Reveling in the pounding of my heart, I lean forward to press a kiss to his cheek.
Zan’s eyes widen; darken.
My cheeks, I can feel flaming.
No regrets.
Starting now, I’m making the life I want.
“I’m ready,” I tell Zan.
Chapter 14
Zanuseshisinternalfire to dry out our clothes so we don’t have to hike sopping wet back to the cottage.
They’re a littletoodry, in fact, almost brittle, which I tease him about on the way back.
I’m worried about how low his magic feels. But I don’t want to fight about it now and break whatever this new feeling between us is, somehow both electric and easy at the same time.
Not yet, anyway.
When we arrive back at the cottage, Teren and Nomi have made themselves busy.
Whatever food they brought has already been put away, and in our absence, they’ve been cleaning. The whole cottage smellsfresh in a way I hadn’t realized it didn’t before, so accustomed to stone dust in my nose.
A vase with fresh-picked wildflowers on the table, marking it as a place where people currently live; a place that merits beauty.
A wholepileof neatly folded new clothes for me to do with what I will, spoiling me for choice to decide how I want to present myself in this world.
A new blanket in shades of blue and pink, which when Zan goes to change his clothes I cast Teren a long look over, and he grins unrepentantly.
“Get over here,” I grump at him. “It’s time for sage lessons.”
He raises his eyebrows, but joins me in the sitting room. “We’re going to do this in here?”
“You’re the Sage of Comfort. We’re going to start in a setting that you’ve made yourself comfortable in already.”
I’d intended to ease Teren into sage training. To let him get comfortable with the options, acclimate, choose what felt right for his power.
But we don’t have the luxury of time. I need to make him able to functionnow, first, fast, like all of them are helpingme.
We don’t have a perfect, “ideal” training situation. We have reality.
I need to work with the person Teren is and what’s comfortable for him.
But I also need to work with what he really needs to know.
Nomi asks, “Want me to head outside, then?”
I shrug. “Up to you and Teren. We’re going to be working on him actually manifesting Comfort today, so if you stay close and take off your talisman, he’ll be testing on you. But it might also be educational for you in terms of being able to tell if magic is being used against you.”
Nomi considers that and then nods. “I’ll stay and keep working, then, if that’s okay with you, Teren?”
Teren frowns at me. “Am I ready for that already?”
“One way to find out.”
“That’s aterribleteaching philosophy.”
