He went on. “As a kid, I never wanted anyone to see it. If we were swimming together, I’d make sure to cover my foot as soon as we came out of the water. But then later, after—”
He stopped short then picked up the story again. “Later I decided, you know what? Screw him. I told the tattoo artisan to make it as large as possible.”
Nodding, I acted as if I understood, which I did not. The King was hard to understand.
His second son was only slightly more transparent.
“Butwhywould your father be ashamed of your shadow glamour?” I asked. “It seems rather magical to me. And useful.”
Once again, Pharis went quiet.
As he moved his hands to the back of my thigh, he said, “The tattoos you saw are not the symbol for shadow wielders. I have more than one glamour.”
“Ohhhhh. Stellon said that’s rare.”
“It is.”
“What’s your other one then? What does the hooked whirlwind represent?” I was dying to know by this point.
After a moment, Pharis removed his hands and moved away a few inches. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“I’m sure your second glamour is not as bad as you think it is,” I said. “Stellon was ashamed of his for no reason.”
“I don’t want to talk about Stellon either,” he said grumpily.
I turned onto my side, pushing up to one elbow. “Let’s talk about your father, then. It’s my opinion he shamed you both for no reason and that both your glamours are perfectly benign.”
“No glamours are benign,” he muttered. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know your father is afraid of you.”
“What?” Pharis finally made eye contact after minutes of looking at the ground, the sky, anywhere but my face.
“I think the King is afraid of you both,” I said. “I sensed it that night in the stable when he found Stellon and me attempting to escape. I think your father shames you in order to keep you small because he’s afraid of you.”
“How would you know?” Pharis asked.
I shrugged. “Intuition? I don’t know for sure, but I’ve always had a knack for sensing things like that. I always suspected the reason Dardick Creegan acted the way he did was because of his own sort of… smallness—though I couldn’t be sure of it until we ran into him on the road outside the village that night and you swayed him to disrobe.”
Pharis smirked, remembering.
“I think Stellon’s greatest fear is letting people down, particularly your father,” I mused.
“My father’s greatest fear is dying and leaving the girls behind,” I said. “And in turn, their greatest fear is losing him.”
“They love you just as much,” Pharis said.
“Oh, I know that. But they don’t fear losing me the same way. I guess because they sort of expected I’d get married someday and move away from our home. It’s the natural order of things, so to speak, though not my fate in particular.”
“Your…sense…really tells you that the King fears me and Stellon?” Pharis asked, sounding interested.
I was surprised he was taking me seriously, actually.
“It’s what I’ve felt when I’ve been around him,” I confirmed. “Though, admittedly that has been a rare occurrence. I’d need to spend more time with him to be sure.”
“Let us pray that never happens,” Pharis said.
“Agreed.”
