My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 433

Lyra

"So what's the biggest headache out there for him?" Odile asked, lying back and curling her toes against the pillow.

"The fences." Nadia laughed. "Poor Daddy. They're his bane."

"Fences," Odile repeated.

"The pigs keep getting through them, you see. And he's convinced that if he just finds the right materials, the right technique, he'll build one they can't breach." She waved her glass in a small circle. "He's always having a go at it. It never works."

"So why does he keep doing it?"

"He says it's good exercise." Nadia snorted. "I've heard that man go on about those fences more than I've ever heard him talk about scribing, and that is saying something."

"I always imagined land could be lovely," Odile said. "To walk on it. Get my hands in the dirt. I bet it's wonderful, having a real place you come from."

Nadia snorted. "You're missing out. The smell of pigshit will knock you flat."

"I bet it would." Odile was laughing. "But just to see what that's like. To know what a field smells like. Which way the wind was going."

She settled back into my pillows and was quiet a moment. Then she turned her head and looked at me.

"Lyra. If you could leave Valdris tomorrow, where would you go?"

I blinked at her. "What?"

"If you could leave. Tomorrow morning." She was watching me and waiting for a real answer, which nobody ever did.

I didn't even hesitate. "I don't care where it is, so long as it's somewhere nobody knows whose daughter I am."

The words spilled out too easily. I should have taken it back. I didn't.

I glanced at Nadia, sitting cross-legged on the floor with her back to the window. She knew my drunk ramblings too well.

"No matter how much you bitch about it, you've never packed a bag," Nadia said. "You say that every time you drink."

"I could leave tomorrow," I said. "I wouldn't even take two changes of clothes. I'd steal what I needed."

"Oh sure. How long would that last you? Two days?" Nadia snorted. "You'd be back eating off your father's plate before the week was out."

"Maybe," I said quietly, rolling onto my side on the rug.

Nadia grinned at the ceiling.

"Where the hell are my shoes?" she asked, squinting around the room.

"Under the rug, you idiot," I said. "You kicked them off before you sat down."

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