Page 31

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

An intimate invitation.

The words hadn’t left H?ra’s head since Madeleine had first uttered them.

By asking Madeleine into a bedroom, H?ra had invited intimacy.

As Madeleine had put it—with surprising forthrightness—sex.

H?ra kept her eyes firmly on the road ahead and tried not to think about having sex with Madeleine, possibly in the passenger seat where she now sat.

It wasn’t easy. In the past month, H?ra had learned about a new kind of torture.

It wasn’t the agony of waiting she’d known in the sea, hoping to take to the skies.

It wasn’t the incalculable pain of being attacked by her own family.

It wasn’t the dull misery that had beset her during her first months living on land.

There was nothing dull about this torture.

It was sharp, relentless, alive.

And it didn’t always feel like pain.

Sometimes it even felt good—a warm pulse between her thighs that had H?ra “seeing to herself” more often.

Most nights, in fact.

She’d lie in bed in the dead of night, touching herself and thinking of Madeleine.

She’d imagine that they hadn’t been interrupted in the alley.

Instead, they’d had perfect privacy while H?ra finished what she’d started: unzipping Madeleine’s then-untorn jacket, slipping her hands under Madeleine’s sweater, finding what there was to find.

All the while, Madeleine would have kept grinding on H?ra’s thigh, seeking release with those helpless whimpers coming from the back of her throat.

She’d have found it.

Madeleine would have shuddered in H?ra’s arms with the same ecstasy H?ra found from her own touch.

Then she would have relaxed as H?ra always did, panting, her muscles going limp.

She’d have gone loose in H?ra’s arms, happy and grateful.

She’d have said?—

“Are we going to park somewhere else?”

H?ra blinked.

They were nearly in the village.

So much for focusing on her surroundings.

And she’d driven right past the four spaces set aside for public parking.

Thornhill didn’t have a proper car park.

Not much need for one.

“I’ll park at the curb in front of that café,” H?ra said, as if she’d intended to do this all along.

“The Sunrise. I can fit between those two vehicles.” She squinted.

“That van is Jimmy Howisher’s. He’s been late on our deliveries. Jonathan’ll be cross if it’s because he’s been here drinking coffee.”

Madeleine didn’t reply.

She was probably looking at her mobile or something.

H?ra glanced over to find Madeleine staring at the Sunrise Café as the car approached it, her eyes wide and her face pale.

H?ra began to slow. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Madeleine swallowed visibly.

“I’m just not sure the car will fit there. You should find a space with more room. A couple of blocks down, maybe.”

A challenge.

H?ra’s skin already prickled with the urge to meet it.

“Can’t fit? You watch.”

“But...we don’t want to damage…”

“Have faith.” Haera pulled up parallel to the van and reversed her car.

“My sense of perception is excellent.” She checked the mirrors as she backed into the space—which, admittedly, would be a tight fit.

“Not as good as when I’m in my real form, mind you. Then I can see from all sides.”

She waited for Madeleine to say a horse would have a hard time driving a car in other ways.

Madeleine didn’t. She was silent.

H?ra focused on backing the car expertly into the space.

When she put it in park, she gave Madeleine a triumphant grin.

“See? Perfect.”

“Let’s go.” Madeleine unbuckled her seat belt with unsteady hands.

She wasn’t looking at H?ra.

“Hurry, please.”

Now H?ra’s skin prickled for a different reason.

Madeleine wasn’t just upset.

She was afraid. H?ra could smell it on her.

But why? There was nothing to hurt her here.

No threats were visible on the street.

H?ra’s lips pulled back over her teeth anyway; her fingers curled tightly on the steering wheel.

Better than reaching out and grabbing the frightened woman trying to escape the car.

It was too late anyway.

Madeleine was out of the car, and there was nothing for H?ra to do but follow her.

As she did, she glanced in the window of the Sunrise Café.

To her surprise, she saw a man with black hair and brown skin looking through the window too, but not at H?ra.

Rather, he was looking after Madeleine with two raised eyebrows.

He’d clearly noticed her haste.

That wasn’t remarkable.

You noticed people when they seemed distressed.

But something about the man’s expression stopped H?ra in her tracks.

He didn’t just look curious—he seemed a little upset himself.

He frowned.

H?ra realized that she and Madeleine had never been to the Sunrise Café during their little trips to the village, or even gone near it.

That was surprising, since Thornhill was so small.

But Madeleine always cut across the street or chose routes that went other directions, sometimes taking side streets even if they were less efficient.

Had she been avoiding this place?

