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they not? And he hadn’t attempted to talk too much, stating she needed to rest.
    It had made for some pretty awkward awake times. Thankfully she’d slept more often than not.
    He hadn’t let her mother in, and Mara was grateful. What was she supposed to do about her mother? Yesterday had illustrated the chasm that had widened between them more than Mara could have ever expected.
    And that wasn’t good for any of them, especially the boys. She’d have to find a way to work things out with her mother. And quickly.
    Starting with getting her questions answered, ones her mother had evaded for far too long.
    He was in the shower, and she could hear the sounds of him moving around in the small bathroom. Thrun had running water and plumbing but it was far different from what she was used to in the modern world. At least—the main residence hall did. She didn’t know much about the rest of the city. Their house hadn’t had more than a single piped toilet and a cistern to store water outside the house. The ruling hall’s pipes were far less crude and made out of the same white and black stone that characterized the rest of the city. They were exposed—not that stone would weather all that quickly—and they used gravity for movement instead of electric pumping.
    There wasn’t anything as modern or convenient as electricity or power—other than magical, of course—in this new world. This old world. Whatever it was.
    She’d always been fascinated by ancient times, but she had never intended to live in some of those times.
    But Mara made do. Their small home had no power, no real windows, no real beds, and only a very crude kitchen. Her mother hadn’t been thrilled with it, but she had adjusted better than Mara would have expected.
    But then again, maybe her mother had been born into similar times. She didn’t even know how old her mother truly was.
    He—Rion, she needed to remember to call him by his name—came out of the bathroom. He didn’t have a shirt on. There was all kinds of man muscle right there in front of her. She’d seen a lot of Dardaptoan men in recent months—they were all tall and muscled and absolutely beautiful. At first she hadn’t believed they could be real. They all looked too perfect.
    He took that to the next level. He smiled at her. “Good morning, Rajni. Do you feel rested?”
    “Better than yesterday.” She looked at the bandages still on her arms. The bleeding had stopped, and she had been about to change the wrappings herself. She wasn’t waiting for his sister-in-law like she’d been instructed.
    She wanted to find her mother and get her and the boys back to their house. Where she could have some time to process everything that had happened.
    Somehow she doubted he was going to let that happen. “I need to get going. I appreciate what you’ve done for me, but I need to take my family home. The boys will have school, if it’s safe.”
    “You’re not going back to the center of the city. It’s not a safe place, especially for the dahn of one of the Adrastos Houses. Your family will be moving with you.”
    He meant it, didn’t he? He actually thought he had the right to give her orders. “Excuse me? Isn’t that my decision to make? I don’t know why you think you have a say in my life. But you don’t.”
    “I am your Rajni . And you are mine. You know what that means.”
    “No. No, I don’t.” And wasn’t that part of the problem? She’d spent the last three months not knowing anything. “All I really know is that your brother showed up at my door and told my mother we were evacuating the only world I’d ever known, and told me that I wasn’t as human as I had always thought. My mother hasn’t told me anything more than that since we came through a freaky kind of cloud to get here. My brothers know nothing, and believe me, all the lovely little Dardaptoan kids have no trouble pointing that out to them. We have little running water, a pit to cook in, and barely