Tahlen still had not taken a single step. “Zelli does not act as I would, or sometimes even as you would, but I would obey his orders.”
Zelli reached up to tug at his necklace without pulling it free. He let the initial sting from Tahlen’s assessment carry through him, then the warmth that followed. “I never gave you any orders.”
Tahlen held a stare with Grandmother, not looking to Zelli at all.
Zelli pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I will try to give you orders?” he suggested, only to realize that he might have issued some sort of commands when in bed with Tahlen and Tahlen would certainly remember them.
The remark earned him a sideways glance and a glimpse of a light in Tahlen’s eye.
For a moment, Zelli was no longer even remotely tired. His skin sizzled with added heat.
“All things I will consider in my own time, Tahlen,” Grandmother cut in, unimpressed. “Go see your family. Rest, eat, wash, and then return to me. I will have questions.”
She was very sure.
Tahlen offered her another respectful nod, then turned. He met Zelli’s stare with one eyebrow arched.
The look was meant to inquire about Zelli’s condition, not to imply Tahlen would obey Zelli over Grandmother, but Zelli gulped.
“Esrin’s probably worried sick,” he told Tahlen anyway. “And you barely got any sleep last night because of me.” He froze, his shoulders so tense they nearly touched his ears. He didn’t look at his grandmother as he cleared his throat. “And I’m well enough. Thank you. Go see your sister.”
“Yes, Zelli,” said Tahlen, daring to have that same light in his eyes. With a final nod, he backed out of the door and closed it silently behind him.
Zelli, who could not follow him, turned to face his grandmother.
“Mizel.” Grandmother’s tone was a warning and her eyes saw more than Zelli’s did. She held out her hand and waited until Zelli supported her arm before making her slow, shuffling way toward her bed. She sat on the edge with a heaving sigh, but yanked him down next to her with surprising strength. Her eyes remained dark.
“Now,” she didn’t let him look away, “tell me everything.”
Eighteen
Zelli bathed immediately upon returning to his room, dropping the pack and slipping off his clothes as he went to the bathing room. Someone had been instructed to ready his bedchamber for him on his arrival, because a fire was lit and there was a tray of food and tea on the little table before it. But getting clean and soaking away various aches and pains in the water were of more interest to him at present.
He had told Grandmother everything, except for details of what had happened between him and Tahlen last night. She’d interrupted him twice, first to be concerned over Zelli’s foolish wish, then to ask if any of Zelli’s other problems were affecting him.
Her shoulders had dropped with worry or exhaustion by the time he was done and she’d let him settle her into bed without much complaining.
“I couldn’t leave them there,” Zelli had finally argued, drawing her eyes to him again. “But they don’t have to stay beyond the night. Hospitality demands at least that, and no one could claim we were doing otherwise. No oneshouldclaim it.”
Grandmother was much better at hiding her feelings than Zelli was. He really needed to learn how to do that. Not even lingering in the hot water could calm some of his nerves at the memory of Grandmother’s impassive expression.
“As for the rest,” he’d gone on, wondering why Tahlen thought Zelli was persuasive when he clearly wasn’t, “I was perfectly safe. Tahlen took excellent care of me.”
Zelli, in the bath, squirmed at the way Grandmother had said nothing there so the words had seemed to echo. “The judgments went well. Most people were happy to hear from us. Oh—did outguards stop here?”
That had made Grandmother speak, at least. “No.”
Zelli wondered if the outguards had gotten lost in the fog again, but that really wasn’t his concern.
“Tahlen did nothing wrong,” he had insisted to Grandmother. He thought it right that he’d said it. But the memory made him restless again.
He pulled himself from the bath before he could fall asleep, and slipped on a nightshirt and his robe without doing much more than squeezing the water from his hair and patting himself dry.
Someone had brought food into the room while he’d been bathing, which he devoured while further drying his hair and rehashing his talk with Grandmother to consider what she must have been considering while Zelli had gone on and on.
“Your current issues,” she’d begun thoughtfully. “One of which is something we hadn’t seen in months.”
“Possibly another,” Zelli had admitted, although without evidence except for his suspicions that the fae were listening or watching and doing this to him on purpose. This lust-fever felt different than before, certainly, which was probably due to Tahlen’s help. But Zelli, beneath his exhaustion and the wrongness from the wish, still felt rather… unlike himself.
