate that. Because I totally lied about defeating the thorn bush. He’s still alive and probably chomping at the bit to finish what he started.”
A smile broke across Lake’s face. “I’ll show you to your room.”
I followed him down the hall and to a staircase that curved up to the second floor. After going up, he turned into the first doorway on the left and lit a lantern, illuminating the room in a soft golden glow. It was small, with a twin-sized bed centered on one wall, a three-shelf bookcase across from it, a nightstand, and blue curtains over the double windows. Doodles of the sun and clouds covered areas of the walls.
“Give me a moment to fetch clean linen,” he said before stepping back out into the hall.
I went over to the bookcase and squatted down to check out the few hardbacks, gliding my fingers over the spines. The creases in the spines showed that the books had been well loved, read multiple times.
I pulled one free and flipped through it. A storybook of what looked like children’s stories with illustrations on every page. A page in the center was marked, and I opened it to a story about a small red fox.
The illustration showed the fox hunkered down inside a hole in a tree, its ears down and tears in its eyes as it rained.
‘Why, oh why, is the fox so sad?
Because, you see, the fox is bad.
But if the fox is bad and has no heart
Then why, oh why, is his breaking apart?’
The next page showed the fox being approached by a rabbit and a squirrel. The two then hugged the fox. Another passage spoke of friendship and looking past appearances. The last page showed the three running through a grassy meadow with the sun shining bright above them. All laughed.
‘Why, oh why, is the fox so glad?
Because, you see, the fox isn’t bad.
