Chapter 10 Cadeon #2
I consider the question carefully. "She was... efficient. I was a tool. Tools don't require cruelty or kindness. Just maintenance."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer I have." I move to stand beside her, not touching, just present. "She fed me regularly. Gave me orders I could follow. Maintained the bond so I never had to make choices. In her mind, I imagine she was being perfectly reasonable."
"And in your mind?"
"I don't know what I think anymore." The admission comes easier than it should.
"No with so many years of her control. It was all I knew.
I didn't question it because I didn't know how to question it.
And now... " I stop, searching for words.
"Now you're asking me to think for myself, and I don't know how.
I don't know what I want beyond what I've been trained to want. "
She turns to look at me fully. "Did you grieve her? When she died?"
The question catches me off-guard. "I... I don't know. I think I forgot how to grieve centuries ago. Forgot how to feel most things."
"I think that's the saddest thing you've ever said."
"It's just the truth."
"It's not just anything." She's studying me with that intense focus she gets sometimes, like she's trying to see through to something hidden.
"Can I ask you something?" I whisper.
"Yes, of course.”
"Why not war magic like Mistress Elspeth?"
The change of subject is deliberate, giving me space to retreat from dangerous territory. I'm grateful for it.
"I assumed you chose what called to you," I say carefully. "Magic tends to align with nature."
"I tried war magic." She says it flatly, matter-of-fact. "When I was sixteen. Grandmother insisted. Said I was wasting my potential on 'hedge craft.' That I could be powerful if I just applied myself."
"And?"
"And I was terrible at it." She laughs, but there's old pain in it. "Couldn't throw a fireball to save my life. My defensive shields were like wet paper. Every spell I tried either fizzled or exploded spectacularly. Grandmother was..." She trails off.
"Disappointed."
"Appalled is more accurate. She said I was wasting my potential.
That I was weak. That if I just tried harder, wanted it more, I could be like her.
" Iris turns to look out the window. "But I didn't want to be like her.
I wanted to make things that helped people.
That healed them. That made their lives better in small, quiet ways. "
"So you chose kitchen magic."
"So I ran away to kitchen magic. To somewhere I could be good at something, even if it wasn't what she wanted." She looks at me. "Do you think that makes me weak?"
The question is vulnerable. Real. She actually cares what I think.
"No." I say it with absolute certainty. "I think it makes you strong."
"Magnus doesn't think so."
"Magnus is wrong." The words come easily now.
"You're not weak, Iris. You're creating peace.
Do you know how rare that is? How much power it takes to heal instead of destroy?
" I move closer, drawn by something I can't name.
"War magic is easy. It's just force applied with intent.
Any mage with enough power can learn to throw fire or raise shields.
But what you do, making people feel safe, healing hurt that goes deeper than flesh, creating spaces where people can rest, that's real power. The kind that actually changes things."
She's staring at me like I've said something profound instead of obvious.
"Your grandmother moved mountains," I continue. "Literally. I watched her do it. But mountains move back. Stone crumbles. What you're building, this space, this safety, this kindness, that's permanent. That changes people from the inside."
"You really believe that?"
"I know it." I touch her hand lightly, briefly. "I'm living proof."
For a moment, we just stand there in the warm kitchen, surrounded by the smell of bread and herbs, and something settles between us. Understanding, maybe. Or just the acknowledgment that we're both trying to be something different than what we were trained to be.
"Will you show me?" I ask suddenly. "Your magic. Not the food magic. I've felt that. But the growing magic. The life magic."
She lights up. "Really? You want to see?"
"I want to understand. What you can do. What makes it different."
"Okay." She's already moving toward the greenhouse. "Yes. Come on."
The greenhouse is warmer than the rest of the cottage, warded against winter's bite. Inside, plants grow in various states of recovery: herbs she's been nursing back to health, seedlings she's coaxing to life despite the season.
"This is where grandmother kept her poison garden," Iris explains, gesturing to the neat rows. "Useful plants, but aggressive. Everything fighting for dominance. I've been trying to teach them to cooperate instead."
"You're trying to reform plants?"
"You can reform anything if you're patient enough." She kneels beside a bed of what looks like dormant lavender. "Watch."
She places both hands on the soil, closes her eyes, and I feel her magic rise.
It's different from the warm, food-scented magic she uses in cooking. This is rawer. Deeper. Green and growing and alive in a way that makes the air itself feel charged. There is power there too. So much power it’s like a punch in the gut. She has no idea how strong she is.
The lavender responds immediately. Buds that were closed begin to open. Stems straighten. Color deepens from gray-green to vivid purple.
