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Instantly, my spine stiffens. But that could be anyone. It could be an elderly neighbor.
The neediness that I previously tamped down goes hand in hand with jealousy, I’m afraid. If Jakob knew how irrational I can be…
He curses. “My housemate. I hate it when she doesn’t tell me what she wants.”
You said a mouthful, I think silently.
As he dials with one hand, he keeps a gentle hold on my fingers with the other, squeezing.
His housemate. Housemate. So what? I tell myself. It’s modern times. Men and women can be friends or cohabitate and it doesn’t have to be romantic.
I wonder if I should give him some privacy for this talk because I can hear every word this Suzanna is saying through the phone at his ear.
“A big guy in a kilt was here asking about you, bruh. What the heck is going on?”
My mind races. Not a lot of people in Gravenland wear kilts anymore, not unless they’re descended from a handful of specific ancestral warrior tribes or serve in the military—a Venn diagram that’s almost a circle in this country. “What did he want?” Jakob asks. His eyes meet mine, then glance away.
Why do I feel like Jakob already knows what that man in the kilt wants?
Suzanna sounds a bit frazzled when she replies, “Dude, I don’t know! But he was wearing the royal family insignia, and he was asking if I knew where you were on Prince Torben’s 35th birthday celebration.”
“And what did you tell him?” Jakob replies, rather forcefully.
“I told him as far as I knew, you were working in your studio.”
“Good girl,” Jakob says.
My feelings of jealousy had been starting to calm down until he said those words. Good girl.
Call me crazy, jumping to conclusions, but I do not like that.
But even through this fog of jealousy and hurt and confusion, I put the pieces together. Of course. That man in the kilt is Uther Nancarrow, special assistant to the queen and the princess. I wouldn’t know his name, except that the royal watchers love to fawn over how handsome Uther is. It’s a little ridiculous.
Is the queen’s security guard trying to reach Jakob about the reward for rescuing Princess Flora? Have they identified him? Oh gods, it can’t be about the ring, can it?
I watch the lines furrow deeper in Jakob’s forehead. I study his resolute face that I once loved as a child. The face before me now is careworn and full of stories and heartache, and I’m falling so hard I barely recognize that childlike love anymore.
I slowly untangle my fingers from his and look away, focusing my attention on a male and female songbird, hopping and chirping in the underbrush a few meters away.
Happy little birds. All they do is sing and mate and look for food.
Would that human relationships were that uncomplicated.
I should have been a bird.
16
Jakob
Jo doesn’t ask what the call was about.
I sense something off in her energy as soon as I hang up.
“Are you sure you don’t want to 'fess up? I hate that people are putting pressure on your housemates.”
“Suz can hold her own. And besides that, she knows nothing. They won’t get very far with her.”
“What about your other housemate?”
