Sorven, still bent over his plate, grinned at Mavek and shook his head.
“Naw. I don’t wanna go shopping,” Sorven said. “Cobrid’s learning to work the cattle, so I–”
“You and that damn dragon,” Sath laughed under his breath as Sorven launched into the training regiment he’d designed.
After they cleared the table, Sorven and Mavek got to work on the dishes while Cassia scrubbed down her counters. Aevrin was about to step in when Gramma Prisca pinched his elbow and quietly tipped her head back to indicate he was to come with her. Confused, Aevrin followed his Gramma all the way to the office. She cast her eyes furtively around the empty hallway they’d just come through, then closed the door behind them.
“Can you check what a spellstone’s been used for?” Gramma Prisca asked.
“...What d’you mean?”
“What someone wanted to see.”
Aevrin frowned at her. He had the bad feeling this had something to do with Cassia. He didn’t like the accusation she was up to anything.
“Gramma Prisca. Why d’you want to know what?”
“Miss Cassia cleaned my study when I was out. Only, I don’t think she was just cleaning.”
“...You’re asking me to spy on Cassia?” Aevrin asked in disbelief. “I dunno about that, Gramma. Doesn’t feel honorable.Whatare you accusing her of?”
Prisca narrowed her eyes and poked Aevrin in the stomach, hard. He tensed and folded his arms.
“I’m not just being nosy,” she said. “That girl was crying earlier today.”
“Cassia was crying?” He straightened his shoulders with a frown.
“If she’s trying to find whatever no-good man hurt her, I think we oughta know. Especially if we’re about to teach that girl to drive a cart and start sending her out with a bull. For her own good.”
Aevrin sat heavily down in the chair, then slowly looked up at his Gramma. Her expression looked about as worried as he felt. The idea of Cassia going back to where she’d come from made him feel sick. Mostly because of her safety, but he'd be lying if he didn't admit to himself that the house was warmer with her in it. That he woke up earlier these days just to have her company to himself.
“It doesn’t feel right,” he said again, but his resolve wavered.
“Just do it.” Gramma’s eyes narrowed. They’d gotten the spellstone in his mother’s last days, a gift from Sathuel to his wife so she could see all her relatives from afar. Now itstayed in Gramma’s office, out of his father’s sight. But even though they kept it in her space, so that any of Aevrin’s siblings could get to it, Gramma Prisca had never learned to use it for more than a few things. She’d claimed the magic made her feel itchy and odd, whenever one of them tried to show her how to use it.
He nodded slowly, reached towards the stone, and let his mind settle as the strange power pulsed through him. He wasn’t great with magic, but if any young man with access to a spellstone hadn’t learned to navigate the murky waters of the underchannels to slake his curiosities, well, that boy was dumb or lying.
“... Weather patterns,” Aevrin said, his brow furrowed as he tried to untangle the information flooding into him. “How Dariek’s doing out east. Some old memories of the ranch, fifty years back…”
“That’s all me,” Gramma Prisca said, which actually meant it was mostly Sorven or Mavek. “There’s nothing else? Nothing from this morning?”
“I can’t tell. The stone knows something. It doesn’t want to say.”
“Can’t you do that thing where you command it?”
“I’m a rancher, Gramma, not a wizard. Guess we’ll never know.”
“Pfft. We already do,” Prisca told him. “She’s hiding something.”
Aevrin shook his head and stood, peeling his hand off the stone. Cassia had never struck him as a liar, except when it came to insisting, as she initially had, that she’d just fallen down. It didn’t change his opinion of her that she still hadn’t come clean. He’d never expected her to. That was how it went, he knew, for women who were loyal to men they shouldn’t be.
If he could use the stone to see who’d hurt her, he would in a heartbeat. But he didn’t know enough about the man to look for that.
“So?” he asked Gramma, clinging to the hope that she’d guide them through this. “What do we do now?”
“Nothing,” Gramma said. “It’s her life to live. But Aevrin… you keep a close eye on her when you two go out. She’s closest to you by a longshot. If she needs an ear, you’re the one she’ll go to.”
Aevrin nodded mutely. It ought to make him feel good, that he was the one Cassia was closest to. Instead, it just hurt a bit. The kind of closeness he wanted from her, he wasn't going to get. Butwas she really still hung up on some asshole? He left the study and ambled back to the kitchen, where Sorven was still washing dishes while Mavek swept, no sign of Cassia.
