“You stood up to him,” I pointed out. “That takes strength.”
She shrugged, her gaze dropping to her plate. “Not enough strength, apparently.”
My claws itched at her words, the dragon within me bristling at the thought of her feeling powerless. I gripped the edge of the table, grounding myself in the mundane sensation of the rough wood beneath my fingers.
“You have plenty of strength, Seranni,” I said quietly. “Don’t doubt that.”
Her eyes flicked to mine, surprised, before a faint smile curved her lips.
“So, he thought he could get away with it because he was the mayor’s son?” I asked, my hackles rising again at the thought of the man who had hurt Seranni.
“And because of what I am,” Seranni said carelessly. I frowned, and through careful questioning that wouldn’t give away my ignorance, I finally understood the status of magic users in Telluria, explaining something I’d wondered about before.
Why was the mage given such freedom?
Now it all made sense. If magic was rare in Telluria, a King would do much to get his hands on a secret magical weapon.
I shivered. Perhaps it was a good thing that magic was so common in the Drakazov kingdom. Back in Kalinovo, I could not have imagined one magic user having so much political power.
Now, I understood why Seranni had come to the tower in secret, stealing away in the night when she should’ve been asleep. Ifanyone had seen her coming to the tower, her secret would’ve been out, and she would’ve been sent away to the army.
My hackles rose at the thought of Seranni being pushed into serving her corrupt King. I was glad she was smart enough to steer clear of her country’s army.
As we finished up and washed our dishes, Seranni sighed. “I guess I’ll have to stay here until spring, when I can travel again.” She looked out of the window toward the West. “I’m going to leave Telluria.” She turned to look at me, and smiled. “That means I have three months to solve whatever problem it is you’re trying to tackle.”
We spent the evening in a tour of the tower, starting with the kitchen and the larder.
“Where to next?” she asked brightly. “Ooh, can I see the lab? I’m sure the mage must have had a lab!”
“Of course,” I said through bloodless lips, hoping she hadn’t caught my change in mood.
With a heavy heart, I showed Seranni the laboratory, where the mage had conducted his experiments. I gritted my teeth as I stood in the doorway, unable to make it past the threshold. After fluttering around the room for a while, talking to herself, Seranni seemed to notice my silence, because she grabbed two books from the table and quickly shut the door.
“What’s next?”
My spirits rose the further we walked away from the lab, seeing the stores of magical supplies, the study, and my bedroom, finally ending with the observatory on the top of the tower. I omitted mentioning the underground dungeon that had been built below the tower, where I had been kept in isolation for sixmonths before I had managed to escape. Seranni would never step foot in that squalid place.
The next few days passed in a haze of shared meals, long hours spent quietly reading before the fireplace, and gentle conversation. We had started by making polite small talk, before moving on to talk about our childhoods and our dreams for the future.
What I had learned was that Seranni’s father did not deserve her love and that he was a selfish ass who only thought of himself. The man had left his only daughter behind nearly two years ago, and she’d not heard from him since then. Not even a letter.
He had abandoned Seranni.
I also knew that she didn’t want to hear it. The first time I had said something about it, Seranni had blown up at me, slinging vicious barbs at me that an orphan like me could never know what it was like to sacrifice for family.
I’d said nothing, then, but after she’d calmed down, I’d said to her, “And what has your father sacrificed foryou?”
Seranni had retreated to bed in a cold silence, only returning to her normal self the next day, when I had apologized for speaking out of turn.
For her part, Seranni learned not to talk of my past. As a soldier from Drakazov, an enemy to her country, what could I tell her? And I had no interest in talking about the war or my fallen comrades from my old regiment. The Stonehearts with whom I’d ridden into battle had all died, and I considered myself the least of their number. By rights, now that I was free from captivity, I should be returning home to my village, where I would carry tales of their deeds and their brave, honorable deaths.
But I couldn’t return likethis—more beast than man.
My frustration with myself, with my fate, with the godsdamned mage who had condemned me to this life—all of it had me raging any time the past was brought up. It was an animal rage, called forth from somewhere in my being that I couldn’t fathom. I couldn’t control it or mitigate it. When the rage took me over, I could only wait until it had dissipated and I felt human again.
Those were the times I usually escaped into the woods, going on long walks through the snowy forest, cooling my head by communing with nature.
Time went on, and before I knew it, two weeks had passed. Seranni had settled into her new home, and we had come to form a routine of our own.
