ignore it, I do have a responsibility to my people. I was supposed to try to find the Hidden Waters, and be home within a few days. And I do miss my family. This wasn’t supposed to be some kind of holiday.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, reaching out toward him. “I have to know if Eland and Aloe are okay.”
He exhales slowly, and slides his finger along a particularly deep scar on my hand. “Your commitment to your people and your duty . . . it’s one of those things I admire about you. I don’t expect you to change now.”
My willpower falters. I lean forward and touch my forehead to his, breathing in his sweet scent. “Why did you have to be so great? I’m supposed to hate you.”
He chuckles in a throaty way that does nothing to dispel the fire raging inside me. “I’ll try to be hateful in the future.”
He pulls his bedroll down from the bed and wraps us up in it, curling his body around mine again. I hear his breath quicken, but he doesn’t touch me any further. I’m relieved—and disappointed. A part of me wants to roll over and face him, let things lead where they may. At the same time I want to jump up and run.
I’ve never felt this conflicted about someone before.
My relationships with Aloe, Eland, Calli, even Bear, grew out of the close ties of family and friendship, nurtured since childhood. I’ve never questioned my feelings for them. But with Peree it’s different. We were thrown together. I didn’t expect to have anything with him at all, apart from the distant relationship of Water Bearer and Keeper. The intensity of our bond confounds me.
I can’t deny I have strong feelings for him. But I’m holding back, resisting the growing intimacy. If I let go of my heart, give myself over to him, what will we do when we go back? No Groundling and Lofty ever made a life together. There’s no precedent for it. What would our families say? What would the Three do? Where would we even live? I wish I could say it didn’t matter to me. But it does. I care for him, but I care about my family and my people too.
So I do nothing, snared in a miserable tangle of desire and caution, longing and fear.
Chapter Sixteen
I wake early the next morning, and carefully untangle my arms and legs from Peree’s. I have to put some distance between us; I can’t think with him so close. I go to the only woman in the village I can talk to. It’s my bad luck that she also happens to be his mother.
“Fennel, I’m so glad you came.” Kadee takes my hands in hers. Her skin feels dusty.
I rub my fingers together and a smile crosses my face. “Flour?”
“I’m doing some baking for the Feast. How are you?”
“Still shocked about everything, I guess.”
“And upset with me, for not telling you sooner about Peree.”
I shrug. “I was, a little, but I know you had to tell him first.”
“He was so badly injured, and then when he woke up, I didn’t know how to say the words.”
I nod. “I wouldn’t know either.”
“Somehow I doubt that. You don’t seem like you’d shrink from a difficult situation.”
My cheeks flame, thinking about the night before. “Um, would you like help with the baking?”
“Please—I have so much to do still.”
I’m as much of a failure at cooking as I am at sewing, but I do love to bake. When I was about eight, I pestered the baker unmercifully one afternoon until he finally shoved ingredients at me and showed me what to do with them. I fell in love with kneading the dough, feeling the soft mush slowly thicken under my fingers. Over time I learned how dough feels when it’s the right consistency, and how bread smells when perfectly baked—spongy and warm inside, crusty outside. I still sometimes join him at the clay oven near the roasting pit when I finish early in the caves.
As Kadee and I work, blending and forming the lumps of dough, my mind wanders back to Peree. Suddenly I realize the dough I’m working with has become more rock than loaf. She takes it from me with a chuckle. “Do you want to talk? You must have a lot on your mind.”
“It’s about Peree.”
“Is he all right?”
“Yes, it's just . . . I think he wants . . . more from me than I can give him.”