He grinned. “In the interest of inspiring you to greater challenge, I admit I probably couldn’t tell.”
She rolled her eyes. “Soldiers. If you can’t stab with it, it’s not worth learning about.”
He wasn’t a soldier anymore. But rather than dwell on that he said, “You’re not going to sit there and tell me you can’t grow a perfectly normal looking plant that would actually kill me.”
Theira smiled like a blow to his chest. “No, I’m not.”
Varius felt unreasonably pleased with himself for getting that smile out of her.
She should smile that wickedly all the time, and maybe that was one thing he could do for her.
“I didn’t get a good look last night, but it looks like your gardens are expansive and flourishing,” Varius said. “Do you grow your own food, along with everything else?”
“Mostly.”
“Is that so you’ll always know what’s poisonous?”
Theira rolled her eyes again, but, he thought, fondly. “As if I couldn’t tell if someone else tried to poison me? Please. No, it’s mostly convenience.”
“Ah. You are pretty far from anything out here.” Sausage would keep, but she must use sorcery for the eggs. Had she broken out a few from a precious stash so he could eat something familiar?
Then again, for all he knew he was eating eggs of something other than a chicken that she kept in her basement.
Another thought struck him. “Has the Sorcerer Ascendant pressured people to not sell you food?”
Theira shook her head. “No need. I’m not going to put people in any more danger to help me. The people who built my house are protected, but if I started doing that commonly Tychon would make a point of... challenging that protection.”
And the Sorcerer Ascendant was the one person alive who could definitely break it.
Varius frowned, wondering anew about that guest room. But he said, “You said ‘mostly’. What else is it?”
Theira considered him for a moment, then shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “I like growing things.”
The simple statement hit him like a punch in the gut.
Gods. He knew how much she reveled in sorcerous destruction, and he’d be lying if he said he himself didn’t take satisfaction in knowing he’d hit an opponent just right to take them out.
But there was another side of her, too, that she was trying to give space to in this house.
She liked growing things.
If he didn’t have to kill for the empire, what would he do?
He’d barely considered the question before; it was an impossibility.
Theira had a garden, though, and it was flourishing.
But her house was empty.
“All those craft books in the guest room,” Varius said slowly. “Are they for you?”
“Yes, all the guest rooms have books like that. I’ve hardly read them all, but I thought it was better to have them ready in case the need arises.”
“Wait. How many guest rooms do you have? Do you have that many guests out here?”
For all his wondering about her other guests, it was only in this moment that Varius realized he might not be the only one in the house with her.
But Theira’s careful expression cut that line of thought off as she said quietly, “You’re my first.”
