Page 39 of Heartsong
Anna cleared her throat. “I have to go back to work today. The break is over.”
“Fy nghân,” he sighed, “you know how I feel about this.”
“Yes, you’ve been quite clear. And you know how I feel about it. I’m going.” She held her hands up and approached him, until she was only a few handspans away. Looking at him almost beseechingly, she said, “I know you don’t like it. But me not going in or quitting all of a sudden would look super suspicious.”
“Damn what it looks like if it keeps you safe.”
But Anna just shook her head. “These things are almost always an inside job, so I can’t afford to look anymoresuspicious than I already do. I need this job, Frey. I need it for the healthcare and the money—I’m buying for both of us now.”
From her tone, she didn’t mean it to insult him, but the arrow of truth, that he was utterly dependent on his mate, struck him nonetheless.
Frey’s lips thinned with displeasure and a sour shame.
Color bloomed across Anna’s cheeks and she held her hands up again. “I don’t mind. And besides, going back means I can keep an eye on things. Maybe I’ll learn something to help the rest of your people.”
The thought perhaps had merit, but that didn’t mean Frey liked it. He wouldn’t put his mate in danger for mere possibilities.
Still, that she wanted to help his kin at all mollified the worst of his bitterness.
He didn’t say that he thought the best thing Anna could do for his kin was accept the mate bond. Whatever lay behind the curse and his partial freedom from it, their bond was at the heart of it. Nothing else explained his awakening after so many centuries, and having a link to this new modern world, a human mate, made sense for his kind, cut off from their own so long ago.
But he didn’t say this. He’d promised.
Frey did open his mouth to argue about her leaving the dwelling again, but his jaw went stiff before words could form.
With a frustrated grumble, he managed to growl, “You must be safe.”
“I will, I promise,” she said, the words ringing in his ears as they too turned to stone.
It had to be enough.
Her promise and whatever connection he’d been able to form with her over the past days had to be enough.
12
The guilt in Anna’s gut tried to work with the caffeine from her coffee to make her a nervous wreck by the time she made it into the museum an hour later, but she wouldn’t let them.
She didn’t have anything to feel guilty about.
Get safely to work?Check.
Put away my things in my very low-risk desk?Check.
Don’t let on about the giant gargoyle taking up a considerable corner of my living room?Double check.
Settling in at her desk felt like slipping on a supportive pair of shoes. She found her grooves, sliding easily into routine to prepare for the day.
As more of a homebody, Anna always appreciated getting to be at home rather than work. Yet, coming in, having a routine, did offer a sense of normalcy and security. Going through the motions of the job was its own comfort; she was accomplishing something, earning her own keep. Establishing a routine over the past few months had even helped her migraines a bit—and she wasn’t surprised that seriously deviating from it over the last week had incurred more headaches.
Completing her normal morning tasks gave her a sense of calm that’d been seriously lacking since a certain statue sprang to life.
Now that she was in and reestablished, though, she did have a few things to add to her routine. Namely,find out what you can about the statues without looking suspicious. That could prove tricky, but she had to start somewhere. She didn’t know what else to do; Frey needed answers. He couldn’t stay the only one of his kind awake, what kind of life would that be? She couldn’t hide him forever.
What he and his kind could or would do after lifting the curse, she couldn’t really fathom, either. And she wouldn’t touch the inexplicable sadness she felt at imagining him leaving with his kind with a ten-foot pole.
Sipping on her coffee, Anna scrolled through the somewhat backlogged museum emails. She had her own organization email that received maybe two messages a day, since Carrie or Gavin were more likely to just come over and ask if they needed something, but Anna also manned the museum’s main communique. They got the standard fare of solicitations, inquiries, and advertisements, along with a nice smattering of crackpots and doomsayers.
A bit of everything had piled up over the four-day closure, and Anna toggled through to see if anything caught her eye that needed immediate attention. Quite a few inquiries had been sent about the closure, which she flagged to respond to en masse, giving the Gwyneths’ scripted excuse of cleaning and restoration. The scripted explanation was the one email sitting in her personal inbox that morning, and Anna’s stomach knotted reading over the lie, especially as it was to staff, not just the public now.
