Chapter 34: May Contain Courtship

"They remember a woman who expected to be obeyed," Ash said. "A pretty face won’t make them forget the rest."

Dove set her coffee down before she could use it badly. "You keep explaining that as if I haven’t spent every day here meeting the rest."

Thorne looked at Ash. "She asked what they remember. Tell her something she can use."

Ash’s attention moved between them, pausing on the small space Thorne had left beside her gate. "Hale carried out your removal. He watched her demand it. He’ll have questions about finding you here together."

"Then he can ask," Dove said. "The answers aren’t yours to supply in advance."

Ash left her with a warning about sharing supply routes and no explanation for the way he had asked about Kael. Dove had no interest in solving his moods for free. She already had a business with terrible margins.

Thorne moved his bench to the nearer side of the hall, then asked whether it was in her way. He said the new men would be using the passage tomorrow. Dove looked at the perfectly empty visitor route and then at him.

"Very threatening, all that nobody," she said. "If you want to sit closer, say that."

His ears warmed beneath the silver waves. "I want to sit closer. I want you to consider me."

The direct answer left her with nowhere convenient to put her eyes. She looked at his collar, which turned out to be a terrible choice because she immediately noticed the muscle beneath it.

"Consider you for what? Please understand that I can only afford one employee, and it’s the horrible voice in my head."

He frowned at the last part. Dove corrected herself before he could ask. "My own terrible business judgment. Continue."

"For company you choose," he said. "For more, if you ever want it. I know you don’t owe me that."

She let the words sit without rescuing either of them with a joke. The hall stayed busy around them, men moving laundry and sealed food between rooms, but the counter felt strangely private for once.

"I’m still angry about the passage," she said.

"I know," he said. "I haven’t forgotten what I did."

"And some days I like having you nearby. Those things don’t fit together neatly, and I don’t want to be hurried because you’ve figured out what you want."

His eyes stayed on her face. "Then I won’t hurry you."

Dove did not promise a future she could not see. She told him he could ask to spend time with her, and that gifts needed to stay small enough she could refuse them without feeling she had ruined his week. He agreed to both, then asked whether she wanted to see what he had brought today.

She laughed, startled by the timing. "You had that waiting through the entire discussion?"

"I didn’t want it to answer for me."

He unfolded a short wool scarf, soft from use and carefully washed. He had traded a buckle he owned for it with another worker. The scarf had a repaired edge, not a hidden hole, and he showed her the repair before letting her choose.

"It’s for the gap at your neck," he explained. "You keep pulling your collar closed near the service door."

Dove rubbed the wool between her fingers. "If you keep noticing my practical problems, Sprout is going to become unbearable."

Thorne looked at her in confusion. "Who is Sprout, and why would he care about the scarf?"

"A personal insult I use for my common sense. It’s small and annoys me."

Thorne looked unconvinced, which was fair. She had said the name carelessly, and she wrote herself a private reminder to stop treating conversations inside her head like they had no effect on the ones outside it. He knew the word now. He did not know what it belonged to.

She accepted the scarf and tied it herself. Thorne watched the loose end settle against her chest, then dragged his eyes up. "I’m trying to look at the scarf," he admitted when she caught him, which was a terrible thing to say if he wanted her to remember how breathing worked.

"Try harder," she told him, then spoiled it by looking at his mouth. Heat climbed her face while the color deepened along his cheekbones. They both looked away, and the silence that followed was somehow worse than flirting.

He turned back first and reached slowly toward her chin. Dove saw the movement, could have stepped away, and stayed exactly where she was. His fingertips had barely lifted her face when someone called for the shopkeeper.

"Coming!" she blurted, then closed her eyes because there were worse answers but not many. Thorne lowered his hand, shoulders shaking with a laugh he was trying very hard to keep private. She served the customer while wondering whether a natural disaster could please arrive at a more useful time.

A visiting supply runner paused to offer a polished hair clasp as a courting gift. He knew the rumors, he told her, but he would rather hear her talk than another man tell him what she was like. Dove refused the clasp politely and sold him an older hairpin instead, paid with a spare button. Thorne stayed seated, though his tail gave one thoroughly unconvincing flick.

Before closing, Dove paid four Favor Coins to keep the third needle threader for her mending, leaving fifteen normal and seventeen Favor. Sprout suggested reviewing the day’s romantic progress. She told it to review its own talent for ruining a perfectly good silence.

Varek brought Terminal’s final arrival notice near closing. Six adults, one covered truck, and a sled trailer loaded with goods. They would unload in the covered service bay after the morning inspection. No visitors were permitted beyond the trade area without an escort.

Dove wrote down the boundary and decided she would carry only a sample of her stock to the bay. Thorne offered to accompany her and accepted when she said she would decide in the morning.

After he left, she noticed a line at the bottom of the notice beneath the list of requested goods. Terminal had asked whether the white fox female was still living at the Warren.