Page 70 of The Storm
* * *
Kyra walked up the stairs,carrying a tray of bread and meat she’d bought in the village the day before. She could hear the rhythmic ticking of a grandfather clock in the hall and muttering from the bedroom she and Leo shared. She tapped on the bottom of the door with her foot.
“What?” Leo called. He sounded cross.
“It’s me. I brought some food.” Leo hadn’t come into the house for lunch. He’d been trimming hooves with his father that morning, then helping with the afternoon milking, then working on an outdoor water tap Artis had mentioned was leaking.
He opened the door with a frown and a smudge of dirt across his forehead. “Kyra, you shouldn’t be…” He grabbed the tray. “Everything up here is a mess.”
“You need to eat something.”
“I’m not very hungry.” He set the tray in the window seat and turned back around. “Sorry.”
She stepped into the bedroom to see boxes stacked in the corner and odds and ends spread on the floor. There were books, a painted shield, and a wooden sword. A pine box was cracked open with sea glass spilling out. Papers and more books. A few clothes and an instrument that looked like a round guitar.
So many small swords. It appeared as if wooden swords and daggers were the only toys allowed.
Leo shoved some of them to the side as he walked back to the door. “Be careful.”
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Since my father refuses to say more than a dozen words to me, I thought I’d go through the things I had in storage here. I have some things…” He glanced at her. Glanced at his feet. “Some things I thought we might want for… the future.”
Kyra sat on the edge of the bed and watched him shove the clutter into semiorganized piles. His eyes were sad even though he tried to put on a cheerful face. Her mate was confused. For the thousandth time, she wished she could do more to comfort him. Ava was teaching her the songs she would need for the mating ritual, but it had been a slow process. Until then, there was no magical comfort she could offer.
“Did you tell your grandfather?” she asked.
Leo paused what he was doing and walked over. He knelt at her feet and spread her knees so he could lean into her. “No. I thought about it. But I haven’t told anyone, not even Max.” He spread his hand over her belly and kissed the space between her breasts. “You said you weren’t sure you wanted them to know.”
“Only at the beginning, but we’re past the most uncertain time. It’s your family. It’s up to you. Would the idea of a great-grandchild be a comfort to Artis or a burden? He is dying; I’m sure of it. Even his soul-voice is quiet.”
“Children were never very interesting to my grandfather,” Leo said. “We were annoyances until we could hold a sword and help on the farm. So I don’t think he would care either way.”
“I think you’re not giving him enough credit.”
“Trust me, I am. Artis isn’t a soft man. He talks more than Peter, but he didn’t kiss our bruises when we were children. Usually he was the one administering them.”
“What?”
“With a sword.” He kicked his foot out at a stack of wooden swords. “Usually with the back of a sword. Or an ax. He preferred fighting with an ax.” Leo took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know what kind of father I will be, Kyra. I will have to ask Malachi many questions. He had an excellent father.”
Kyra’s heart was full to bursting. The fact that Leo doubted what kind of father he would be tore her heart in two.
“You will be the best father.” She ran her fingers through Leo’s thick blond hair as he laid his head in her lap. “Even better than Malachi. I do not know a more caring, gentle, and thoughtful man in the world.”
“Do you think so?” He arched into her hand. “What if I close up like Peter? Maybe he was a good father before my mother died. Do you think Artis was a good father?”
“I know he loved your mother and your aunt very much.”
Leo looked up at her. “Did he talk about them?”
“A little. He said your mother and Peter decided to get married even though Peter hardly spoke. He didn’t even know they liked each other.”
Leo said, “That sounds right for my father.”
“And that Max’s parents, Stasya and Ivo, were wildly in love and wildly suited and wildly…”
“Wild?” Leo said. “Well, that explains Max.”
