The sweater was a signal that her father was home and off duty, his obligations as the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan put aside—at least for the day.
She wasn’t sure what he’d intended, but he moved his hands and the puppy sank her sharp little teeth into the sweater, anchoring herself to him. From his quick intake of breath, she suspected Breen’s teeth had caught more than the sweater.
When she picked up the Warlord again to cuddle him, she realized he was focused on Breen. Before he could follow the other pup’s example, she lifted him away from her chest and said firmly, “No. We don’t claim humans by biting their clothes.” Or the body part under the clothes.
Shelby hadn’t learned to talk to humans yet on a psychic thread, but she could feel his frustrated objection. But Breen is doing it.
Mikal snorted a laugh, then tried to look innocent.
Yes, these two pups needed extra attention and someone to love—and herd. She wasn’t foolish enough to think there wouldn’t be extra herding as well. She’d lived around Scelties all of her life, but after she’d made a mistake with Morghann and told her to do a wrong thing, the Scelties who lived at the Hall would play with her, but none of them would let her teach them anything. They learned what was proper from her father and Beale and Holt—and Mikal.
She wanted that connection again, wanted to be teacher as well as playmate. Wanted someone to think she was special.
Quiet murmurs from her father in his deep, soothing voice finally convinced Breen to release the sweater. He petted and praised. They all played with the two pups until exhausted bundles of fur were tucked back into the basket for a nap.
As she and her father rose to take their leave, Jaenelle Saetien realized Tersa had been sitting at the kitchen table all that time, watching them. Just watching.
Tersa followed them to the front door, then grabbed her wrist, holding her back with one hand while giving Daemon a push to indicate she wanted him out.
He gave his mother a puzzled look but stepped outside and closed the door.
Sometimes Tersa just seemed eccentric. Other times she was strange in a frightening sort of way—like now.
“Everything has a price,” Tersa said. “You will pay what you owe. He will ask, and she will answer—and she will do what needs to be done. For him. For you. When the time comes, you should remember that.”
“I’ll remember.” She had no idea what Tersa was talking about, but it was better to agree with her.
“Yes,” Tersa whispered, “you will.” She released Jaenelle Saetien’s wrist.
As Jaenelle Saetien opened the door, Tersa added, “Not all scars are visible. You put a scar on the girl that will never fully heal. You both have to live with that now.”
She wasn’t going to think about that. She wasn’t.
Her father waited for her at the end of the walkway.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Everything is fine.” Nothing was fine, so she focused on the one thing she wanted to think about.
“Papa? Could I help you and Mikal teach Shelby?”
He said nothing. As they walked up the main street, he nodded to the people who were going in and out of the village shops, but they all seemed to sense that he didn’t want to stop and chat. Finally, he said, “I think it would break that pup’s heart if he couldn’t be with you at least some of the time, but you will be going back to school in a few days. Won’t you?”
“Yes.” It hadn’t occurred to her that she wouldn’t go back to school. “But when he’s a little older, Shelby could come to the town house on the study days. I could stay home then, and we could take walks around the square. It wouldn’t be good for him to come to the school. Too many people who might accidentally tell him a wrong thing without appreciating the damage they could do.” Like she’d done. But she’d been a child then. She wouldn’t want any of the boys at the school to spend time around Shelby when he was so young and impressionable.
None of the boys except Daemonar.
That uncomfortable truth was something else she didn’t want to think about.
“I agree,” he said. “When it comes to Scelties, all the teachers have to agree on the rules—and uphold them.”
Pretty much the way it worked in the family. Her father and uncle decided on the rules and where the lines were drawn—and they both upheld those rules, regardless of place and whose child was being called to task.
But she was almost an adult, and she had to make her own choices, her own decisions. Didn’t she?
And yet, today felt comfortable. She knew the boundaries of acceptable behavior as well as she knew the boundaries of the family seat. Delora and Hespera kept saying she was afraid to step beyond the rules, that she would never prove to anyone that she was a strong woman unless she showed everyone that she could make up her own mind about things—something her parents, her father, clearly would never allow her to do.
They always sounded right when she was with them. She wasn’t allowed to do half of what they were allowed to do, and doing those things with them gave her a taste of defiant freedom.
But Titian and Zoey had stepped outside all expected lines, and no one had made a fuss. Her father and Uncle Lucivar had listened to Titian—and then had drawn new lines. No fights, no defiance.
It wasn’t that they never moved the lines. They just couldn’t seem to understand when she needed the lines moved. Maybe because she didn’t know where she wanted them to draw those lines?
“Witch-child?”
She linked her arm in his and remembered something that was sure to distract him. “What was the title of the book Manny was reading that made Uncle Lucivar blush?”
He choked. “It doesn’t matter since it will be a few more decades before you’re allowed to read it.”
Maybe tomorrow she would chafe at his deciding she wasn’t old enough to read a particular book, but for the rest of the way home, they talked about puppies and made plans to go out riding together in the morning.
THIRTY
Delora watched from the shadows as Jaenelle Saetien stopped to talk with Insipid Zoey and Fat Bat Titian, as well as the group of girls—and boys—who were infatuated with Daemonar’s fighting skills.
Something had changed during the thirteen days of Winsol, when Jaenelle Saetien had been away from school—and away from her influence. When the girl had arrived at the school that fall, she’d been ripe for rebellion, craving an escape from her stodgy little village and the rules her parents used to constrict her choices.
She’d been ripe to embrace some of the Hayllian traditions that Delora found so fascinating because you had to read between the lines of what was written in history books and listen for what wasn’t quite said in the stories her family told when they acquired a new object that had come from Hayll.
It had been such a thrill when Jaenelle Saetien’s father had misheard her name and called her Dorothea, like he already acknowledged her ambition and destiny.
But something had changed in Jaenelle Saetien during her time away from school. Instead of being embarrassed or laughing with the rest of Delora’s followers when the boys used their cutting wit to demean the girls unworthy of their notice except as prey of one sort or another, Jaenelle Saetien had looked uncomfortable and actually told Krellis yesterday that he was being unkind to one of the school dregs.