Chapter 223: Waking in Sage

Chapter 223: Chapter 223: Waking in Sage

Killian woke the way a diver surfaces, slowly, with the sense of having been somewhere very deep.

The ceiling was cream-colored, with a plaster medallion at the center and a faint shimmer of afternoon light that moved across it. He did not know it. He lay still and listened to his own body while it reported in. The headache was gone. So was the hollow ache behind his eyes, and the trembling in his hands. When he flexed his fingers, they closed into a fist with no argument.

Then the room arrived all at once. Sage-green walls. A chair with a folded blanket over its arm. Tall black-framed windows with a garden beyond them, and a faint, steady smell of something simmering downstairs. Barley, he thought, and carrots, and a little pepper.

Penelope’s house. Whenever he came into the space, this was where he slept, and it had begun to feel like somewhere he was allowed to stay.

He turned his head. A glass sat on the nightstand, half full. Beside it lay a clean folded cloth, set at an exact right angle to the edge of the table, the way a person arranges things when they have done it many times.

"Master."

Ziki.

"You are awake."

Apparently.

"You slept for three days. Outside, it has been three minutes."

Good to know.

"Erik has not finished his coffee."

Killian let out a breath and stared at the medallion. His ring lay against his chest on its silver chain, a small cool weight. He closed his hand around it out of habit. Status.

"Your body has recovered. Your reserves are at seventy percent."

That’s higher than I expected.

"Yes." A pause. "Your level has advanced."

Killian went still. Already?

"From level one to level two. It happened on the second night."

He sat up too quickly, and the room tilted before settling. He knew how it worked. A power grew when it was pushed to its edge and then allowed to recover, and combat did it faster than any drill. But he had expected weeks of that, perhaps a month. He had not expected to wake up and find it done. That was quick. I thought it would take far longer.

"I also thought so."

You did?

"I am not required to explain my thoughts."

You just did.

"..."

Killian almost smiled. What did it?

"The water. The hull. The air. The armor. The syrup. Then a boat for eight people." A short silence. "You emptied the well and kept reaching."

That’s the idea.

"It is also how people break." Ziki’s voice stayed flat. "You stood close to that line. I disliked it. Do not do it again."

I’ll try.

"Try harder."

He swung his legs out of bed and sat on the edge with his feet on the cool floor, and tested the new thing inside him. It was not dramatic. He reached for the water in the glass, only to see, and the water answered like a held breath. Cleaner. Quicker. The edges of it came into focus at once, where a week ago he would have had to hunt for them.

What changed?

"Resolution. You feel finer structures. You hold them longer. Cost per move is lower."

And the ceiling?

"Higher. Do not mistake that for permission to spend more." A beat. "The well is larger. It is still a well."

Understood.

"The spring water settled the nausea. It did not refill the well. Sleep did that." Another pause, slightly too long. "Sleep, and supervision."

Supervision.

"..."

Ziki.

"I would rather not say."

Say it.

"You are in her guest room. She cooked. She changed the water in that glass twice a day." Flat. Precise. "She stood at your door seventeen times on the last day. I counted. She took your pulse on most of them."

Killian said nothing.

"I mention it only because you would ask later."

He looked at the glass. The cloth. The blanket on the chair, laid out in case he woke cold. His throat felt strange, and a warmth spread slowly through his chest, the kind that has nothing to do with fever.

Is she nearby?

"In the kitchen. I can hear a spoon."

You can hear a spoon.

"The space is quiet."

He did not know what to do with that.

He had known for a while what he felt. He had admitted it to himself on the dock, with her hand on his wrist, and again in a quiet moment in the space. He was not a man who lied to himself for long. He had already lived one life in which he trusted the wrong people, and the habit of watching had stayed with him.

But feeling a thing and knowing it was returned were two different matters. She had been kind. She had been careful. She had said you pushed yourself too far with her hand on his forehead, and don’t get used to it to the dark window. Those were the actions of someone who cared, but care came in many shapes. A friend could make soup. A comrade could count pulses. Penelope was fierce about her people, and he was one of them now. That did not make him anything else.

She could simply be looking after a colleague, he thought.

"She could," Ziki agreed. "After all, you are only wishing to be her children’s godfather."

Killian closed his eyes. You’re never going to let that go.

"No."

It was one conversation.

"It was a conversation in a mall. I remember."

It was a passing thought.

"You said it out loud."

...Fine.

"..."

Ziki.

"I did not say anything."

He stood. His knees held. He crossed to the window and looked out at the garden, at the turquoise pool and the cypress trees standing like dark candles. Somewhere beyond them, he knew, the fields ran down to a spring that had never once stopped running.

He had never had a home like this in any life. The feeling it gave him was dangerous, because it made him want things.

