Page 40 of Into Ember

“Elara.” I keep it even. “Maybe we shouldn’t call him that. Yeah?”

She looks at Vick. Back over her shoulder at me and she huffs.

“…Fine.” She turns back to him and gives it everything she’s got. “What is THE MAN talking about?”

The man. She puts enough weight on it to crack tile. It is, technically, a correction.

“Better,” Vick says.

And then it’s my turn, and every version of this conversation I have ever rehearsed — her couch, her hallway, coffee, all the time in the world — is gone. And what I’ve got is—

“Uh.”

“Yeah.” Gunnar, off the door, the smirk arriving before he does. “Tell her, Erik.”

Rayner chuckles.

Traitors. All of them.

Elara turns — a full sweep of the kitchen, taking in every last one of us, and the exasperation on her face has been building since the crossing and has finally landed on me.

“Why is it that everyone knows everything before I do?”

Nobody answers. Which is its own answer, and she hears it.

“I think it’s about time you all tell me what the hell is going on.”

And Vick stares at her.

Longer than a man like Vick looks at anything. He walked into this kitchen looking at a woman standing where she shouldn’t be. He is not looking at a woman anymore. He’s looking at a bedtime story that moved him off his feet and growled at his temper. Who is now demanding answers with her hair messy from sleep.

He grins again, looking at all of us then back to her.

“Well,” he says. “I’ll be damned.”

That makes two of us.

Chapter 15

Leif

“I’ll be damned,” the man says, and then we all just stand here.

Like idiots.

I have to say I’ve never seen Erik at a loss for words quite like this before. And Gunnar…

Gunnar is enjoying this far too much. I want to wipe the grin off his face. Someone should. But now isn’t the time, because Elara is in the middle of the room, looking more lost than I’ve ever seen her.

She’s waiting on answers that no one has given her.

She doesn’t deserve that.

I have tried to start this conversation so many times I’ve lost count. She knows we keep pushing off the explanation. The last attempt got interrupted by a man coming through the front door and nearly getting himself killed for it.

Not this time.

I cross the kitchen before anyone can take it from her again.