And even while I was admitting to premeditated murder and accidental actual murder, he was still paying attention to that, too.
To me.
I meet his eyes over the sandwich, find them intent; his focus fixed wholly and utterly on me.
It belatedly occurs to me that I have never eaten out of someone’s hand before, and it’s actually super intimate and I did not think this through.
“You deserved to have nice things before,” Zan tells me quietly. “But after recounting that, youespeciallydo. Let’s go for a visit. I think it will give you some ideas.”
I eat this sandwich alotfaster. “Ideas for what?”
His gaze never leaves mine. “For what to do about still being the Sage of Wrath.”
Chapter 6
Well,thatwasapersonal attack.
I don’t know if I want to live as the Sage of Wrath anymore, but Zan is right. I need to decide what that even means.
He won’t tell me why this visit will help, though, other than to say that Nomi, the person whose house we’re now approaching, is the one we need to talk to about supplies for the cottage.
Her house itself is exuding magical pressure, though. The only reason I’m not instantly on alert is because the magic feels like Zan’s, but I still have to ask, “Why does this house have so much of you in it?”
He cuts me a sharp look. “That’s right, with the Quiet down sages will be able to feel that, won’t they?”
“Even priests would be able to feel this, unless their training is vastly inferior now too,” I tell him.
Zan swears.
I maybe take a little too much pleasure in getting that honest of a reaction out of him.
“It’s because it used to be Kovan and Tasa’s house,” he explains. “Once their children were older, they moved to town so they could be nearer to other families and left the mountain cottage for future sages. Since Tasa was a null, my scales made it possible for her to live here without destroying the magic of her own home constantly.”
Aha. “And the person we need to see just happens to live here.”
Zan’s eyes glimmer with appreciation. “No, it isn’t an accident. Come on.”
He takes the last few steps to the door of the house and knocks before I can interrogate him further about what must, in some sense, behishouse that healsodoesn’t live in.
“Not a good time!” a woman’s voice calls from inside.
Zan’s eyes narrow. “It’s me, Nomi,” he replies, his volume elevated to carry but somehow not a yell.
A pause, and then the rapid approach of footsteps, like the woman isrunningto the door.
She throws it open, and I get my first glimpse of the woman he’s installed in his house.
Nomi is older, on the early side of middle-aged—perhaps in her forties?—and in her prime, with faint lines creasing her face and a stocky, solid build, her toned muscles accentuated by her fitted top and pants. She’s tan like she works outdoors and her hair is cropped close to her head, almost like the hairstyles I saw on men in town but still undeniably feminine.
“Zan, thank goodness you’re here,” she says fervently. “We don’t know what happened, but Teren is struggling— Who’s this?”
Nomi finishes sharply, almost accusingly.
In a flash of insight, I realize Zan has probably never brought a person with him before.
“Can we come in?” Zan asks. “There are things we should speak of, and I promised her ice cream.”
I blink, breaking what I belatedly realize was probably a too-intent stare at the woman in Zan’s house to look at him. “Ice cream?”
