I sighed. “Look, I know you want it to be simple and easy for me to trust my magic. I know you want it to happen the quicker the better. But I don’t trust it. I threw a person at a tree as if they were a mere doll. I snapped an entire bathtub in half. So no, I do not trust it. Not even a little. I might not fear it as much as I did at first, but that doesn’t mean I’m there yet.”
Owen threw an arm around my shoulder. “We have time, Jorah. It’s okay. You’re powerful as hell. It’s okay not to know what to do with that. Particularly when you never asked for it to begin with.”
As I pulled back, I told him the truth, wanting both he and Krew to get it through their thick heads. “We don’t have enough time. There is a ball in four days.”
I heard the door creak open, and instinct had me making sure all traces of my magic were gone.
Fortunately, it was only Renna anyway.
“Hey.”
She grinned and headed right over to the table. “Hey, Jorah. Ready for a good old fashioned butt whooping?”
I shrugged. “We’ll see.”
We grabbed our seats and I began shuffling the cards. The feel of the cards in my hand gave me a weird sense of peace. That though so very much had changed in the last few weeks, some things would always be the same. I was still Jorah. I still knew how to play cards. And trash talk.
We heard Molly before we saw her, jokingly telling her guard today was the day she would finally win.
“Bold of you to assume that already,” Renna teased.
“Bold of you to doubt your oldest friend,” Molly fired back while placing her hand over her heart. “I am wounded.”
She sat down on the other side of me. “How are you two today?”
I saw how genuinely happy Molly seemed these days and I wondered how things with Keir were going. I almost wanted to ask Keir. Almost. But if things were going well, I was just going to stay out of it.
“I’m tired, but good,” I offered.
“I am bored, Molls. Bored out of my mind,” Renna provided.
“We should go for a walk in the gardens soon,” Molly supplied. “It’s been my new thing. Reading and walking in the gardens. Because the two of you are too preoccupied with a certain prince.”
Renna choked on a laugh, and I knew she had to be thinking of the fact that Krew and I were, in fact, now married. Meanwhile I just felt bad Molly didn’t know.
“Sorry I’m late!”
We all turned to see Gwen coming in.
“You aren’t,” I offered. “Only boasts and empty promises are being made.”
Gwen laughed. “I’d rather win first and boast later.”
Now that I believed. She was the youngest woman at the table, but she’d never been afraid to ask the hard questions or go after what she wanted. Whether that was because she was a disloyal or because that was just her personality, I didn’t rightly know.
I didn’t hate Gwen, nor was I even remotely still mad at her for how everything played out while I was in Keir’s Assemblage. I just didn’t know if I could ever fully trust her. She was ambitious in a way which made me wonder when it came down to it if she would choose those ambitions over protecting her own friends. If she would use anything and everything to her advantage.
“The next ball is going to have another play,” Molly provided a few turns in. “I was kind of hoping for the acrobats again.”
“Keir said there are plans in the works for a tour of the kingdom with the Assemblages too,” Gwen offered. “Won’t it be fun to travel to all the levels of the kingdom?”
I exchanged a look with Renna. Were they just being chatty and sharing information to be nice? Or was each sharing a piece of information they had in an effort to show how much they knew? How close to Keir they were?
Women were a weird species. I was one and even I wasn’t quite sure I had us figured out.
I hadn’t known either of the things they mentioned, but with all the discussions we’d been having the past few days about the trees I healed in the forest, I wasn’t mad. And then Silvia had been fitting my gown for the ball that I may or may not go to depending on my control over my magic.
There had just been a lot going on.