The man glanced up and saw H?ra looking at him.

His frown vanished, replaced with surprise.

Knowing she ought to chase Madeleine, H?ra spent a precious few moments staring back at him.

Her brows drew together, and knowledge shivered through her.

This man had recognized Madeleine.

Had he frightened her?

If so, there was no time for the dire retribution he deserved.

H?ra would make sure he suffered it later.

For now, she had to chase Madeleine down.

Dallying at the window meant she had to jog rather than walk.

She caught Madeleine at the end of the block, in front of the Cliffside Store.

She caught her literally, in fact, grabbing her elbow before she could cross the street in front of an oncoming car.

The car honked and drove past.

“One car on the whole street and you try to get hit by it?” H?ra snapped.

Her heart raced unpleasantly in her chest. That had been too close.

“I looked the wrong way. It’s still a habit.” Madeleine kept her eyes turned from H?ra.

“Thanks for catching me.”

H?ra kept Madeleine’s elbow in her grip.

That might not be wise, but she couldn’t do anything else.

It had been a while now since Madeleine had attempted to run from her.

She’d forgotten how it had felt: like being marooned.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Don’t say, ‘Nothing.’”

Madeleine laughed roughly.

“I know better. Let’s just walk for a second, okay? I’ll gather my thoughts.”

What an odd way to put it, as if thoughts could fall out of your pocket to be retrieved.

The first time H?ra picked up something with human hands had been the night she’d offered Jonathan a gold coin.

It had been solid and wet in her palm.

How much had changed since then.

How little had changed, too.

She couldn’t tell what had upset the human at her side.

“Where are we going?” she asked as they began to walk.

To her astonishment, Madeleine said, “Back to the beach.”

H?ra stopped in her tracks.

“Beach? You mean our beach?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

They hadn’t returned to that beach since the night H?ra had met Madeleine in horse form.

It seemed like a bad idea, as it always had.

But H?ra had grown bolder about being near the water lately.

It was daytime, when most Each-uisge were forbidden to come to the surface.

She’d broken the rules herself, but nobody else had, that she’d ever heard of.

The same conditions applied.

Only Asgall, Beathag, or Calder would recognize her like this.

The odds were minuscule that any of them would come above the surface, today, in front of that particular stretch of beach.

And Madeleine wanted to go.

H?ra only had one question.

“Why?”

Madeleine wrapped her arms around herself, keeping her eyes focused straight ahead as she marched in the direction of the beach.

“I don’t know. I just need to be there. Where we were, where…” She trailed off.

When she didn’t finish, H?ra said, “Where we met?”

Madeleine nodded.

“Will you be safe there?”

H?ra took in a deep breath.

“Yes. I think so.”

They said nothing else until they’d reached the seawall and climbed the stairs down to the rocky shore.

How strange to think that less than a month ago, they’d met here in the dark and their lives had changed for a second time.

Only a moon’s turn since they’d reunited?

Impossible. It seemed she and Madeleine had been bound to one another since the creation of the world, whoever had done that.

As they reached the shore, H?ra felt herself grow stronger.

Here, she’d be able to pick up four Madeleines if she wanted to.

Not that she’d get the chance.

There could never be another Madeleine.

Today, others were on the beach.

Not close: a man and woman standing by the water in brightly colored jackets—tourists, probably.

Farther down the beach, a bearded old man walked by himself, his hands in his coat pockets.

His shuffling steps reminded H?ra of how Jonathan used to be.

To the left, Jorsay’s cliffs loomed in jagged layers of sandstone with moss-covered outcroppings.

Slippery rocks rose from the ocean floor above the water’s surface.

They were like the cliffs and rocks H?ra had hidden behind when she’d eavesdropped on Madeleine talking to that juvenile, Ava, about what it was like to be a nun.

The sound had carried clearly to her, Madeleine’s voice enchanting her as surely as any witch’s spell.

It seemed so long ago.

“What happened in the Sunrise Café?” she asked.

Madeleine looked at her, wide-eyed.

“There was a man inside who watched you,” H?ra clarified.

“I think he recognized you. He looked upset.”

Madeleine groaned and hid her hands in her face.

H?ra’s breath caught.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No,” Madeleine mumbled into her palms. “I hurt him, I think. And I hurt myself too.”

“What?”

Madeleine lowered her hands and told H?ra of the day she’d arrived, when she’d ordered food at the Sunrise Café and reacted poorly to learning that the owners were gay men.

She spoke of her panic, followed quickly by humiliation and regret.

“I know what they thought of me,” she said.