He turned away from the window and went to find a clean shirt.

He had just pulled off yesterday’s wrinkled one when the door opened a few inches, and Penelope’s voice said, "I thought I heard the floor."

He froze with the shirt half over his head. A pause followed, the length of a held breath. Then the door opened wider.

"Oh," she said.

"Good afternoon," Killian said, muffled, and finished pulling the shirt off, which turned out to be a mistake, because it left him standing in the middle of her guest room with nothing on above the waist. Her eyes went to his face, very quickly, and stayed there with an effort that he found, against his better judgment, charming.

"You’re up," she said.

"I’m up."

"How do you feel?"

"Fine," he said, and then, because she gave him a flat, immediate look, "Truly fine. The headache’s gone. The nausea’s gone. I could probably eat an entire horse."

"I don’t have a horse." Her mouth twitched. "I have soup."

"I’ll take the soup."

"Good." She held her position in the doorway with her hand on the frame, as though it were a boundary she had drawn on the floor. "You slept three days. I wasn’t sure how long you’d go."

"Three days." He said it lightly. "Did I snore?"

"Once."

"Was it terrible?"

"It was... tolerable." The corner of her mouth went up, and she looked at the ceiling briefly, as if it might rescue her. "Lunch is ready when you are. I’ll set the table."

"I’ll shower first. Ten minutes."

"There are towels in the cabinet by the tub. And clean clothes on the chair. Ben left them." She gestured toward the folded pile on the armchair. "They’re about your size."

"Thank you."

She nodded, a little too quickly, and stepped back. Then she paused, one hand still on the door. "Killian?"

"Yes?"

"I’m glad you’re better."

It was a simple sentence. It was not particularly warm, as such things went. But her voice caught a half-second on the last word, and she did not meet his eyes when she said it, and he understood with perfect clarity that she had decided to say it before she opened the door.

"So am I," he said quietly.

"Okay." She backed out. "Ten minutes."

The door clicked shut. He stood there with the shirt in his hand, and the warmth in his chest spread until it found the tips of his ears.

"Master."

Not now.

"Ten minutes."

I know.

"I will be quiet."

You won’t.

"..."

The bathroom was bigger than his first apartment. White marble, gold taps, a soaking tub by a tall window, and a glass-walled shower with a rain head that poured hot water over him like a benediction. He stood under it with his palms flat against the tile and his eyes closed, and for the first time in a long while he let himself imagine something that was not a fight.

It began small. A table in the kitchen downstairs, long and made of old wood, with the light coming slantwise across it. Penelope at the counter in an oversized sweater, her red hair pinned up carelessly, a wooden spoon in one hand. A child sitting on the island with sticky fingers, a girl with amber eyes and a stubborn chin, demanding to know why soup was brown. Penelope laughing, and explaining, and sneaking her a piece of bread when she thought nobody could see.

He could see the whole thing. A second child on his own shoulders, small hands in his hair. A garden. A dragon at the window, and Penelope rolling her eyes at it. Quiet evenings, with the rain going on outside and no one on the other side of the door to fear. Mornings in which he woke, and she was there, and there was nothing to survive but the day.

He realized he was smiling like a fool, with water running into his mouth.

"Master."

Not now.

"You are in a woman’s shower."

I’m aware.

"You are naming her children."

I am not naming them.

"You are on the second one."

Killian opened his eyes. Which one did I pick?

"Marcus."

I did not pick Marcus.

"Then I misheard." A pause. "You stockpiled maternity clothes."

That was practical.

"For a woman you have not asked to dinner."

He closed his eyes again and let the water hit the back of his neck. You’re being cruel.

"I am being accurate. I do not understand why you would furnish the nursery before obtaining the girl."

I’m not furnishing a nursery.

"You have the clothes. You have the toys."

...Those were for trading.

"..."

They were.

"If you say so."

A long breath left him. The fantasy, a moment ago so bright and complete, wobbled and thinned like steam.

You’re right, he admitted.

"I usually am."

It’s still annoying.

"It is meant to be." The flat voice dipped, almost imperceptibly. "I have been with you a long time. I have not seen you want something like this. I would prefer you not ruin it by running ahead of her."

Killian turned off the water. He stood a moment in the quiet, dripping, with his hand pressed against the tile.

Slowly, he thought.

"Slowly," Ziki agreed. "Dry off. The soup is getting cold."

He dried off. He dressed in Ben’s borrowed clothes, which fit better than he had expected, and he stood in front of the mirror and made himself arrange his face into something neutral, something a man might wear who was not planning a family in someone else’s shower.

It took three attempts. The last was nearly convincing.

Then he went down the curving staircase, one hand on the iron railing, toward the smell of soup and the sound of someone setting two bowls on a wooden table.