Chapter 403: Domestic Conditions
Thomas discovered that helping Sylvia live with it involved soup.
Sylvia sat at the small table by the bedroom windows, wrapped in a pale robe, with three medical bracelets on one wrist and the soft protective collar still fitted around her nape. Morning light spilled across the garden beyond the glass, touching the climbing roses and the damp stone path without reaching the expression on her face.
She stared at the bowl before her.
Thomas stood across from her. "Eat."
Sylvia lifted her eyes slowly. "That was not domestic."
"It was clear."
"It sounded like an order given during a siege."
"You need food."
She looked back at the soup.
The kitchen had produced something pale, smooth, and medically approved, with soft vegetables blended beyond recognition and enough seasoning to make it technically edible without allowing anyone to enjoy it.
John had delivered it personally.
He had been less cheerful today.
Thomas considered that an improvement.
Sylvia picked up the spoon, dipped it into the soup, and allowed most of it to slide back into the bowl.
Thomas waited.
She did it again.
"Sylvia."
She let go of the spoon and looked at him. "I want wings."
Thomas stared at her long enough that she clarified, "Chicken wings. Garlic, a little spicy and properly cooked. Not this."
His gaze shifted to the bowl.
The soup offered no defense of itself. Even Thomas, who had eaten military rations without complaint, could admit it looked less like food than something prescribed for a person who had offended their physician.
"You cannot have fried food."
"Seven said my stomach might be sensitive. He did not sentence me to blended vegetables until death."
"You were nauseated yesterday."
"Because Florian gave me medication before I ate. And because breakfast had raisins without warning."
Thomas’s expression briefly suggested that Florian’s involvement in surprise raisins might require an inquiry.
Sylvia used the opportunity to push the bowl away.
Thomas moved it back.
She sighed, then reached for her phone.
Thomas took it first.
Her eyes narrowed. "Give it to me."
"No. You have a bad idea."
"I only wanted to write to Nero."
"That is the bad idea."
"He would give me wings with extra sauce."
"He would send twelve boxes, three sauces, and a note insulting Seven, and Hale would apologize afterward."
Sylvia brightened. "Exactly."
Thomas put the phone in his pocket.
For a moment, silence held between them, softer than the argument deserved. Sylvia looked at the soup, then at him, and the stubbornness on her face thinned into exhaustion.
"This is not living with it," she said quietly. "This feels like being punished for surviving."
Thomas’s expression changed.
He sat down across from her.
"I am not trying to punish you."
"I know."
"I am trying to keep you from hurting."
"I know that too." Her fingers tightened around the robe. "But I am hungry, Tom. Not symbolically. Actually hungry."
Thomas reached for the house console and called the kitchen.
John answered as if awaiting judgment.
"The soup has been rejected," Thomas said.
John sighed. "I suspected."
Sylvia leaned toward the console. "It tasted like disciplinary action."
After a careful pause, John confessed that he had prepared an alternative: roasted chicken, soft herb rice, steamed carrots, and mild garlic sauce approved by Seven’s list.
Sylvia looked moved enough to forgive him.
Thomas approved it with warnings about spice that John accepted with the solemnity of a defeated artist.
When the food arrived, it smelled real. Warm chicken, rice, herbs, and garlic gentle enough not to anger the new gland beneath Sylvia’s collar.
Florian carried a second tray for Thomas.
Thomas stared at it.
"General Lancaster’s instruction," Florian said.
Sylvia’s attention turned sharply. "You did not eat?"
Thomas looked as if he regretted having staff.
"Domestic condition," she said. "If I am monitored, so are you."
For one second, Thomas looked like a man realizing that mating Sylvia meant no peaceful future.
Then he sat.
Sylvia looked satisfied for exactly three seconds before her expression softened in a way Thomas found far more dangerous than defiance.
"You really did not eat."
"I was busy."
"You were hovering."
"I was ensuring your transfer went smoothly."
"You were hovering with paperwork."
Thomas picked up his fork because arguing felt less safe than obeying. The roasted chicken was warm, properly salted, and better than he deserved after spending the morning threatening a bowl of soup by association.
Sylvia watched until he swallowed.
Only then did she return to her own plate.
The room quieted into something unfamiliar.
Sylvia was eating, and the color had returned faintly to her cheeks, and Thomas could look at her without seeing only blood, collapse, and the terrible stillness of the battlefield.
He wanted her healthy with a hunger that had nothing polite in it.
Healthy enough to laugh without pain. Healthy enough to argue. Healthy enough to stand beside him in Rohan and Roslew and every ugly room that thought it could measure her worth.
Healthy enough for him to touch her without feeling like he handles very fine china.
For his mouth.
For the mark he had not placed because love was not an excuse to take before her body could bear it.
Two years together had taught him Sylvia’s moods, her stubbornness, the way she lied badly when frightened, and her dramatic nature when hungry. Two years had taught her his silences, his restraint, his violence, and all the places gentleness cost him effort.
She knew him.
That was why, after only a few bites, she glanced up and said, "You are thinking too loudly again."
Thomas lowered his fork.
Sylvia’s eyes narrowed. "Is it about the food?"
"No."
"Medical rules?"
"No."
"Me?"
"Yes."
Her expression gentled. "Tom."
He looked at her across the small table, wrapped in pale morning light, fragile in ways she hated and alive in ways that made every disciplined part of him ache.
"I want you at my side forever," he said.
Sylvia went still.
His voice roughened. "Not as proof. Not as convenience. Not because the world finally gave us a classification it respects. I wanted you before this. I want you now. I will want you after every monitor is gone."
Her fingers tightened around the fork.
"And when I mark you," he added, quieter, "it will be because you are ready. Not because I am afraid."
Sylvia’s eyes shone.
Then she lifted her fork again. "Good."
Thomas blinked.
She tasted the chicken and nodded.
"Then eat. Forever requires calories."
Thomas stared at her.
Then, helplessly, he obeyed.