“I haven’t been able to face going back.” She snorted.

“Even though that sausage roll was amazing.”

“What do you mean, what they thought of you?”

“That I’m a homophobe. You know that word? Someone who hates gay people. That’s what they thought I was.” Madeleine seized the top of her zip, which was already pulled up to her chin.

“They were right.”

The back of H?ra’s neck prickled.

The word “gay” felt heavy, significant to the moment.

Madeleine hadn’t used it since their passionate encounter in the alley.

H?ra had figured it was just part of her desire for them not to become sexually intimate in general, but it had to be more than that, if using it made her look so miserable.

It seemed they were talking about it now.

So talk about it she would.

“You don’t hate anyone,” she said.

“You’re not made that way. Besides, you told me you’re gay, didn’t you? So that would mean you’d hate yourself, and that’s absurd.”

The logic seemed foolproof to her.

Madeleine would realize she wasn’t a homophobe because she couldn’t possibly hate herself.

How could anyone hate her?

Madeleine pressed her lips together and closed her eyes.

For all the world, she looked as if someone was about to strike her and she was just waiting for the blow.

I will protect you from blows, H?ra thought, nobody shall strike you while I’m here .

“Maybe it’s absurd,” Madeleine said softly.

“Maybe it’s prideful and un-Christian. But it’s still true.”

H?ra boggled.

Madeleine could have said nothing more unbelievable.

As such, H?ra could not believe it.

“Hate yourself! For that ?”

Maybe Madeleine just didn’t have a grasp on the concept of hatred.

She was too kind. If she knew how H?ra felt about Asgall, Calder, or even her mother sometimes, she’d know the difference.

“It’s wrong,” Madeleine said.

H?ra scowled. Loads of things were wrong, but she couldn’t imagine why this was one of them.

Wasn’t H?ra resigned to her attraction to someone from another species ?

It couldn’t be wrong when it felt so natural.

“I know your books say it’s bad. I just don’t know why that matters so much.”

Madeleine kept her eyes shut.

“I couldn’t expect you to.”

“No,” H?ra said sharply.

“It’s not just because I’m not human. Those men in the café must not care about your books either. Neither do a lot of other humans. If your books and saints and whatever else are more important than people…”

“They’re not!” Madeleine cried, opening her eyes.

They were full of anguish.

“That’s the point! You can’t separate the Scriptures from people. They teach us how to live with each other. How to behave, how to be .”

H?ra turned her eyes away from what she didn’t understand and toward what she did.

Ahead of her, the North Sea churned, iron gray beneath the clouds.

Whitecaps crested the waves that carried sediment to shore, blending sea and land.

“H?ra?”

Even the plea in Madeleine’s voice couldn’t get H?ra to turn her eyes from the sea.

It was great, it was powerful, it was greatly and powerfully lonely.

“My kind don’t live in community as humans do,” she said eventually.

“We only cluster for safety. We hunt and travel as a herd. Everyone knows their place. There was never a place for me.”

Madeleine’s hand landed gently on her upper arm.

The sea sighed.

“There’s no music or entertainment,” H?ra continued.

“The closest I came to idle conversation was my brother’s taunts. I sought often to be alone—it was less lonely than being with the rest of my kind. It’s different here. I’m not lonely with Jonathan. Or with you.”

She turned, finally, to Madeleine, who looked up at her with wide eyes.

“I would still rather go back there,” she said, “than live by your books and hate what I am.”

Madeleine’s hand gripped H?ra’s arm, as if in a spasm.

She looked as if she couldn’t speak.

Just as well. H?ra was out of words herself.

She couldn’t continue with the truth: that she would have to return to the sea eventually and either seek to live alone as a rogue Each-uisge until she couldn’t fend for herself anymore, or face execution by the herd.

A lonely end, no matter how you looked at it.

But she would know who she was and who she’d been, and she’d have no regrets.

“I’ve learned so much,” she told Madeleine.

“I’ve learned that life isn’t what I always thought it was. I wish you would too. Then…”

Madeleine blinked once, then twice.

Her eyes were wet. As H?ra watched, a tear streaked down from one of them, down her cheek.

She choked, “Then what?”

There were so many options.

Then you could share this world with me.

Then we could be together, for a time.

Then I could have what I want, which is…

which is…

“Then you could be happy,” H?ra said, her voice quiet with the truth.

“That’s what I want.”

Madeleine gasped.

She clapped a hand over mouth, and more tears flowed from her eyes while her shoulders shook.

