She rears up on my leg, watching me, so I reach down and pet her head.
“I wasn’t upset with you. I was mad at myself. I’m sorry. Go play. I promise I’m fine,” I say as I push her in the direction of the other familiar. She glances back at me but when I wave her off again, she gallops after him.
I let her go but then just stand in the doorway, not knowing where to go without being able to see anything.
Torin grabs my hand and pulls me after him. He slides into a chair and drags me onto his lap, which is not what I’m expecting.
“What are you doing?” I ask, rather startled by the seat I’ve ended up with.
He wraps one hand around my waist and the other over my eyes.
I repeat, “What are you doing?”
“Why do you feel so much hate?” he asks.
“Hate? I… what are you talking about?”
“You hate yourself. You hate your affliction. You’re so frustrated with yourself.”
“And you wouldn’t be?” I retort. “You’d be happy to suddenly be fucking blind?”
“I understand your frustration, but why do you take it out on yourself? Why do you think so little of your capabilities because of this curse? You seem to think your only worth is your magic and that without the strength of it, you are nothing. You want tohide everything you are going through and feeling. You want to suffer alone. Why?”
“Stop trying to analyze me,” I snap as I try to get up, but he holds me still.
“You don’t have to answer, but you should think about it.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What? Greatness and then being stripped of it?” He lets out a humorless laugh. “Yes. Yes, I do. I’ve just had two hundred more years to come to terms with it. There was once a time when I probably could have stopped this curse you’ve been afflicted with by just a simple touch.”
I stop struggling when it hits me that he’s right. I’m not the only one whose life has fallen to shambles. “I don’t even know if it’s greatness I’m chasing,” I whisper. “I’m just tired and frustrated today.”
Torin is quiet for a moment. “You must have been tired and frustrated every day since I met you.”
“Strange, almost feels like there’s something that could have added to that.”
“No idea what it was, but now that your ass is on my dick I’m very horny.”
I would like to glower at him but from this position, I can’t do it with ease. “We are not having sex here.”
“No, no, we’re reading,” he says, dropping his hand from my eyes.
“And why do I have to sit on your lap for it?”
“I heard this is how you read to others.”
“Is it?” I ask, positive it’s not.
“It is in your sex books.”
“Fucking hell,” I growl as I try to get up, but his hand around my waist keeps me pinned down.
And then he begins to read. He reads it in his tongue, even though I know the book isn’t. “The language this book is written in, was it a part of your culture?” I ask.
“No.”
“Then… how did you learn it?”
