“Your father has claimed for years that you could best me with your plant magic if you wanted to, and I’m eager to find out if he’s right.”
Cerian shakes his head. “I don’t—”
“What? Did you have other plans? I imagine if you did, you’d still be in there with Arisanna rather than out here with me. Is she all right?”
Is she? He glances back at the door.
“I promise you’ll survive without her for an hour as long as we don’t go too far. Come on.” Mother pulls him down the corridor before he can respond to her absurd statement.
Of course he’ll be fine without Arisanna. Whatever he was feeling last night was just exhaustion, as it was for her.
“I’ve never sensed your affinities with my life magic before,” Mother says as she drags him away from his chamber and Arisanna. “Your plant magic is powerful. I can barely discern your fire magic around it.”
“Tharios says the same thing.” Cerian glances back at the corridor as Mother pulls him around the corner.
Arisanna will be fine. Right?
“How’s your fire magic doing?” Mother asks, and he swings his gaze back to her, eyeing her warily.
“It’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“No reason. Here we are.” She pushes open the door to the practice arena, revealing the miniature forest, with its trees and dirt and a gurgling creek.
He’s spent hours upon hours in this room, practicing with Father and with trainers. Occasionally, Tharios andElowyn joined him, though Father usually only let the three of them spar together if they were on the same team.
He doesn’t like them to compete too much.
But the one person he’s never faced in here is Mother. She’s never been strong enough.
Until now.
She retrieves a pair of wooden bowls from nearby and hands one to him. “Eat up.”
He looks down at the nut and berry mixture. Was she planning this all along?
“How did you know?” he asks as she munches on her own plant foods to pre-fill her magic stores.
“That you’d need to let off some steam this morning? I may not have been as active in your childhood as your father was, Cerian, but I still know my elflings well. I see the most of myself in you.” She looks up at the tree-grown roof high overhead and laughs. “‘He’s just like you, Nestraya.’ How many times your father has told me that. ‘He has your eyes and your spirit.’”
“He says that?”
“All the time. Now eat. If we grow cranky and murder each other, your father will never forgive me.”
Cerian takes a handful of the berry mixture. “Does he know we’re here?”
“He believes I’m resting. I chose not to relieve him of that assumption.”
Cerian stares at her. Who is this woman, and what happened to his mother?
“Eat,” she admonishes again.
As he drops a berry on his tongue, thoughts of Arisanna fill his head. The way her fingers brushed his lip as she fed him in the heartlanding. Her willingness to care for his magic like that.
Maybe he should check on her. She was about to say something when he left. Why didn’t he hear her out first?
He was embarrassed and disappointed. That’s why.
He can’t run from her, though. As he stands here, munching on nuts and berries, remembering the way she smiled up at him when he asked the heartlanding to brighten the sky, a startling realization overtakes him.