Madeleine’s pain burned H?ra, as painfully as fire must. This time, she’d inflicted it.

One month ago, on a darkened street, Madeleine had told her, You already ate me up.

There’s only bones left .

Without permission, swift as thought allowed, H?ra wrapped her arms around Madeleine’s bones and flesh, pulling her close.

Madeleine clung back, digging her fingertips into H?ra’s back while she pressed her face into H?ra’s shoulder and wept.

“I don’t deserve to be happy,” she sobbed.

“Why not?” H?ra tightened her grip.

If only she could pull Madeleine into her own body somehow and keep her safe from these awful ideas.

“I’ve hurt people?—”

“Who?”

“And I’ve done wrong?—”

“How?”

“Because I’m bad, I’m just bad, that’s all!” Madeleine dug her fingertips into H?ra’s back even harder.

It hurt, but it couldn’t hurt nearly as much as what seemed to torture Madeleine now.

“I’ve never been what I’m supposed to be!”

H?ra choked back a gasp.

Beathag had said nearly the same thing right before she’d tried to murder her own offspring.

She’d said it about H?ra as if it were the foulest curse she knew.

Now Madeleine used those words as cudgels against herself.

“That’s not true,” H?ra said fiercely.

“You’re kind. You’re generous. Aren’t you supposed to be those things?”

Madeleine didn’t seem to hear her.

“I hate what I’ve been taught, I hate it, and that’s wrong too, and that’s—t-that’s—” She shook her forehead rapidly against H?ra.

“Oh God!”

H?ra’s nose rested against Madeleine’s hair.

This close, she could smell Madeleine better than ever.

It was the most perfect scent in the world, the most tantalizing.

How could Madeleine believe any part of her was bad, wrong, or anything less than perfectly beautiful?

If H?ra had been wronged by her kin, Madeleine had been poorly served by her faith.

No one should have dared to make her feel this way.

While Madeleine cried in her arms, she looked around.

The man and woman at the water’s edge were watching them, but at H?ra’s glare, they quickly turned away.

The old man was nearly to the end of the beach now.

“If that’s what you hate,” she said, “then what do you love?”

Madeleine took a deep, shaky breath, and let it go.

She did it again, a couple more times, while her trembling slowed.

Her face was still pressed against H?ra.

“I love springtime,” she said after a moment.

“When I see the first crocus or daffodil. I love my coffee in the morning. I love starting a new piece of embroidery, all the possibility of the blank fabric.”

These did not seem like significant things, but plainly they were significant to Madeleine.

H?ra waited for more, trying to do so patiently.

“I love singing, I don’t think I’ve told you that.” Her voice was muffled.

“I love the first day of school, getting to know my students. I love the farmer’s market Becca and I go to sometimes. I love Becca, I really should call her soon. I love so many people I haven’t seen in so long. People who’ve gone, and I pray I’ll see them again, I love them too.”

H?ra said into Madeleine’s hair, “Even if you don’t see them again, you still loved them.”

“Ah!” Madeleine pressed her face hard into H?ra’s shoulder again, but it was only the truth.

H?ra had spent years waiting for Sister Madeleine to return to her.

But if she never had, then H?ra would still have had the memory of their meeting on this very beach.

She understood that now.

She stroked the back of Madeleine’s head.

And, as she had seen Jonathan and the farmhands do with upset animals, she gently hummed.

Madeleine was no animal, but she was H?ra’s to hold nevertheless.

“What else do you love?” she whispered into the shell of Madeleine’s ear.

It was cold from the wind.

Madeleine shivered and exhaled again.

She stepped back a little, although not out of H?ra’s arms, and wiped the tears from her face.

She looked into H?ra’s eyes, sniffled, and bit her bottom lip.

For a moment, H?ra’s lungs—which could hold more air than a human’s—couldn’t function.

Her eyes couldn’t either, since even her peripheral vision was gone, and Madeleine’s face was all she could see.

Madeleine said hoarsely, “No, it’s not like that. I’ve only known you for a month. I don’t know how to describe it. Just that…” She placed her hand over H?ra’s human-sized heart.

Maybe she could feel it slamming against H?ra’s human-sized ribs.

“For years, I thought you were an angel,” Madeleine said.

“Or I hoped you were. Church doctrine says everyone has an angel who’s assigned to us, who protects us, and I thought…if you were my angel, then maybe I was all right.”

“You are all?—”

“And now I know you’re not, but it’s like I opened a door I couldn’t close. I keep questioning . I keep wanting who I am, what I am, to be okay, because I’m so tired of fighting myself.”