"It's not forcing them," she murmurs, eyes still closed. "It's just... asking. Reminding them what they are. What they want to be. Then giving them the strength to become it."
Under her hands, the lavender blooms: impossible, beautiful, completely at odds with the winter outside.
"Your magic feels like sunlight," I say without thinking.
She opens her eyes, looking up at me. "What does yours feel like?"
Darker answer than she probably wants: "Blood and ashes."
"Can I?" She stands, brushing dirt from her hands. "Can I feel it? Your magic?"
"I don't use magic the way you do."
"But you have it. Vampire magic. The speed, the strength, the way you move through shadows. That's magic." She steps closer. "I want to feel what it's like."
I should say no. Should maintain distance. Should remember that she's my master and I'm her bound familiar and we're already too close to proper boundaries.
Instead, I take her hand.
Her magic is immediately there: warm and green and alive. It flows into me like sunlight, like water, like everything I've been denied for centuries. I gasp at the intensity of it.
"That's what life feels like," she says softly. "That's what you could feel all the time if you let yourself."
"It's too much."
"It's exactly enough." She steps closer now that we're touching. "Now you. Show me yours."
I don't know how to show her. My magic isn't something I call like hers, it just is. The cold, the strength, the predator that lives under my skin.
But I try. I let her feel what I am when I'm not carefully controlling it. The hunger that's always there. The darkness. The thing that's existed for hundreds of years and has forgotten what warmth feels like.
She doesn't flinch. Doesn't pull away.
"It's not blood and ashes," she says quietly. "It's winter. Deep winter. The kind that kills but also preserves. The kind that looks like death but is really just dormancy." She squeezes my hand. "Waiting for spring."
The metaphor is almost painfully optimistic. But feeling her magic still flowing into me, warm and alive and insistent, I almost believe it.
"I can feel it," I say, and my voice comes out rough and deep. "Your magic. It's..."
"Soft?" she offers.
"Yes. But beautiful." I look at our joined hands, at the way her magic and mine are mixing, green warmth and cold darkness, finding some kind of balance. "I'd forgotten what beautiful felt like."
"Then I'll keep reminding you. Every day. Until you remember."
The moment stretches, heavily. Her hand in mine. Magic flowing between us. The greenhouse warm around us while winter presses against the glass.
I should pull away. Should remember my place. Should maintain proper distance.
Instead, I step closer.
"Iris."
"Yes?"
"If the bond dissolves at solstice. IfI have to choose. What happens if I... " I stop, because I don't know how to finish that sentence. What happens if I choose wrong? What happens if I choose right? What happens if I don't know how to choose at all?
"Whatever you choose," she says, and her free hand comes up to rest against my chest, "I'll support it.
If you want to stay, we'll figure it out.
If you want to go, I'll let you. If you want time to decide, I'll give you that too.
" Her eyes meet mine. "You're allowed to want things, Cadeon. You're allowed to choose yourself."
"What if I choose you?"
The words escape before I can stop them. Too honest. Too vulnerable. Too much.
But she doesn't look away. Doesn't pull back. Just smiles, small and soft and utterly genuine.
"Then I'd say you have excellent taste," she says, and there's warmth in her voice that has nothing to do with magic.
We stand there in the greenhouse, hands joined, magic flowing between us, and for the first time since our argument, I let myself hope that maybe we can navigate this impossible situation.
That maybe choosing her isn't weakness or conditioning or the bond compelling me.
Maybe it's just choice.
Pure and simple and terrifying and mine.
"Come on," she says finally, gently disengaging. "I promised rage-baking, and I'm thinking something with a lot of kneading. Very therapeutic."
"What are we making?"
"Bread. Obviously. It's always bread." She grins at me over her shoulder. "You can do your knife work on the add-ins. I'm thinking rosemary. Maybe some cheese."
"Rosemary and cheese bread," even I hear the skepticism in my voice.
"Don't say it like that. It'll be delicious."
"If you say so."
"I do say so. And you'll help me make it, and it'll be perfect, and you'll admit that my chaos produces excellent results."
"Your chaos produces edible results."
"Excellent results."
"Adequately delicious results."
"You're impossible."
"I'm accurate."
She laughs, and the sound fills the greenhouse, chases away the last lingering tension from Magnus's visit. We head back to the kitchen, already falling into the easy rhythm of working together, and something in my chest eases.
We're not fixed. We're not solved. We still have to figure out what happens at solstice, what choosing means, whether I'm capable of making choices at all.
But right now, in this moment, with her laughing and planning bread and trusting me to be her partner in this small domestic act...”
Right now is enough.
Maybe it's more than enough.
Maybe it's everything.