Chapter 123: She Wanted Him to Know What He Was Choosing

Thorne asked whether Dove wanted to wait until she’d slept. She told him she wanted one night to decide what she could explain clearly, not another week to find an excuse.

So they ate, checked the doors, and slept in the office with Edrik’s bag beside the wall. On Day Sixty-Two, Dove washed and dressed before sitting with both men at their folding table beside the office desk. She wanted to be awake, fed, and able to leave the conversation for a minute if she needed to.

"There’s something behind the shop," she began. "Not a supplier hiding outside, and not the little item powers we’ve seen other men get. It’s called Sprout. It talks to me."

Edrik looked at the empty space beside her head, then back at her. "Can it hear this?"

"Yes. I told it to keep quiet."

"Good start."

She almost laughed, grateful that he hadn’t made her prove she was sane before letting her finish. She explained the daily stock, the changing tasks, and the difference between ordinary trade goods and the two balances only she could spend inside its shop.

"Normal coins come from completing the sales tasks and things like exercise. Favor comes from reactions. Some men’s reactions," she said. "Surprise, amusement, anger, affection. Other feelings too."

His gaze stayed on her face. "Mine."

"Yes, yours too."

Thorne remained beside her without taking over. Dove had wanted him there because he understood the system, not because she needed him to defend her from the answer.

Edrik asked what she could see. Thoughts? Memories? Everything he’d wanted while sitting outside her room?

"No thoughts. It gives me labels and notices. Sometimes it makes guesses I don’t agree with. I can’t look inside your head, and I don’t want to."

"Does it tell you to make me feel things?"

"It tries. Constantly. I argue with it constantly." She rubbed her thumb against her cup. "At first I needed the money for basic things. I still need it. But I don’t kiss you because a screen tells me you’re worth points."

Edrik leaned back enough to think. Dove made herself let him. The silence wasn’t punishment just because she didn’t know what answer lived inside it.

"Did you ask me to train you for coins?" he asked.

"No. I wanted to learn. There’s a manual I can buy after real practice, and I still can’t afford it. You helped me qualify, but the lessons mattered without the purchase."

He considered that, then looked toward Thorne. "You knew?"

Her husband nodded. "She told me before we bonded."

Dove took a breath. "The first bond gave a reward. I’ve had a daily extra since then. It didn’t make either of us choose. I won’t promise what another bond would unlock because I haven’t done it, and Sprout loves sounding more certain than it deserves."

Edrik’s mouth curved faintly. "So do some of the men we’ve met."

"Yes, and I keep refusing to marry those."

He laughed, briefly, before returning to the part that mattered. "When you asked me to stay yesterday, was that yours?"

"All of it." She met his eyes. "I wanted you in the room. I liked hearing you there. I didn’t want to keep getting closer while you didn’t know this part."

He reached across the table and left his hand where she could take it. "I don’t mind that you survive cleverly. I would mind being told what I feel by something that doesn’t know me."

"I mind that too."

"Then tell me when it gets something wrong. Don’t let it answer for me."

Dove put her hand in his. He didn’t ask for a list of every reaction he’d ever earned, and she didn’t offer one as though private feelings were receipts she owed him. They agreed he could ask questions later. One conversation wasn’t a full instruction book for something she was still learning herself.

She hadn’t told him where her soul came from. That truth remained hers, unfinished and frightening. Explaining Sprout did not make every other secret suddenly easy.

Edrik asked one last question before they got up. "Does the water do something to how you smell?"

Dove nodded, admitting what Sprout had told her about people noticing the scent they liked most. "It doesn’t make you choose anything. I wouldn’t want that."

"I know what choosing feels like," he said. "I also like that you remember how I take coffee."

Her throat tightened unexpectedly. Of all the strange things she had explained, he had found the ordinary thing she’d done on purpose and handed it back to her.

Thorne squeezed her shoulder as he stood. Dove stayed at the table another moment, letting that answer mean what it meant.

Afterward, she opened the daily delivery privately, then explained the visible result while both men watched. Four sets of stackable cookware arrived. Selling three paid twenty-six normal coins. Ten fresh Favor unlocked a one-hundred-coin compact cook station. Three newly stored trades and fifteen active minutes remained today’s road tasks.

The travelers from yesterday brought two friends after hearing she had goods. Dove sold three sets for sealed rice, coffee, and clean towels, keeping one for four Favor. She stored the trades by touch and let Edrik watch without pretending the vanishing objects now explained everything about her space.

Practice and sales raised her normal purse to six hundred twelve. Ten new Favor and the mate extra, less the kept cookware, left six hundred nine. When the notice appeared after a shared joke at lunch, she told Edrik what it said only because he’d asked how an award worked.

He looked pleased. "That one sounds accurate."

"Don’t encourage it. It already thinks it’s managing my life."

By evening, Dove wasn’t waiting for him to look at her differently anymore. He still took the dangerous side of a doorway. He still smiled when she told him off. He also asked whether she wanted his hand before offering it across the table.

She took it and kept it. "I want to choose you," she said. "Not because we need help tomorrow. Because I want you here afterward."

Edrik’s fingers closed around hers. "Then ask me when morning comes, and I’ll give you the same answer awake."