As in all-weapons-that-had-been-on-the-bureau gone.
Jumping from the bed, she nearly bolted naked out of their room, but managed at the last moment to pull on a robe that hung on the back of the door.
The house was quiet. The shutters still down. No one—
The scent of bacon drifted into her nose and she exhaled in relief. Telling herself not to be so paranoid, she forced herself to walk like a normal, sane person down to the kitchen . . . where she found Nexi facing the stove, cooking up some strips of heaven in a pan.
Ahmare tried not to rush to conclusions when Duran was nowhere to be found in the galley.
“I guess I slept in,” she said in what she hoped was a calm, conversational tone.
In her head, she was screaming, WHERE IS HE!
“Mattress okay for you then?” the Shadow murmured.
“Oh, yes. Thank you.”
When Nexi didn’t turn around, when she just poked at the sizzling maple-smoked bacon in the pan with a fork, the pain in Ahmare’s chest came back.
“When did he leave?” she asked baldly.
“Fifteen minutes ago. Twenty at the most.”
Ahmare stumbled over and took a stool. “He didn’t wake me.”
“I told him not to go.” The Shadow finally pivoted around, crossing her arms, that fork sticking out of her fist. “I told him he was an asshole. Look, he’s been through a lot. You can’t imagine what it was like in the colony with his father. What happened there. Even if he told you some of it, he didn’t tell you everything, and then there was Chalen. It’s too much to hold in one male’s head.” Nexi touched her temple. “Too much to hold in anyone’s head. He loves you. He just needs time. He doesn’t know who he is right now. He’ll be back, though.”
“How can you be sure?”
“He’s bonded with you,” the Shadow said wryly. “Or do you think that’s cologne he’s sprayed himself with?”
Ahmare thought about the compression of hours. And her sense that she had known these people her entire life when in fact that was only true about her brother downstairs.
“How is Ahlan?” she asked roughly.
“Great. I mean—he’s recovering. He’s asleep. I mean, I checked on him—”
“It’s okay.” Ahmare tried to smile through the agony in her heart. “I think I know where it’s going between the two of you. My brother can be a lot to deal with, but something tells me you can handle him.”
The Shadow smiled a little and turned back to the bacon, flipping the strips over one by one. “You better believe I can.”
Ahmare got off the stool, pushing it back under the counter. Then she cleared her throat and started to make some excuse about returning to her bedroom— “He’s going to be back.” Nexi looked over her shoulder. “But he has unfinished business, business that will never be finished. There’s a reason why people ahvenge their dead. It’s a brutal way of dealing with grief, but the shit works.”
“Do you think his father died in the mountain’s collapse?”
“I didn’t see him. You did. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
Back in their bedroom, Ahmare plumped up the pillows and propped herself against the headboard. Tucking her knees into her chest, she stared across at the bureau on which Duran’s weapons had been laid.
Like if she kept looking over there, they would mysteriously reappear and mean that he was still in bed with her.
Intellectually, she knew what the Shadow had said made sense. After her parents had been killed, she had roamed the nights, all pent-up anger and aggression with no target for her to take her emotions out on.
She’d even gone so far as to try and hunt lessers in the alleyways of Caldwell. As if she knew what she was doing, as if she were a member of the Brotherhood. So stupid and dangerous. But her grief and rage had been so great that her body had been a bowl overflowing, the container of her skin insufficient to hold all that consumed her.
She knew exactly how Duran felt.
And she told herself she had to believe in what they had. But that now sounded ridiculous. They were on, what, night three of a relationship now?
Anger swelled in the midst of her sadness as she remembered what his father had looked like, the crazy eyes, the long, white-streaked hair, the greedy way he’d stared at her.
The automatic shutters began to lift, the daytime panels retracting slowly from the glass on the exterior as they rolled into their storage units at the top of the headers.
She looked over to the window. As she’d left the lights off, she could see clearly into the distance, to the wide mountain-valley view that seemed to suggest all corners of the world could be seen— A figure was right at her window.
And the hulking form was revealed inch by inch by the rising shutter.
She knew who it was before she saw all of him, and she jumped back in the sheets.
Duran’s father was standing just outside the glass, sure as if she had conjured him with her memories, a spectral manifestation of the loathing she felt for him.