Though, it must be said, having your cycle in that world was not fun and games, seeing as their sanitary products were as medieval as the rest of the world was. I’d learned this on the journey from Fleuridia (not fun to start your period around a bunch of guys you couldn’t ask about tampons or pads and find a way to make do) and, like chamber pots, I still wasn’t used to it.
I drew in a big breath and sighed again.
“Miss Maddie?”
I turned my head to see Cristiana standing in the doorway.
The one saving grace these last four days was that Apollo left me with my girls. At first, they’d acted the same, except a little cautious because of my mood. Now, they were watchful—in a caring way, of course, seeing as that was how they were.
But I hadn’t shared what happened and twice I’d seen Loretta open her mouth only to have Meeta give her an elbow to the ribs. So I knew they were worried.
I also knew I should open up to them. They were my friends. Or they were becoming my friends.
And even Captain Kirk had chats with Spock and Bones. Mostly, it was mild arguing or banter but he shared his troubles with them. He was not the man, the island. Of course, the crew of the Enterprise was always in a life or death situation and that tended to promote sharing. Still.
It was just that it had been so long since I’d had friends, or anyone to open up to, I’d forgotten how.
And, in thinking about it (which I tried not to do, and failed), it occurred to me I really never had good friends I could open up to. When I was a kid, I didn’t want to bring friends to my house because I didn’t even like being in my house, I didn’t want to make friends come there. This meant invitations to their houses dried up and I was often left out.
Thinking on this, I realized as I grew older, my solitude kind of became habit. I had friends, just never really close ones.
Even though I hadn’t opened up to the girls, it wasn’t lost on them things weren’t great. This was because I was moping and also because Apollo hadn’t showed in four days.
“Hey,” I called to Cristiana.
She smiled a small smile, her eyes on me assessing in a kindly way, and she moved into the room.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Tea, perhaps?”
“I’m good, honey, thanks,” I murmured.
She sat on the couch with me and looked out the window.
I looked back out it too.
“Ulfr doesn’t come.”
When she spoke, I looked back to her.
“Sorry?”
She gave me her eyes, no less assessing, no less kind, but now astute. “Four nights he has not been here.”
“No,” I agreed.
“Will we see him tonight?”
I looked back to the falling snow and whispered, “I doubt it.”
There was a long moment of silence before Cristiana broke it.
“May I ask, Miss Maddie, why you delay so long in healing this breach?”
I turned surprised eyes to her. “Sorry?”
“It’s yours to heal and you delay. This isn’t right.”
“I…” I began and trailed off.
What was she talking about? How was it my breach to heal?
Had Apollo said something to her?
“Um…Cristiana, no offense,” I pulled it together to say, “but you don’t know what happened. I’m not sure it’s my breach to heal.”
“We women,” she started, “it rarely is but it always is. Learn from me. I have thirty-five years with my husband. He is proud. He is stubborn. Therefore, when we have words and distance forms, it’s up to me to close it.”
There it was. One thing that was the same in both worlds.
“That isn’t right,” I told her the truth.
“It isn’t but there are a lot of things that aren’t right or fair in this world and this also pertains to relations between men and women.”
She wasn’t wrong about that.
“This, I know,” she began and I braced because her voice had gentled and she’d leaned into me when she spoke. I took these as warning signs and I was glad I did when she continued. “I have worked at Karsvall for twenty-three years. And thus, I was there when Ulfr brought home his bride.”
I pulled in a sharp breath.
She kept going.
“Honestly, I knew no husband and wife who settled into marriage, and then parenthood, with the ease in which those two did. They had a steadiness that would have seemed unnatural if it wasn’t so beautiful.”
This, I did not need to hear.
Since I knew she was trying to be nice, I didn’t tell her that and she kept talking.
“When she grew ill, he went to her several times a day, every day, and from their bedchamber, you would hear laughter. You would think nothing was amiss from the noises coming from that room. But when he left and the door closed behind him, the cloud would descend. She was in her bed, she never felt it, but it followed him with every step he took. He is a good man, neither servant nor soldier bore the brunt of that illness eating away the woman he loved. But as it ate her away, it ate him too. And when she was lost, that cloud descended and stuck, immovable, shadowing him everywhere he went, except when he was with his children.”
I pressed my lips together as I felt my eyes sting with tears.
That was so Apollo, to go to Ilsa when she was sick. Visit with her. Make her laugh.
But every time he did it, it had to kill him more and more.
I hated this for Apollo. Hated it.
“Then came you,” she stated.
At that, my lips parted.
She kept going. “At first, when I laid eyes on you, your resemblance…extraordinary. I feared I understood his attraction to you and it was not healthy.”
I held her eyes.
She went on.
“But what I saw was not him attempting to recreate what he had with Lady Ilsa. It was him building something new with you. Although she could make him laugh, the air did not ring with the richness of it near as often as it does with you. Although she was his wife and the mother of his children and he is a certain type of man, the type who would lay down his life to protect theirs, he did not look on her as if he needed to spring to her side at any given moment to shelter her from a storm.”
Oh God.
Apollo looked at me like that?
My heart clutched.
She kept talking but did it softly.
“What you have is new. So you may not know him well enough to understand that even if it is he who should ride to you to heal what has broken between you, his pride will not allow it. It may be that whatever happened between you is keeping him awake at night. He still won’t do it. He is a man, but he is also an Ulfr. They have many qualities that are very good and these qualities make them the best House in Lunwyn. But with any good comes bad. I mentioned he is proud. But he’s also stubborn. And last, he is a man used to getting his own way. And these three together will make things difficult at times for the people around him, most specifically the woman who warms his bed.”