“I didnot,” Zan says fiercely. “Wearegoing to have ice cream. Wearehere for supplies. I told you that I would tell you more once we were here, and I am. Whoever lives in this house is the one responsible for setting newly arrived sages up with what they need to start a new life. And the warding also made it possible for a young sage who couldn’t be on his own to live here, too.”
Before. Before I decided to wake up and cause problems, because that’s all my power has ever been.
Zan brought me here for something else, though.
But he still brought me here to use my power for somethinghedecided, and I can’t help feeling a little betrayed by it.
Yes, I’m overwhelmed with choices, but I thought he meant to help me learn about them, not push me into them.
I remove the bow from my hair so that he can see my eyes glow.
Teren and Nomi freeze; threatened.
Because that’s also who I am. Terrifying without trying.
But not to Zan, who does understand me enough to know that I want him to know I am not buying his bullshit.
“That is not,” I repeat, “why we’re really here, though. Is it?”
Zan doesn’t flinch away from me. “I have no idea what you can do, Yora. I don’t know what you want to do, or if you know what you want to do. You have all this wisdom, but you don’t know this world, and I think you need to, in order to knowhowto move.”
Damn it.
After all this time still, I do need to move.
More thinking—clearing my mind, gods that makes me want to set some priests on fire—isn’t going to help me or anyone else.
You can’t be wise about the world without moving in it.
I glare up at Zan, angry at him for understanding this and maneuvering me this way because apparently even now I can’t just go eat a dessert in town without it being a wholething—
Teren’s voice interrupts my thoughts, surprising me. “If you’ve been asleep for five hundred years youdefinitelyneed some ice cream. Aunt Nomi, let’s give them a moment. You two, choose whatever seats you like by the table and we’ll bring you bowls in a couple minutes.”
Nomi looks like she’s about to say something, but Teren takes her by the elbow and tugs her out of the room.
Leaving me to really look at it for the first time.
It’s a riot of color, with knitted blankets... everywhere.
As I’m taking it all in—this is very cozy and part of meyearnsfor it, but it also feels like an assault on my senses after lifetimes of no softness or color—silence falls.
“Nomi isn’t his aunt,” Zan says abruptly.
Okay, fine. Let’s talk. “But she raised him?”
He nods. “Apparently she always wanted children, but she hasn’t met the woman for her yet. And without dealing with the Order and leaving the Quiet, adoption is really the only option. Teren was a child when I found him but still old enough to have memories with his birth parents, so she didn’t want to try to displace them.”
“Is that why you chose her?”
“Because she wanted to be a parent? No, that was luck; it’s not the most important quality in a sage guardian. Nomi was an apprentice of the previous guardian, who chooses their successor. It’s always someone who has enough skills that theycan maintain the cottageandhas the connections in Crystal Hollow to get a sage set up with whatever trade suits them.”
“And who hates the Order but is fine with dragons.”
Zan rolls his eyes. “I felt that went without saying. Are you going to choose a seat?”
I want to ask him to choose for me because this is a choice that doesn’t matter, but I’m mad at him for choosing for me already so I go sit in the chair that has blue patterns covering it.
It’s only when Zan sits in a pink one that I realize the blue I chose is the same color as Zan’s natural hair, and now we look like a matched set.
