Chapter Two #3
He was sure Terila had felt it, too, though she’d passed it off with a brittle-sounding laugh.
He assumed she’d been hoping to discover they were wildly compatible and push for a marriage.
But maybe she did it with everyone. He had witnessed three separate occasions at that particular ball, and he wasn’t sure if that had been designed to show him that she thought nothing of him and his incompatibility or if she’d really been on the hunt for a partner.
Common gossip had it that she was looking for marriage, and she expected it to be someone who was Extraordinary and to whom she was perfectly matched.
Tor had nothing against someone knowing what they wanted, but it seemed as though she was eliminating a lot of possible people needlessly.
Ada laughed when he tried to articulate that.
“But Tor, that’s exactly what you’re doing. You decided that she isn’t what you wanted after one dance.”
“But I’ve actually met her!” Tor protested.
“I’m making an assessment based on her behavior and our Tendrilling, not on her sphere of influence or position.
If there’d been a way for her to make the two of us compatible, I swear she would have done it, Ada.
Instead, as soon as it became apparent that we weren’t compatible and I wasn’t interested, she dropped me like a hot potato. ”
“For which you’re very grateful, or your pride is bruised?” Ada asked with an arched brow.
After a moment, Tor acknowledged wryly, “Perhaps a bit of both?”
Ada’s expression softened, her lips quirking up. “That’s what I thought. You want your cake and to eat it, too?”
“Uh, I think I want to eat the cake and reject the cake,” Tor said, smirking at how ridiculous he was currently being. “I will settle for rejecting the cake—I just have to figure out how to do so in a way that will leave Varex feeling that it’s a good thing.”
“Ideas?” she asked.
Tor frowned. “I’m more than a little concerned that if it appears that I’m interested in her, she’s going to decide that, incompatible or not, it’s the best thing that could have happened to her.”
Ada leaned over to tweak his arm. “Conceited.”
He stuck out his tongue, making her laugh. “Realist. Do you really think she wouldn’t?”
She sighed. “It can be a lot of pressure, to do what is good for your realm and your people.”
“I can still get rid of him,” Tor offered.
She rolled her eyes. “But we’re going with the option that won’t end in you being banished by Var, remember?”
“Right, right,” he grumbled.
“So… you’re procrastinating?” Ada suggested.
“I’m visiting my favorite sister,” Tor corrected.
She snorted.
He was definitely procrastinating, but at least here, there was no Varex or Fernila or Yomil to judge him and act as though he was doing the wrong thing.
Spending time with Par and Hena made Tor feel like he was flashing forward to the future, to what it could look like when Cala was older, to the fun that he could have with her—as long as he figured out how not to marry Terila but also how not to be exiled.
It wasn’t normally this complicated to navigate through his life, Tor thought, and it was definitely complicated by the absence of alcohol.
“I don’t know,” Ada drawled when he admitted this. “It’s kind of nice to see you sober.”
Tor blinked at her. “You’ve seen me sober.”
“Yeah, when you were about sixteen,” she said with an eye roll.
Tor straightened, not liking Ada’s tone. “Wait. Are you serious?”
Her amusement fell away. She glanced away for a moment and then back at him, her blue eyes a little wary.
“I’m… kind of serious? I mean, obviously, you haven’t been drunk for twenty years.
But you seem to be of the opinion that your drinking is directly proportional to how much fun you can have, and your goal in recent years has seemed to be to have as much fun as possible at all possible times. ”
A prickle ran down Tor’s spine. He was fully aware that Varex—and Fernila and Yomil—thought he drank too much, but Tor had been more than halfway certain that was simply them being stick-in-the-muds.
The more time Varex spent as High King, the more sober and less fun-loving he got.
Tor hadn’t taken that sort of scolding seriously in years.
But Ada telling him this in all seriousness was something else.
“I… hadn’t noticed.”
It was an inadequate response and probably revealed just how disturbed he was, because Ada leaned over to lay a hand on his arm, and Tor had a flashback to Var continually doing this to Fernila. He realized he’d tensed up and made an effort to relax.
“I don’t mean to upset you… but before Var gave you this order, when’s the last time you didn’t have at least one drink in a day?”
Tor wracked his brain… and couldn’t immediately come up with an answer. He didn’t exactly track his daily drinking habits, but he knew how he spent most of his evenings. And occasional afternoons. Or mornings, if the entertainment had been going really well and lasted all night…
“I’m not sure,” he admitted, troubled. “Maybe not since I was captain of the guard.”
Which was two years ago.
Ada came over to perch on the side of his chair and lean into him. He slipped an arm around her and hugged her back before he could decide if he was annoyed with her.
They didn’t see one another as often now, since she rarely came to Nexa.
The last time Thurnil had come with her, he’d made a number of asinine suggestions which Varex had rightly ignored, and there had been some…
friction. Tor wasn’t sure if it was Thurnil or Ada who had ensured that it didn’t recur.
Ada insisted she was doing what she wished.
He knew she adored Par and Hena, so when she said she didn’t want to miss them growing up…
Tor worried that Ada was doing what was best for everyone else, and not for herself. He didn’t want to do the same.