Chapter 76 Taera
Taera
Tension grates on me like sand. Gramps leans heavily against his chair—more rickety than I remember—and shoots Ezran a reprimanding look. I can see the pain in his grimace, and my stomach twists. His joints are getting worse.
“Have you been taking your tea? Has it run out?” I rush forward. “Let me help.”
“Like you helped by abandoning us?” My brother’s arms are folded over his chest.
“Ez,” Gramps says sharply, but his firmness is undermined by a hissed exhale that follows.
“What?” I stare at Ezran. “Where do you think I—”
“You ran away to the city. That’s where your letters were posted from.” Ezran continues. “The letters that told us nothing.”
I start to laugh, then shut my mouth before my chuckles can morph into sobs. After everything I’ve done to get back to him, Ez thinks I abandoned him. I can’t help it. The hurt is instant and stings.
“Ez,” Gramps says again, “give your sister a chance to explain.”
My voice is rough. “I never went to the city. I was taken by Nikolai into the desert.”
“The desert?” Ezran’s brows shoot up. Shock, then fury. “He took you? Against your will? Taera, he—”
“Ez,” I snap. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand enough.”
“Why don’t you make us a pot of tea,” Gramps says, looking at my brother. “We have a lot to talk about.”
We sit around the slab of an oak table, already staining my clean clothes on the dirt floor. Everything in sight is brown, earthen. But once we’re holding ceramic mugs steaming with ginger tea, the tension isn’t as thick. I take a deep sip. The water tastes like clay.
“How have you been?” I ask. It doesn’t feel like enough.
“Fine,” Ezran says.
I clear my throat. “Nikolai has a little sister. She made this.”
I unwrap the bundle of pepperspice cake, and my brother eyes it suspiciously.
“Your brother helped Clarice with the harvest,” Gramps says. He pats his belly, his eyes crinkling with a smile. “He’s been keeping us well fed.”
“She’s been working at the apothecary, rather than going back to the city,” Ez adds, “and the healers are paying for Gramps’s medicine, and then some.”
“That’s…” Too good to be true. I blink. “How much?”
“The first payment was a hundred ‘n’ fourteen bits,” Gramps says, then lowers his voice. “Not copper, or silver. Gold.”
I asked Omi to send that exact sum. Is this how it reached my family?
“That’s wonderful,” I croak. No more payments will be arriving now that I’m back.
“It is,” Gramps says. “Your brother even insisted we save some for you, so you can finally do your apprenticeship.”
Ezran looks down, not saying anything.
Surprised, touched, I place my mug down on the table. Then, I’m embracing my brother, squeezing him hard enough that he lets out a puff of air.
“I missed you,” I whisper.
“Missed you too,” he murmurs. A weight drops away from my shoulders. But I can’t bear the half-truths between us. I have to tell them everything.
And so I begin.