Chapter 14: The Third Step

Caspian's POV

I could not sleep, so I sat on the third step from the bottom of the stairs.

The house was quiet.

Leo was upstairs in the east guest room, asleep with a pillow over his face.

The doctor's note on the table said he was bruised and should have soup.

I did not know why I had chosen this step.

I knew only that it made my chest hurt.

Then the memory came in like the tide on the sandcastle.

It took the east tower first.

I was twenty-eight and kneeling in the Elders' hall with a split lip.

A human woman in a brown coat was looking at me over a jeweler's loupe.

She was an appraiser, sent to value the clan's treasury.

I had known her for four minutes.

I took the back of her neck in my hand, very gently, and marked her in front of everyone.

The Elders rose from their chairs all at once.

She did not scream.

She said, "I'm going to need that in writing."

I laughed on the stair, alone, with my head in my hands.

The rest came faster.

Her pricing sheet for the mark.

The first time she let me hold her hand for no reason, in a car, in the rain.

A wedding in the starlight dome that cost half the treasury.

She had said, "That's the worst return on investment I have ever seen," and cried anyway.

Five years of her ledger, her loupe and her cold feet against my shins.

Five years of her rule that nothing was free.

I did not stop her paying me back.

I had thought it was the way she loved.

It was.

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