I did not sleep.
This was not a problem. I have gone without sleep for nine days during a siege. A single night is nothing, and I was only awake because I had a number of important things to think about, and the kitchen was a good place to think about them.
At dawn, I was standing at the stove, stirring a pot.
The children had fallen asleep in a heap on the little bed upstairs, Toby sideways, Clara curled around him with one arm flung over his chest and her boots on, which I had decided not to mention. Elise slept in our bedroom with the window open. Sister Margaret's blanket lay folded on the kitchen floor, and beside it, on the table, was a note in her upright hand.
Gone to the cathedral. Archives. Back by Sunday. Do not do anything glowing. M.
Below that, in smaller letters:
The soup was acceptable.
I read it twice. Then I folded it very carefully and put it in the pocket of my apron, which I wasn't wearing, so I put it in my sleeve instead.
It is simply good manners to keep correspondence, I thought. Nothing more.
"You're making porridge," said a voice behind me.
I didn't jump. I would never jump.
"It is a very good porridge," I said.
Clara stood in the doorway in the gray coat, with her hair uncombed and her eyes swollen. She looked about nine years old and about ninety. She had the face of a girl who has been awake since the stars went out and had spent the whole time making rules.
"I couldn't sleep," she said.
"Neither could I."
"Is that why you're cooking?"
"It's the most efficient use of the hour."
She almost smiled. She crossed the kitchen and stopped beside me, a little too close and a little too careful, the way she does with a wild animal she is not sure about. I held out the wooden spoon.
"Stir," I said.
She took it.
"Slowly."
She stirred. The porridge made a thick, comfortable sound. The first light came in through the east window and lay in a pale square across the floor. Somewhere in the yard a hen made a remark.
"It's for Toby," I said. "He likes it with honey, and one pinch of cinnamon from the buns. If you add too much, he knows. It's frightening. He's five, and he knows."
"I know. I've been feeding him for four years."
"Yes," I said. "I'm aware. I am asking you to teach me."
Clara stopped stirring.
She turned her head and looked at me. It was a long, level look, and I understood, with a little drop in my chest, that she was waiting for the catch. She had been waiting for it for six weeks.
"Why?" she said.
"Because I would like to do it correctly," I said. "He is yours, and now he is also mine, and I would like to get it right."
The spoon trembled in her hand.
"...You put the cinnamon in last," she said, at last, in a rough voice. "After you take it off the heat. Otherwise it goes bitter."
"Thank you."
"And you let him lick the spoon. That's not optional."
"I would never dream of withholding the spoon."
Her mouth twitched. It was a real one, small and astonished, and she turned back to the pot at once so I wouldn't see.
I did not see, I thought. I see nothing. I am a statue.
Two minutes later, so quietly that it might not have happened at all, Clara leaned her shoulder against my arm and stayed there while she stirred.
I held very, very still, so as not to startle her.
I stood that way for the whole pot.
I carried the tray upstairs myself.
It had two bowls on it, a little jug of honey, and a spoon for Elise, who is hopeless at holding spoons when she is ill. She was awake when I came in. She lay propped on the pillows with the window open behind her and the morning on her face, and she turned her head the moment the door opened, as though she had been listening for my feet.
"Hello," she said.
"You should be asleep."
"I was. Then I smelled porridge."
"It's for Toby."
"Mm." She looked at the tray. "There are two bowls."
"One is for him. The other is a coincidence."
"Of course it is."
I set the tray on the stool. I sat on the edge of the bed. I was not hovering. I was positioning, which is a different activity, and I took the spoon and filled it, and held it out.
Elise looked at it. Then at me. Then she opened her mouth with an expression of perfect, hateful innocence.
I fed her one spoonful. Then another. I did not look at her face.
"You're doing it again," she said.
"What?"
"The thing with your ears."
"They're not doing anything."
"They're the color of a very ripe plum."
"It's a warm morning!"
"Noctavia." She caught my wrist, gently, with the hand that wasn't shaking. "Come here."
"I'm here."
"Closer."
I did not move.
Then I moved, because I am a weak and foolish woman, and she pulled me down, slowly and clumsily, until my forehead rested against hers. Her skin was warm. Not fever-warm. Alive-warm. I closed my eyes.
"Good morning," she said.
"Good morning," I said, in a voice that was not mine.
She kissed me.
It wasn't a dramatic kiss. It was brief and soft, barely more than a breath, and she tasted a little of honey. Her hand slid up and rested against the side of my face, and I thought, very clearly and very distantly, I am the Demon Lord of the Black Throne, and I have lost the use of my knees.
I kissed her back.
Idiot, I thought. Idiot, idiot, you are such a—
"Mm," said Elise against my mouth. "You're humming."
"I'm not."
"You are, a little."
"It's the porridge."
"It's definitely the porridge," Elise agreed, and kissed me again, and I stopped arguing.
The door creaked.
I'm told I did not leap off the bed. I'm told that what I did was freeze, with one hand in Elise's hair and the other flat on her pillow, and turn my head very slowly toward the sound.
Toby stood in the doorway.
He was in his pajamas, with one sock on. He had Dumpling tucked under one arm like a football and a very sleepy expression, and his hair stuck up on one side like a duckling's. He looked at the two of us for a long moment.
"Why is Noctavia on Elise?" he said.
Nobody said anything.
Say something. Anything. Explain. Be calm. Deflect.
"Because I wanted to be," I said.
I don't know who was more surprised. Elise made a small, strangled sound against my shoulder. Toby considered the answer carefully, as if weighing it against a long list of other possible explanations.
"Were you kissing?"
"Yes," said Elise, cheerfully.
"Oh." He nodded. He scratched his head. "Okay. Is it a long kiss, or can I come in?"
"...You can come in," I said, in a tiny voice.
He came in. He climbed onto the bed with all the grace of a small bear, deposited Dumpling in the middle of the quilt, and settled himself against Elise's side. Dumpling opened its mouth, regarded the three of us, and went click, a long, warm, satisfied sound, as though something had finally been filed correctly.
"I like it when you kiss," said Toby, to the ceiling. "It makes the house feel right."
I looked at Elise. She was wiping her eyes with the corner of the sheet.
Do not cry, I thought. There are children present.
There was a soft cough in the doorway.
Clara stood there with the bowl of porridge in both hands, in her gray coat, her face the color of a boiled beet. She had clearly been standing there for some time.
"I was bringing Toby's breakfast," she said, very formally, to the far wall.
"Come in," said Elise warmly. "There's room."
"I don't want to—"
"Clara," I said. My voice came out gentler than I expected. "There is a great deal of room. I measured."
She hesitated. She looked at the bed, and at the four of us in it, and at the small plant now curled contentedly between two pillows. I saw the very exact moment when she stopped arguing with herself.
She put the bowl down. She climbed onto the end of the bed, very carefully, as if she were stepping onto ice, and sat with her knees pulled up beside Toby's feet.
Nobody said anything.
The sun climbed. The curtain stirred. Toby began, with enormous ceremony, to demand the spoon. I handed it over. Elise's head tipped against my shoulder, heavy and warm, and Clara's hand crept out across the quilt, a little at a time, until it rested against mine.
I did not move.
I am not going to cry, I thought, in a bed full of children and a plant.
I have standards.
I turned my hand over and held hers.
We sat there for a very long time, in the porridge-scented morning, and not one of us said the word leave.