Chapter 6 #2
Because that’s also who I am. Terrifying without trying.
But not to Zan, who does understand me enough to know that I want him to know I am not buying his bullshit.
“That is not,” I repeat, “why we’re really here, though. Is it?”
Zan doesn’t flinch away from me. “I have no idea what you can do, Yora. I don’t know what you want to do, or if you know what you want to do. You have all this wisdom, but you don’t know this world, and I think you need to, in order to know how to move.”
Damn it.
After all this time still, I do need to move.
More thinking—clearing my mind, gods that makes me want to set some priests on fire—isn’t going to help me or anyone else.
You can’t be wise about the world without moving in it.
I glare up at Zan, angry at him for understanding this and maneuvering me this way because apparently even now I can’t just go eat a dessert in town without it being a whole thing—
Teren’s voice interrupts my thoughts, surprising me. “If you’ve been asleep for five hundred years you definitely need some ice cream. Aunt Nomi, let’s give them a moment. You two, choose whatever seats you like by the table and we’ll bring you bowls in a couple minutes.”
Nomi looks like she’s about to say something, but Teren takes her by the elbow and tugs her out of the room.
Leaving me to really look at it for the first time.
It’s a riot of color, with knitted blankets... everywhere.
As I’m taking it all in—this is very cozy and part of me yearns for it, but it also feels like an assault on my senses after lifetimes of no softness or color—silence falls.
“Nomi isn’t his aunt,” Zan says abruptly.
Okay, fine. Let’s talk. “But she raised him?”
He nods. “Apparently she always wanted children, but she hasn’t met the woman for her yet.
And without dealing with the Order and leaving the Quiet, adoption is really the only option.
Teren was a child when I found him but still old enough to have memories with his birth parents, so she didn’t want to try to displace them. ”
“Is that why you chose her?”
“Because she wanted to be a parent? No, that was luck; it’s not the most important quality in a sage guardian.
Nomi was an apprentice of the previous guardian, who chooses their successor.
It’s always someone who has enough skills that they can maintain the cottage and has the connections in Crystal Hollow to get a sage set up with whatever trade suits them. ”
“And who hates the Order but is fine with dragons.”
Zan rolls his eyes. “I felt that went without saying. Are you going to choose a seat?”
I want to ask him to choose for me because this is a choice that doesn’t matter, but I’m mad at him for choosing for me already so I go sit in the chair that has blue patterns covering it.
It’s only when Zan sits in a pink one that I realize the blue I chose is the same color as Zan’s natural hair, and now we look like a matched set.
Silence falls between us again. Awkward this time, and I don’t like it.
“How did guardians go up the mountain?” I ask abruptly.
Zan hesitates.
Nomi answers me, reentering the room. “Zan’s scales. He gifted them to Sage Kovan to make a talisman so his child could live on the mountain with them. Now the talisman is passed down to the guardians. Teren’s wearing it at the moment, though, to help him with the power fluctuations.”
I glance at Zan, who’s not meeting my gaze for once. Why didn’t he want me to know that?
Guessing the direction of my thoughts, Nomi adds dryly, “He knows you’re mad at him for manipulating you and is trying not to manipulate you further by affecting your opinion of him favorably.”
Oh.
My budding feelings of betrayal at his secrecy dissipate.
Zan glares at Nomi.
She raises her eyebrows unrepentantly in return. “What am I here for, if not helping sages learn how to live among people?”
“How do you do that?” I ask curiously, since Zan is at least temporarily going to be less forthcoming.
“The main task most of the time is just upkeep of the cottage,” Nomi says.
“Making sure the plumbing still works—magic helped set it up, from what I understand, but it doesn’t take magic to maintain it—dealing with any leaks in the roof, that kind of thing.
When a sage arrives, I bring cleaning supplies, fresh linens, some clothes to get started, and food.
From there we take on one thing at a time—teaching you how to clean, shop, cook for yourself.
Once you settle, we start figuring out what you might want to do.
It’s my job to help you get started on your new life.
So any questions you have about how anything works—”
“She can ask me,” Zan interrupts.
Nomi’s gaze fixes on him. “Can she.”
Zan’s jaw clenches.
I blink. Is he... possessive of me?
I feel a little thrill at that, though on its heels is the worry that I like it because I’ve been trained to be possessed.
And also he doesn’t get to be my only source of information on what to do with my life after he’s just blatantly maneuvered me onto a course.
“Thank you,” I tell Nomi. “I’m glad to know I can come to you.”
Zan stiffens beside me, just a touch, but one thing a life of being controlled by people hostile to me taught me was how to recognize volatile feelings in others.
An echo of tension runs through me—that I have instigated it, that I will have to manage it to not feel its effects—but before I can get caught up in a spiral, in the habit of over-thinking, Teren comes in bearing a tray full of what I assume is ice cream.
It’s not just ices with cream.