Chapter 111 The Dead Have Names

Chapter 111 The Dead Have Names
Elias

“You did this with Mireya too.”
The jar in my hand nearly slipped.
I caught it before it struck the shelf and set it down more carefully than it deserved.
Across the room, Lyanna was still watching me.
Asha had already returned to folding linen as though she had not just spoken a name I had spent years learning not to hear unexpectedly.
“Asha.”
She glanced at me.
“Outside.”
Her eyebrows rose, but she put the linen down.
I did not look at Lyanna again before opening the door.
Asha followed me into the garden and pulled it shut behind her.
“What the hell was that?”
“What was what?”
“You know exactly what.”
“I mentioned Mireya.”
“I noticed.”
Asha folded her arms.
The afternoon had cooled while we were inside. Wind moved between the cottages and stirred the herbs hanging beneath her eaves, carrying the bitter smell of whatever she had left drying near the wall.
I walked several steps away from the door before turning back.
“You had no reason to mention her.”
“I had an excellent reason.”
“To Lyanna?”
“I wasn't speaking to Lyanna.”
“She was sitting ten feet away.”
“Yes, Elias. I recently discovered that the supposedly deaf woman sitting ten feet away can hear remarkably well.”
I stared at her.
Asha stared back.
I did not appreciate the irony.
“You could have waited.”
“For what?”
“Until she wasn't there.”
“So that the next time I said Mireya's name, you could drag me into another garden and whisper about her?”
My jaw tightened.
Asha tilted her head toward the cottage.
“That would certainly make the woman inside less curious.”
“This is none of her concern.”
The words left too quickly.
Asha's expression changed.
I looked away.
Mireya had been dead for years. There had been no reason to speak about her on the road, no natural opening in which such old wounds had belonged.
That did not mean I wanted her name thrown casually into a room while Lyanna watched me react to it.
Asha sighed.
“I wasn't trying to make trouble.”
“You have an unusual method of demonstrating that.”
“I made an observation.”
“You compared them.”
“No.”
My eyes went back to hers.
“You did.”
“I said you were doing something you used to do with Mireya. That is not the same thing.”
“It sounded remarkably similar.”
Asha unfolded her arms.
“I wasn't saying Lyanna reminds me of Mireya.”
“Good.”
“I was saying you do.”
That stopped me.
For several seconds, only the wind moved between us.
Asha watched me with the particular patience she had always reserved for moments when she believed I was being deliberately stupid.
I disliked that look even more now than I had at fifteen.
“What exactly am I doing?” I asked.
“You keep count.”
I frowned.
“How much she eats. Whether she sleeps. How far she walks before she starts breathing harder. Which pains she mentions and which ones she tries not to.”
“She is nearly seven months pregnant and travelling through the mountains while soldiers search for her.”
“I am aware.”
“Then perhaps paying attention is sensible.”
“It is.”
I waited.
Asha's mouth tightened slightly.
“That wasn't criticism.”
“It sounded like criticism.”
“Everything sounds like criticism to you when you don't like where the conversation is going.”
I rubbed a hand over my face.
“Asha.”
She softened a little.
“You did the same thing with Mireya. The circumstances were different, but you were the same.”
My shoulders stiffened.
“Lyanna is not Mireya.”
“I know.”
The answer came immediately.
I looked at her.
Asha held my gaze.
“I never said she was.”
Something in my chest eased, though I had not realized until then that it had tightened.
Asha glanced toward the cottage.
“What happened with Mireya frightened you.”
I said nothing.
“That doesn't mean whatever is happening with Lyanna came from her.”
My jaw tightened again.
“Nothing is happening.”
Asha looked at me.
I looked back.
Her eyebrows rose.
“Don't.”
“I haven't said anything.”
“You are about to.”
“Actually, I was going to ask a question.”
“That is usually worse.”
Asha ignored that.
“What is Lyanna to you?”
“No.”
She blinked.
“I asked a question.”
“And I declined to answer it.”
“Because you don't know?”
“Because whatever answer I gave you would become unbearable within minutes.”
“That is deeply unfair.”
“It is based on twenty years of evidence.”
Her mouth opened.
Then closed.
I almost smiled.
Almost.
Asha looked past me toward the cottage instead.
“You're very protective of her.”
“Yes.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“It is the one you are getting.”
She studied me for another moment.
I refused to give her anything else.
Eventually, her expression changed.
Not amusement.
Mercy, perhaps.
That was considerably more dangerous.
She did not press.
Instead, she reached down and picked up the empty basin she had carried outside earlier.
“Fine.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Fine?”
“You don't want to answer.”
“That has never stopped you before.”
“I'm becoming wiser with age.”
“You're twenty-eight.”
“Ancient.”
Under other circumstances, I might have argued.
My attention had already drifted toward the cottage.
Asha noticed.
For once, she had enough sense not to comment.
“She heard the name,” she said instead.
“I know.”
“She saw your face too.”
I knew that as well.
My hand tightened briefly at my side.
There were things Lyanna had kept from me because she had believed silence safer than truth. I had resented her for some of them long after I understood why she had done it.
We had spent weeks learning how much damage grew in the spaces neither of us would enter.
I could hardly turn around now and construct another one deliberately.
Asha seemed to read enough from my expression.
“Go inside.”
I looked at her.
“I wasn't waiting for permission.”
“Of course not.”
I turned toward the cottage.
The latch felt cold beneath my hand.
For one moment, I stayed there.
Mireya belonged to a part of my life Lyanna knew nothing about.
That alone was not a betrayal. There were years behind each of us that the other had never seen, names neither of us had heard and wounds that had nothing to do with the road we were travelling now.
But Lyanna had heard this name.
She had seen what it did to me.
If I refused to explain it now, Mireya would become something else entirely.
A question.
A suspicion.
Another silence large enough to fill with whatever fear offered first.
I opened the door.
Warmth met me immediately.
Lyanna was still near the hearth with Asha's blanket across her legs and the cup of herbs between her hands.
Her eyes lifted when I entered.
She did not ask where I had gone.
She did not ask who Mireya was.
That made it harder.
I crossed the room and pulled the chair beside her closer.
Lyanna watched me sit.
The cup remained untouched between her palms.
I rested my forearms on my thighs and stared briefly into the fire.
There were easier ways to begin.
None of them felt honest.
I looked at her.
“Mireya was my fiancée.”