CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Tamara
The tray was heavy and I had been standing outside his door for almost five minutes.
Broth, bread, the tea he liked. A folded cloth. I had carried a hundred trays down a thousand corridors in that pack house and there I was standing in front of a door like a girl who had forgotten what doors were for.
I was frozen, because I heard him.
Not spoken words. I heard a sound, low and torn out of him, and under it Lily’s voice — I couldn’t make out exactly what she said, only the shape of it, calm and unhurried and completely in command — and then his breath breaking apart into something I had no business hearing.
I stood there like a statue with the tray in my hands.
I should have walked away. Any decent person would have gone. What I did instead was stand in th
