Questions Without Answers

Chapter 13

I found Mara in the kitchen the next morning, elbow-deep in bread dough, working it against the floured counter with the focused rhythm of someone who found thinking easier when her hands were occupied.

She didn't look up when I came in. "Coffee's fresh," she said.

I poured a cup and sat at the kitchen island, watching her work. There was something grounding about it — the ordinariness of dough and flour and the smell of something warm in the oven. Small, real things in a place that often felt constructed entirely of tension.

I waited until she'd set the dough aside to prove before I spoke.

"Mara. Can I ask you something?"

She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at me with that careful, unhurried attention of hers. "You can ask."

"Why me?" I said. "When my uncle — when the debt happened. There must have been other ways to settle it. Money, property, something. Why did Damian take a person?"

She was quiet for a moment, moving to rinse her hands at the sink.

"That's a question for him," she said.

"I know. I'm asking you."

She dried her hands slowly, folded the cloth, set it down. The deliberateness of it told me she was choosing her words with the same care she gave everything else.

"I wasn't in the room when the arrangement was made," she said. "I don't know the specific terms."

"But you know something."

She leaned against the counter and looked at me steadily. "I know that Damian doesn't take payments in people. That's not how he operates — not usually."

The word usually landed with weight.

"So this was unusual," I said.

"You being here is unusual." She said it plainly, without drama. "Anyone who's been in this house more than a week can see that."

I turned my cup in my hands. "Someone told me — implied, really — that he asked for someone unclaimed." I kept my voice even. "That he specifically requested that."

Mara's expression didn't change, but something behind it did. A small internal adjustment, barely visible.

"Where did you hear that?" she asked.

"Does it matter?"

She was quiet.

"Is it true?" I pressed.

She moved to check whatever was in the oven, opening the door and releasing a breath of warm, yeasty air into the kitchen. She didn't answer immediately, and I'd learned enough about Mara by now to know that her silences weren't evasions — they were her working out exactly how much truth she could responsibly give.

She straightened and closed the oven. "I think," she said carefully, "that when the arrangement came to him, he could have refused it. He's refused others."

"But he didn't."

"No." She met my eyes. "He didn't."

The kitchen was quiet for a moment. Outside the window, Eli was crossing the courtyard with a crate, his breath visible in the cool morning air.

"Why?" I asked. "Why didn't he refuse?"

"I don't know," Mara said. And I believed her — it had the texture of a genuine answer, not a deflected one. "He didn't explain himself to me. He rarely does."

I nodded slowly, staring into my cup. The information sat in my chest in an uncomfortable way — not because it clarified anything, but because it deepened the question. He had chosen this. Chosen me, specifically, when he could have said no.

That meant something. I just didn't know what yet.

"Mara," I said quietly. "Do you think he's capable of —" I stopped, searching for the right shape for the question. "Do you think there's more to him than what he shows?"

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she pulled out the stool across from me and sat down, which she'd never done before — she was always moving, always occupied. The stillness of it felt significant.

"Every person is more than what they show," she said. "That's not unique to him."

"That's not what I asked."

"I know." She folded her hands on the counter. "Yes. There's more to him. Whether any of it excuses anything —" she shook her head slightly "— that's not for me to say."

I nodded.

She stood, returning to her work, and the kitchen found its rhythm again — the small sounds of domesticity, the oven ticking, Eli's footsteps receding across the courtyard.

I finished my coffee and got up to leave.

"Lena," Mara said.

I turned.

Her expression was even, but her eyes carried something serious. "Be careful with your questions," she said quietly. "Not because asking them is wrong. But because some answers change things permanently."

I held her gaze.

"I know," I said.

I left her to her bread and walked back upstairs, the question I'd arrived with still unanswered, but heavier now — denser, as though the not-knowing had taken on mass.

He had chosen not to refuse.

I needed to understand why.