Chapter 14 14

Chapter 14 14
Chapter Fourteen
Carmen

Dinner was loud in a way I hadn't expected.

Not aggressive loud, not the sharp-edged noise of people performing for each other or jostling for position. Just full, the way a table sounds when people are genuinely comfortable, overlapping conversations and someone laughing too hard at something at the far end and a pair of women near the window arguing cheerfully about something I couldn't follow. Rosaria moved between the kitchen and the table with the efficiency of someone who had done this ten thousand times and found it neither glamorous nor burdensome, just the work.

I ate and listened and tried to orient myself inside it.

The pack stole glances at me with varying degrees of subtlety. A few of the younger ones were almost comically obvious about it, leaning to whisper to each other when they thought I wasn't looking. An older woman across the table caught my eye and smiled, not the careful diplomatic smile of someone managing me, just a real one, and I smiled back before I could think about it.

Bruno was telling a story to the people around him, something involving a river and a stolen cart and what sounded like a catastrophic navigational error, and the table kept erupting around him as he built toward whatever the ending was. He had the natural rhythm of a storyteller, knowing exactly when to pause, when to drop his voice, when to let the silence do the work. I found myself listening despite not knowing any of the people or places involved.

Xavier was watching him too, a faint pull at the corner of his mouth that wasn't quite a smile but was close to it, the expression of someone watching a person they'd known a long time do something familiar.

"He does this every time," said a voice beside me.

I turned. The young woman next to me was perhaps my age, with close-cropped hair and paint-stained fingers and the easy manner of someone who had decided I was interesting rather than threatening. She nodded toward Bruno. "New person at the table, he pulls out the cart story. Never fails."

"Does it have a good ending," I said.

"Terrible ending. That's the point." She held out her hand. "Lucia."

"Carmen."

"I know." She said it without any particular weight, just acknowledgment. "I'm one of the healers here. I did your wrists last night." She glanced at them briefly. "How do they feel."

"Much better. Thank you."

"The wrapping needs changing tomorrow morning. Come find me after breakfast." She reached across me for the bread in a way that managed to be friendly rather than intrusive. "Are you eating enough? Rosaria's food is good but she won't push it on you."

"I'm fine."

"You're being polite."

I looked at her. She was looking back with the straightforward curiosity of someone who asked because they actually wanted to know. "The broth this morning was the best thing I've eaten in two weeks," I said honestly.

Lucia smiled. "I'll tell her. It'll make her day and she'll pretend it doesn't."

Bruno reached the ending of his story and the table collapsed into laughter and he sat back with the satisfied expression of a man who had delivered exactly what he promised. Xavier said something to him low enough that I couldn't hear and Bruno pointed at him and said something back and the people nearest them laughed again.

I looked down the table at Hannibal.

He was sitting quietly, a little outside the natural radius of the conversation around him, eating without tasting it by the look of him. He wasn't sulking. It was more that he didn't know how to be here, in this particular configuration, and he wasn't going to pretend he did. I could see him working at it, the effort of sitting still and taking up an appropriate amount of space and not looking at me.

He looked at me.

I looked back, just for a moment, and then back at my plate.

Lucia had noticed. She said nothing, just refilled her water glass and offered the pitcher to me, and I accepted it and was grateful for the mundane cover of it.

After dinner the table broke apart gradually, people drifting toward the main room or outside or off through the corridors in small clusters. I helped Rosaria carry plates without asking, which made her pause and look at me and then hand me a stack without comment.

In the kitchen she washed and I dried and we worked through it in a quiet that felt easy rather than empty. Outside the kitchen window the night had come in properly, deep and cold, the pines black against a sky that was doing something extraordinary with stars.

"You don't have to do this," Rosaria said.

"I know."

She handed me a bowl. "You said you wanted to be useful."

"Yes."

"There's more to it than the garden and the dishes." She wasn't looking at me, focused on the water. "This pack is going to need to know who you are. Not what you are to Xavier, or what your history is. Who you are." She paused. "That takes time and it takes showing up. You're already doing it."

I dried the bowl and set it on the shelf where she'd shown me.

"Rosaria," I said. "What was he like. Before."

She didn't ask who I meant. She was quiet for a moment, considering. "Harder," she said finally. "Quieter in a way that wasn't peace. Apollo was—" She searched for the word. "Ragged. Like something that had been running too long without rest." She handed me the last dish. "He's still hard. But there's something different since last night. Something settled."

I didn't know what to do with that so I put it aside for later, the way I put most things, in the careful internal space where I kept what needed more time.

We finished the dishes. Outside the stars were outrageous and I stood at the window for a moment looking at them before I followed Rosaria back through the corridor toward the part of the house where Islept, and behind me the sounds of the pack wound slowly down into night.