Interesting. His bitter refusal only made her more curious. “My mother can be irritating.” That was an understatement, as her mother had attempted every bit of emotional leverage in her considerable arsenal to prevent Selly from coming along to rescue Nic. If the others made it back to House Phel without Jadren and her, Daisy would likely explode from worry. “But I love her anyway,” Selly finished.
“That’s because your mother is capable of love and isn’t a monster.”
“Is Lady El-Adrel incapable of love?” What an astonishing concept. Selly didn’t think she’d ever heard of a person who couldn’t love. But then, the Convocation was a strange and foreign place. Even without the long and bitter history of House Phel’s enemies having seen to the entire realm of Meresin being excommunicated from Convocation lands, along with all her people, Selly had known that they were better off. Monsters incapable of loving their children dimmed by comparison to the other horrors.
“I’m fascinated that you asked that first instead of whether she’s a monster,” Jadren answered in a dry tone. “Still, I have no intention of discussing her further.”
“Because you’re her spy?”
“What part of ‘not discussing’ did you fail to comprehend?”
“That’s a question about you, not her.”
Jadren slid her a glittering black look. “I think not even you are that naïve, so I’m calling you out on trying to be clever and failing. You saved my life back there, so I’m being nice, but you’re playing with fire, little girl, by pushing me.”
“I’m not a little girl,” she retorted, stung. “I’m twenty-two.”
“Oh, so very old as that?” he replied scathingly. “Besides, it doesn’t count when you mentally and emotionally froze ten years ago. Your body may be a woman’s, but the person inside is only twelve, if that. We’re lucky you didn’t insist on bringing your dollies along on this trip.”
There were still dolls in her room, though Selly doubted Jadren could know that. He had to be guessing. Never mind that she hadn’t remembered those dolls, not clearly, nor had she put them in her new room at the recently resurrected House Phel. She vaguely recalled her brother and parents trying to get her to sleep in that room they’d painstakingly put together for her in the dry core of the house. Fragments of distorted memory showed that she sometimes had slept there, though she’d been twenty by then, long past the age of dolls. Maybe everyone thought the same as Jadren, that she was mentally twelve years old, the age she’d been when she first started experiencing the spells that took her out of time and left her stranded on confusing shores.
Being inside, though, that had only made the feelings of oppression and madness worse. In the swamps and marshes of Meresin, she’d been able to simply exist. Not having to converse with anyone or deal with expectations had let her mind rest. In truth, she should be enjoying being out of doors, being quiet, and not trying to make conversation with Jadren. Normally she’d be more than happy to be silent.
However, the rapid events of the last few days had made it abundantly clear how much she didn’t know. In some ways it wasn’t wrong to call her mentally twelve years old, if that. She’d certainly stopped learning much about the world around then. If she didn’t want to be relegated to being a child while the adults made choices for her, then she needed to stop hiding and start grappling. At least Jadren didn’t try to protect her from the truth, so this enforced sojourn with him was an opportunity she shouldn’t waste.
“You’re not a fire wizard though,” she informed him, since he didn’t seem to be fond of questions.
“How is that apropos of anything?”
“You said I was playing with fire, but you don’t have fire magic.”
“First of all, that’s an expression and not intended to be taken literally. Second, how would you even know what kind of magic I do and don’t have, baby familiar?”
“I could feel it.”
He stopped walking. Turning, he gave her such a long, icy stare of glittering obsidian that she had to dig her toes into the ground to keep from stepping back. It would be much easier going barefoot, but she was trying to be less wild. Shoes seemed to be an important sign of civilization to people.
“What,” he drawled with cool sarcasm, “are you a walking oracle head now that you think you can assess my MP scores? Because I assure you, you cannot.”
So much bitterness in him, along with anger that was only partially directed at her. She cocked her head at him, experiencing a sense of familiarity, even though that made no sense at all. “What’s an oracle head?” she asked, taking the foreign references in order of his saying them.
He looked briefly incredulous, then shook his head with a huff of breath and resumed walking. “If I’m to serve as remedial schoolteacher on top of my other duties, I’m taking it up with Lord Phel. I should receive extra wages.” He continued immediately, sparing her a response to that. “You know what an oracle head is—you saw it when Rat dragged you back from your feral, barefooted escapades in the swamps. The Convocation proctor was using it to evaluate Lord and Lady Phel’s wizard–familiar bonding.” At her puzzled frown, he freed a hand to wave it. “Looks like a decorated human head in a box.”
“That thing?” she yelped in shock. She did remember it, but she’d been in the depths of madness then and she’d put that nightmarish image down to one of the worse phantasms of her deranged mind. “That was real?” she squeaked out.
“Real as you and me,” Jadren answered, sliding her an assessing glance. “You’re not going to lose your shit, are you? If you go scampering off to blither in the wilderness, I’m not equipped to stop you, and Lord Phel will have my head if I return without his baby sister.”
“I’m fine,” she bit out, stalking determinedly along. Never mind that every impulse in her screamed for her to do exactly as he insultingly implied she might. In the marshes, there was only nature. Nothing there was as horrible as that undead thing in the tabernacle.
“You’re clearly not fine, poppet, but as that’s actually a rational reaction to an oracle head, that works for me. Fits are acceptable, so long as you don’t run off,” he added with a meaningful head tilt.
They trudged along in silence while she wrestled with the bemusement that Jadren had been—if not exactly sympathetic to her reaction—at least understanding of it.
“I thought I imagined the… ah, oracle head,” she admitted, feeling she needed to offer an explanation. “I don’t expect you to understand or sympathize, but—”
He snorted. “You’re learning, at least. Never expect sympathy from the Convocation, from House El-Adrel, or from me.”
“In that order?” she questioned bitingly.
