My Father Gave the King His Youngest Daughter, and My Sister Chose Which One novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: Mine
He did not speak all the way home.
We rode in the back seat of the truck with the windows down and the evening coming gold and slow across the plain.
Cottonwood fluff drifted in over the sill and settled on my knees.
He kept his hands on his own knees.
I held the ring of yard keys in my lap and counted them, because I needed to count something.
There were nineteen.
"Ximun," I said, somewhere past the cattle gate.
"Yes," he said.
"I won't be asked in a truck, or in a bed.
"When you want to ask me something, ask me properly, and mean it."
He turned his head.
He did not say what I meant, and I did not say it either.
"I'll remember," he said.
At the stone house the lamps were lit and the kitchen smelled of bread.
Garazi stood on the step in her black dress with her rosary in her hand.
She looked at her son's face, and then she looked at mine.
"Eat later," she said, and went inside.
Ximun shut the front door behind us.
We stood in the hall.
At the end of it the study door stood open, and I saw the green lamp on the oak desk.
In the front room a deep leather armchair was drawn up before the stone fireplace.
I had sat in that chair at midnight in March with a cup of tea, afraid to be seen.
I went in.
The fire had been laid and not lit.
I knelt on the hearth and struck a match, and the kindling caught.
The room filled with the smell of juniper.
"Sit," I said.
He looked at me.
"In the chair."
He sat with his back straight and his hands on the arms and the firelight on his face.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Father Gave the King His Youngest Daughter, and My Sister Chose Which One are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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