Why in the Great Mare’s name would Madeleine want to be anything other than her generous self?

H?ra said through her teeth, “I’m not an angel. I said so.”

“I know! But you’ve been with me for years. Wherever I went. Now we’re here, together, and I want you with me all the time—I don’t understand it, it’s like you’re part of me, even though you can’t possibly be when we’re not even the same species .”

H?ra wanted to cry out that it didn’t matter, but she couldn’t say a word.

Not now, when Madeleine was saying what H?ra had dreamed of for so long.

It was exactly how she felt too, and she couldn’t find the words to say so.

“But that’s not love,” Madeleine continued.

“At least not like I’ve ever understood it. It’s something else, isn’t it?”

It was hunger.

H?ra had always known that, and it wasn’t the same as love.

Or was it? Hunger could be sated.

You could rend your prey to pieces and feed yourself to bursting, and it would be enough.

It was impossible to have enough of Madeleine.

That…might be love. No, it must be.

One sort of love, anyway.

H?ra had learned, during her time here, that there were supposed to be different sorts of love that meant different things.

It hadn’t occurred to her to apply that idea to herself.

“And you? Can you love?” Madeleine sounded—and looked—desperate as she voiced the question in H?ra’s mind.

“That is, I know you can. But what do you love?”

H?ra held back the most obvious answer—the word “you” that Madeleine wouldn’t believe.

She felt unsteady inside as she pondered the question and sought easy answers that wouldn’t frighten either Madeleine or herself.

She tucked a loose strand of hair behind Madeleine’s ear, and thought she would say, Rainbows , or hunting, or the power of the storm .

She heard herself say, “Jonathan.”

Her breath caught in shock, but Madeleine didn’t look shocked at all.

In fact, her face softened, and some of the distress left her eyes.

“Yes,” she said softly, as if it were obvious.

It was the farthest thing from obvious.

H?ra thought, I didn’t know that.

I didn’t know.

But she loved Jonathan’s patience, his persistence, and his kindness.

She loved how he’d set out the salt for her tea on the second time she’d visited.

She loved how he’d put a pillow and duvet on the sofa for her on the night he’d brought her home, battered and grieving.

She loved his white beard.

She loved how he loved her too, because he must, he must, it was the only explanation for what they were to one another.

All told, that added up to loving…

“Jonathan,” H?ra repeated numbly.

“I love him.”

“And he loves you.” Madeleine’s voice was full of certainty now.

Certainty must be nice.

H?ra looked toward the sea again, where her kin were, where Jonathan was not.

Where there was no farm, or sunlight, or rainbows, or Madeleine.

Once, she had meant to drag Madeleine with her under the waves.

Now that wouldn’t happen either.

She squeezed her eyes shut before she could begin to cry too.

Maybe Madeleine had felt like this when she’d realized she was attracted to other females.

Something out of the order she’d been taught to believe in, and something that couldn’t be changed.

Madeleine’s hand touched her cheek, brushing over it with the back of her knuckles.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

The self-recrimination was gone from her voice, replaced with soft concern.

H?ra already knew how kind her eyes would be, if she looked at them.

“They never told me I could love,” she choked.

“Not this way. I could only take or be taken. It was sharkshite. It was all sharkshite. I didn’t know until now, until Jonathan, until—until—” She looked wildly down at Madeleine, whose eyes were as compassionate as H?ra had known they’d be.

“Until you. ”

Madeleine grabbed H?ra’s shoulders, as if to keep her feet.

After a moment, she said, “This is what we’re supposed to learn.”

“What?”

“I mean, this is it. I think?” Madeleine pressed her face again to H?ra’s shoulder.

“No, I know it is. This is why we were brought together, to learn this.”

H?ra dug her hands into Madeleine’s hair again, her fingers shaking.

“Learn what?” Water dripped from her eyes down her cheeks.

One drop touched her lips.

She tasted salt that should have been familiar but wasn’t.

Tears tasted different from the sea.

Maybe she was sick of salt.

Madeleine’s arms slid down from H?ra’s shoulders to around her waist. She looked into H?ra’s eyes with an expression so earnest that it made H?ra’s hands release their fierce grip on her hair.

“I think,” Madeleine said slowly, “that there’s so much about the world I don’t know. This world and the next one. The last month’s taught me that. And you told me yourself that doubt isn’t a bad thing. It’s how we learn.” She took in a deep, shaking breath.

“You’re brave. You’re so brave. I have to be too. And that means…”

She hesitated, and H?ra couldn’t parse the meaning of the pause.

