The Sin System: My Wife is Envy

Chapter 52: Ana & Tess

Morning came before the sun had finished deciding whether to bother.

Cold in the stone floors. Cold in the corridor. Cold in the courtyard where the birds at the tree line were making their feelings about the temperature clear.

I pulled on my coat and went downstairs.

Sebastian was already at the gate. Carriage, estate crest on the door, his coat pressed, his expression the professional nothing he wore when he had been waiting long enough to form opinions and had kept them to himself.

"Young Master. The road is clear. We should reach the city by evening if we leave within the hour."

I nodded and reached for the carriage door.

Opened it.

Stopped.

Tessira was sitting inside. Knees together, bag at her feet, hands folded.

She looked up at me.

I looked at her.

I looked at Sebastian.

Sebastian looked at the gate post.

"You were supposed to stay with the housekeeper," I said.

"I did. And then I came here."

"How."

"I asked Sebastian where you were going and when you were leaving. He told me."

I looked at Sebastian again.

"She asked very directly," he said, to the gate post.

"She said it was fine. She said you would probably not argue if I was already in the carriage." Tessira looked at me. "Was she wrong."

I stood at the open door in the cold morning and thought about arguing and decided the math did not work.

I got in.

Tessira shifted to make room and went back to looking out the window. Sebastian closed the door. His footsteps moved toward the driver’s seat.

Then stopped.

Sebastian only stopped for things that warranted stopping for.

I leaned to look through the window.

Anastasia was standing at the gate.

Red dress. Dark hair. Hands at her sides.

She was looking at the horses. She had stopped a few feet from the nearest one and was looking at it the way she looked at the unlisted volumes in the library, careful and complete, taking in something she had been holding only as an idea until now.

I got out.

She did not look at me when I came up beside her.

"It is larger than I expected," she said.

"It is a standard carriage horse."

"I know what it is." She raised one hand slowly and rested it flat against the horse’s neck. Held it there. "I could hear them sometimes. Through the stone. The hooves. Not the warmth."

She lowered her hand.

"The trunk," she said. "I packed the two unlisted volumes. They fit."

"You were always coming," I said.

"I was deciding. There is a difference."

***

Sebastian opened the carriage door.

Anastasia looked at it.

Sebastian looked at Anastasia.

Neither moved.

"Aren’t you getting in," I said.

"I thought we were waiting."

"For what."

"You opened the door."

"The open door means you enter," Sebastian said. "It is a courtesy."

Anastasia looked at him.

"Opening a door as a courtesy," she said. "Not as a signal."

"Yes."

"I see." She looked at the open door again. "That is different from what I understood a door to communicate."

"Yes, Miss. In this context."

She got in.

I followed.

Sebastian closed the door behind us and went to the driver’s seat without further comment.

"This is Anastasia," I said through the partition. "She will be staying with me at the academy."

A pause.

"Young Master."

"Yes."

"Is she a relative."

"No."

Another pause. Longer.

"Understood," he said.

***

Tessira moved to sit beside me.

Anastasia had already sat there.

Tessira stopped.

She looked at the seat across from us. She was deciding something. She filed whatever she decided somewhere private and sat across from us, put her bag between her feet, and folded her hands in her lap. She looked at Anastasia with the direct, unhurried attention she gave everything new, taking inventory before committing to an opinion.

Anastasia was studying the carriage interior. She ran two fingers along the edge of the seat cushion. Looked at the ceiling. Found the window latch and examined it without touching it.

Tessira watched all of this.

Then she looked at the seat beside me.

She did not say anything about it. I watched the decision sit on her face for half a second and then disappear, and then she was looking at the window on her side.

***

The carriage started moving.

Anastasia went very still.

Her hands flat on her knees, her eyes fixed somewhere slightly above the window line, breathing with the deliberateness of someone who had decided to focus on breathing. The gate passed behind us. The road opened up.

After a moment she let out a breath and looked at the window.

At the glass first. At the way the world was moving on the other side of it.

"Itsuki," she said.

"Yes."

"The world is very large from inside a moving thing."

"It is."

She kept looking at the glass.

Tessira was watching her with the expression she wore when something had surprised her and she had not yet decided what to do with it.

***