Chapter 235: Her Water Came With None of Your Business

DOVE’S POV

Thorne’s father lasted half a morning before telling his son to stop hovering over the bread knife.

"I’ve been cutting sandwiches longer than you’ve been eating them," he said.

Dove covered her mouth with her mug. Edrik did not bother hiding his laugh.

The clinic annex stood along the narrow road beside their rear yard. Its ground floor held a kitchen, a common room, and two staffed treatment rooms. The guest rooms for displaced residents were upstairs, separate from the patients. Thorne’s father had a room facing the courtyard and a job helping prepare meals, which seemed to please him more than being told to rest.

Dove liked that she could walk over and find him arguing about how thick to slice the tomatoes. He was close. He was busy. Her husband could see him without spending every hour imagining a journey.

Thorne still checked the knife.

His father gave him a look. Dove took Thorne by the hand and led him outside before the sandwich acquired a security detail.

"He’s allowed to enjoy being useful," she said.

"I know."

"Then let him. You can worry about whether I’m going to buy something ridiculous instead."

He glanced at her. "Are you?"

"Probably. Isn’t it comforting when life becomes predictable?"

Rain struck the courtyard while they walked home, and red water crawled between the paving stones before they reached their door. Thorne lifted Dove over the gutter. She watched a man empty his collection bucket with a face that made her stop complaining about her damp shoes.

The next few days settled into a routine she had to keep changing. Heat pushed the busiest market hours toward morning and evening. They rested in the middle of the day, kept the cooler shaded, and checked food instead of trusting that yesterday’s safe meal stayed safe forever.

Dove varied the shop’s stock to match what people actually wanted. A food day brought substantial pasta dinner packs with sealed sauce and meat. A household day gave her thick bath-towel bundles, which customers touched through the demonstration sample as if softness had become an embarrassing luxury. On the clothing day, she tried a loose cotton dress from a retained pack and immediately wondered why she had tolerated anything tighter in this weather.

Edrik saw her turn in front of the little mirror and stopped halfway through a sentence.

"Helpful review," she said. "Very detailed."

"Turn again."

"That doesn’t sound like clothing advice."

"It isn’t."

Thorne smiled from the doorway. Dove turned anyway, because she wanted to, then pointed both men toward the front. "Go admire something you aren’t married to for ten minutes. I need to fix my hair."

"That seems risky," Edrik said.

She threw the comb’s cloth at him. He caught it, kissed her cheek, and went.

Her roots were showing more each day. She could touch up the dye, but part of her had begun to like the pale line returning beside the blonde. She was still deciding what to do with that feeling. She brushed the loose waves, tied them off her neck, and did not turn an uncertain thought into an urgent purchase.

The healing water was much less willing to stay ordinary.

A man who had bought one of the first bottles returned to show her a shallow split across his palm that had closed much faster than he expected. He wanted more, and the name of the road where she had found the crate.

"The bottles are limited," Dove said. "The directions aren’t for sale."

"I could look for another crate."

"You could also ask me how my day is going before trying to organize a treasure hunt through it."

He had the grace to look amused rather than offended. She liked him better for that, but still gave him no route.

She prepared six more small bottles in private using the same measured dilution and clean equipment. Two stayed in the household bag. Four went onto her ordinary counter, separate from the day’s system stock. She traded each for sealed drinking water and kept a written count so excitement could not turn six bottles into promises she had never meant to make.

Sprout opened the locked shop-truck preview beside the bottles on her private display.

"With the next bond, you would have much more room to work."

"Would I? Or are you showing me a pretty truck because Ash is outside?"

"The next tier remains locked."

"So does my door. Show me today’s rewards."

Sprout did, with a brightness she was beginning to recognize as sulking. It reminded her that the owned bottles were not part of an automatic sales mission.

"I know. I’m earning water, not applause."

"Your customers are showing both."

"Then let me enjoy one without hearing a noise every time someone likes me."

It held the alerts. Dove appreciated that more than another cheerful suggestion about her husband’s pulse.

The prepared household reserve now fit into smaller covered containers, with sealed bottles ready to carry. She could lift the emergency bag herself. Thorne and Edrik could carry much more, but that was help she could accept without making every plan depend on their hands being free.

When Iris asked her to visit the kitchen, Dove agreed to one morning and kept the afternoon she had promised herself. She ate a cold sandwich on her own bed, read several pages of a book, and fell asleep with the fan moving air across her ankles.

Nobody came to collect a favor. Nobody told her she should have been doing something useful.

She woke to Thorne sitting beside her, watching her with an expression so soft that she had to blink a few times before speaking.

"What?"

"You looked comfortable."

"Try not to sound shocked. I’m becoming good at it."

He kissed her forehead and handed over the water she reached for. She wanted to keep all of this, selfishly and without apologizing for it. The room, the ease, the ability to wake up and find the people she loved close enough to annoy.

Later, she gave both husbands another hour to themselves while she sorted the last drawer. She found a shirt she had thought lost, a clean pair of socks, and absolutely no patience for the noise coming from the practice yard down the street.

At first, she ignored it. Then someone shouted Ash’s name.

Dove put down the folded shirt. Thorne and Edrik had gone out together, and neither had mentioned an errand requiring the dragon.

She left the shirt on the bed and stepped toward the door.

A hard crash came from the yard, followed by a voice shouting for somebody to get up.

Dove broke into a run. She knew that voice, and it belonged to neither of her husbands.