Everything needed to be spelled out clearly for her just now.

“Means what?”

“Taking a risk,” Madeleine whispered.

“A big one. Because if I don’t…maybe I’ll never be happy. Maybe I’d die without ever being happy. Or free.”

“What does that mean?” H?ra pleaded.

Happiness and freedom might not be the same for Madeleine as they would be for her.

“What would make you free? Or happy?”

Madeleine looked into her eyes.

Her chest didn’t move against H?ra’s; she was holding her breath.

And without a word, she reached up and traced her fingertips over the edge of H?ra’s jaw, back and forth.

“This,” she said shakily.

“Trying this.”

H?ra couldn’t reply.

She could only lower her forehead, slowly, until it touched Madeleine’s.

She closed her eyes.

“Oh, H?ra,” Madeleine murmured.

Her other hand slid up and down H?ra’s back.

“We’ll figure it out. We can do it together. Don’t you think?”

I can do anything with you, except survive the sea.

H?ra couldn’t say that.

It didn’t seem like the right moment to explain her inevitably grisly fate.

Besides, it was still true: whatever happened in the future, they had right now.

H?ra would have no regrets.

Especially not about turning her back on an opportunity.

She tilted her head.

Just a little. She made a soft, small sound, and there was wanting in it as she touched Madeleine’s chin with her human fingertips.

“I want to learn about love,” she whispered.

Madeleine trembled again.

Her breath was warm on H?ra’s lips as she said, “Me too.”

There, before witnesses—the humans, the shore, the sea—they kissed.

Madeleine had been sure that she lacked the courage to return to the Sunrise Café.

She’d avoided it as much as possible, always walking on the other side of the street even if it meant going out of her way.

And, today, actually running away from it as if it had been on fire.

You don’t lack the courage, she told herself.

You don’t lack anything you need .

She lacked certainty, yes.

But she didn’t need that.

H?ra’s hand was in her own, and it sufficed.

The memory of H?ra’s kiss was on her lips.

It had been different from the other kisses they’d shared: soft and sweet.

When their mouths had parted, H?ra sighed and rubbed Madeleine’s nose with her own.

They’d laughed, both of them sounding surprised.

Joy had bubbled in Madeleine’s chest: a feeling she could never have allowed herself only twenty-four hours ago, when she’d still clung to her view of how the world worked, in spite of all the new evidence that said otherwise.

She’d thought: This is what it’s supposed to be like.

This is how it’s supposed to feel .

As she pushed the café door open, the bell rang.

Arjun was standing behind the counter, taking another customer’s order.

He lifted his eyebrows when he saw her but said nothing as he rang it up.

Madeleine led H?ra to the counter, and as they reached it, the customer took his coffee and walked away.

Arjun looked at them impassively.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning,” Madeleine said, before realizing she didn’t have a speech prepared, or even an opening remark.

Righteous determination could only power you so far before you had to say something coherent.

Yet again, she stared at Arjun and tried to think of what to say.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted.

Arjun tilted his head to the side.

“For what?”

His eyes said he knew very well for what .

It was no different from when Madeleine made high school students admit to their transgressions.

She could do the same.

She opened her mouth.

“For not reading the menu before we ordered,” H?ra said.

She slid her arm around Madeleine’s shoulders loosely, her massive power leashed for now.

Madeleine’s face heated as Arjun looked back and forth between them.

“What did you have last time, Madeleine?” H?ra continued.

“The sausage roll?”

Madeleine’s hand crept up to touch H?ra’s where it rested on her shoulder.

It covered the rip where she’d torn Madeleine’s jacket with her teeth.

H?ra’s fingers stiffened.

She clearly anticipated rejection.

She began to move her hand away.

Madeleine placed her own hand over it and held it in place.

“Yes, that’s what I had,” she said, looking at Arjun.

“It was really good. I’d just gotten here, and it was the first thing I tried.” She took a deep breath.

“But I wanted to come back and try something else.”

Arjun looked at H?ra’s hand on Madeleine’s shoulder.

Then his mouth quirked up halfway.

“Never too late to try something new,” he said.

“Especially if it’s something you’ve been wanting to try for a while. Jeremy could tell you so.”

Madeleine blushed again and smiled at someone who was like her and whom she did not have to fear, unless she chose to.

He smiled back.

“We’ll have whatever you suggest,” H?ra told him.

Her thumb rubbed against Madeleine’s shoulder.

Madeleine kept her own hand over H?ra’s, using it to protect the tear beneath.