Chapter 288: Chapter 288: Are You Okay?
Eve looked at her.
At the woman who had named the smallest puppy Malachai and had opinions about everything and had been one of the first pack members to look at Eve without suspicion.
"Yes," Eve said. "It’s true."
Brynn stared at her.
Then she turned to the older woman by the window.
"Petra," she said. "I told you."
Petra unfolded her arms.
She was a tall woman. Quiet in the way of someone who had been around long enough to know that most things didn’t require a reaction.
She looked at Eve for a long moment.
"Your mother was a good woman," Petra said quietly. "I met her once. Years ago. Before everything." She paused. "She had a laugh you could hear from the other end of a building."
Eve felt her throat tighten.
"I’ve heard that," she said.
Petra nodded.
"Then you know what you’re carrying," she said.
She picked up her mug and walked out of the kitchen.
That was apparently that.
Damon made food.
Nobody had asked him to. But within ten minutes of being home he had the stove going and things coming out of the refrigerator and the specific focused energy of a man who processed difficult emotions through feeding people.
The kitchen filled up.
Not just pack members. Vessa at the table with Maya beside her. Silas in the chair by the window. Damian leaning against the counter watching everything with his arms crossed and his coffee in his hand.
It felt like every other morning.
It felt like nothing would ever be the same again.
Both things at once.
Eve sat at the table and let it happen around her. People coming and going. Questions she answered simply. Congratulations she accepted without knowing quite what to do with them. Brynn appearing at her elbow at one point with a plate of food she hadn’t asked for and saying "eat" in a tone that reminded Eve uncomfortably of Maya.
She ate.
Maya found her on the back step an hour later.
Eve had slipped out when the kitchen got loud. Not running away. Just needing five minutes of quiet before she went back in.
She was sitting on the step looking at the grounds when Maya came and sat beside her.
They didn’t say anything for a while.
Just sat there in the afternoon light with the dogs somewhere in the distance and the estate doing its ordinary things around them.
"How are you actually," Maya said finally.
"I don’t know," Eve said. "It doesn’t feel real yet."
"The throne thing."
"All of it," Eve said. "The throne. Varek being gone. Coming home." She paused. "I keep waiting to feel something enormous. Some big moment of it landing." She looked at her hands. "But it just feels like....Tuesday."
Maya was quiet for a second.
"I think that’s how it’s supposed to feel," she said.
Eve looked at her.
"The big things," Maya said. "They never feel as big as you think they will when you’re in them. It’s only later. When you’re looking back." She paused. "You’ll look back on today in a year and it’ll feel enormous."
They sat in the quiet for a little while longer.
"What happens now," Maya asked. "With the throne. With all of it."
"I don’t know exactly," Eve said. "Seraphine says there are formal processes. Meetings with faction leaders. Setting up how the throne actually functions day to day." She paused. "It’s not going to be simple."
"Is it ever," Maya said.
"No," Eve said.
"Are you scared."
Eve thought about it honestly.
"A little," she said. "But not the way I used to be scared." She paused. "Before I was scared I wasn’t ready. Now I’m just scared of doing it wrong." She looked at Maya. "That feels like the right kind of scared."
Maya looked at her.
"Yeah," she said. "That’s the right kind."
Damian found her when the sun started going down.
She was still on the back step. Maya had gone back inside an hour ago. Silas had appeared briefly, sat with her for twenty minutes without saying much, then gone back in. Damon had come out to tell her dinner was ready and then sat down beside her and forgot to go back in for forty minutes before Damian appeared in the doorway and looked at both of them.
"Dinner," Damian said.
"You said that already," Damon said.
"It’s getting cold," Damian said.
"You could bring it out here," Damon said.
Damian looked at him.
Damon stood up.
"Fine," he said. "Coming."
He went inside.
Damian sat down beside Eve in the space Damon had left.
They looked at the grounds together.
The last of the light going. The treeline dark. The dogs finally quiet somewhere.
"How are you," he said.
"Everyone keeps asking me that," she said.
"Because everyone wants to know," he said.
She leaned her head on his shoulder.
He didn’t move. Just let her.
"I’m okay," she said. "I will be." She paused. "I just need a day to let it settle."
"You can have as many days as you need," he said.
"The faction meetings...."
"Can wait," he said.
She looked up at him.
He looked back at her steadily.
"You just sat on a throne that has been waiting for you for twenty years and faced down something ancient and patient and won," he said. "The faction meetings can wait two days."
She held his gaze.
"Two days," she said.
"Two days," he said. "Just us. Just home. Just this."
She looked at the grounds.
At the dark treeline and the quiet estate and the warm light coming through the kitchen window where she could see Damon moving around and Silas at the table and Maya stealing something off a plate when she thought nobody was looking.
Her people.
Her home.
"Okay," she said. "Two days."
He pressed his mouth to the top of her head.
She closed her eyes, took a deep Breath.
Two days.
Then she would face whatever happens next.
