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After three embarrassing attempts, and another full minute of standing in the narrow hall, wondering whether she could feel him there, disrupting the air currents and, quite frankly, being a fool, Sturmhond knocked on the door.
Katya hadn't even really registered the soft knocking against her door, even as she cut across the floor to open it. On the other side was Sturmhond, looking as unbothered as ever. He was holding a covered tray.
"I don't have the time for this," she went to slam the door in his face and, in reflex, Sturmhond wedged his foot forward.
Usually he thought Katya was the most beautiful woman he'd seen, but now, with her hair falling free to her shoulders, in a moment when the mask hadn't snapped on, she looked vaguely god-like. A sleep deprived, slightly malnourished god, but he digressed.
He caught hold of the door and pushed it back open despite Katya's poor efforts to push him out – though Sturmhond was sure she could've had him launched right down the hallway if she'd really wanted to. "Just give me a moment," he snapped.
Katya's brows furrowed slightly, but she moved out of the door, "Don't touch anything."
It was as good as telling him not to move. All across her floor, maps and papers had been laid out in what he could only assume was some kind of order that she could understand. He should have given her the tray and turned back – this was morbid curiosity, a part of him that refused to die and let him move on, simply because he didn't know.
But his concern outweighed his rationality.
"You haven't graced us with the sight of you lately, milaya. I do believe part of the crew looked forward to your bizarre hovering every day."
Katya rolled her eyes at his antics. The past few days, she'd been locked up in her quarters, pouring over maps and the few books that were available to her, trying to make some kind of plan and failing miserably.
She eyed Sturmhond again, suspicion brewing in her chest, and crossed her arms over her chest, "What do you want, Sturmhond?"
"Just watching my back, I suppose," he uncovered the tray to reveal a bowl of steaming porridge. "I'm not crazy about the idea of the Darkling's favorite Grisha dropping dead on deck."
Her eyes narrowed, and she went to speak, but Sturmhond stopped her with a look. He had observed the slightest crack on her face when he'd mentioned the General.
"You don't eat, you don't sleep, you hole yourself up here all day and at night you wander the deck like a phantom."
Katya forced herself not to acknowledge that Sturmhond's words sounded more like he was worried than like him covering his bases, or that he was right. She barely ate, because most of the food was fish, and even if she was hungry, the night terrors kept her appetite down. She couldn't sleep through the night anymore, hadn't been able to since that day in the Fold, so she stayed up until exhaustion won her over.
