"They're not me," she said with a small smile.
"No. I'd enjoy killing you, witch. Don't forget that."
Jula paled visibly and averted her eyes. "No, I won't forget that."
The tent flap opened again, and Allia stepped in with Dar just behind. The Selani took one look at the seated Jula, and she reacted instantly. With such speed that the humans in the tent couldn't even track her movements, Allia drew one of her hidden swords and lunged at the Were-cat female. Jula stared at her in incomprehsensible shock, and had Tarrin not intercepted her, grabbed her by her wrist and pulled her to the side, she would have impaled Jula through the face with her sword. Allia writhed and squirmed in Tarrin's grasp, trying to free herself and attack the startled Jula. "Have you lost your mind?" Allia snapped hotly at him in Selani. "Let me go!"
"Not until you put your sword away," Tarrin replied sternly. "Jula's not here as an enemy."
"But she-"
"That's overwith," he stated. "Believe me, she was already punished for what she did, more than I could ever have punished her. Honor has been satisfied."
" Never, in my life, have I seen someone move so fast!" Dolanna said reverently to Camara Tal.
Allia resisted against her brother, but he had her firmly around the waist and her back against his stomach. But then her writhing eased, when she realized that he wasn't about to let her go. "Honor won't be satisfied until she is dead!" Allia declared with a vicious glare at the female Were-cat.
"Trust me, deshaida," he said soothingly. "I don't much like it myself, but she did suffer for what she did. You can see that she's Were now. Well, she went mad."
"She did?"
"She did. She remembers being insane, she remembers everything that happened to her at the hands of her own comrades after she wasn't useful to them anymore. It's something that'll be with her for the rest of her life. Do you think that was punishment enough?"
Allia was quiet a moment. "It's a start," she said in a sadistic tone.
"I want your oath that you won't kill her, Allia. Not unless I give you permission."
"Why are you defending her, brother? After what she did to you, you should have been the first to kill her!"
"I almost did," he told her calmly. "Then I realized that if I did, then I'd be no better than her."
Allia turned in his grasp and looked into his eyes. There was concern in her eyes, but there was also a hint of hope, too. "We'll talk about this later, deshida," she said gently. "But for now, you have my word. I won't raise a hand against her unless you tell me I can."
"That's good enough for me," he said in the common tongue, then he let her go. She settled her desert garb about her calmy, then sheathed her sword in a single easy movement.
"I will not kill her," Allia said. "At least not now."
Jula gave the Selani a calm look, but said nothing.
"This is going to get messy," Camara Tal said. "I think we'd be better off just trussing her up and shipping her back to Triana. Let Triana deal with training her."
"Triana would kill her," Tarrin said. "Any of the Were-cats would. They know who she is and what she did to me."
Jula paled visibly, and put her eyes on the table.
"That's right, Jula. You have a long way to go before you redeem yourself in the eyes of your new family. If you don't learn what I have to teach, I'll kill you. If you run away, I'll kill you. If you manage to get away, some other Were-kin will kill you. You can't hide from us, and you won't live long alone. Your only chance is to stay with me, and give me every reason to keep you alive."
"I already told you I'd obey you, Tarrin," she said meekly. "I'm not stupid enough to challenge you. I tried that twice before, and look where I am now."
"Why did you accept her?" Allia demanded in Selani, obviously realizing that Tarrin had taken her as his child. "She deserves no such mercy!"
"I didn't do it for her," he said quietly. "I did it because I had to. You've said it many times, Allia. Honor is a person's choice, but duty is a person's burden. Honor and Blood."
Allia sighed. She had taught him the meaning of that obscure phrase, a phrase used by both the Selani and the Vendari. Duty's reward was honor, but its cost was blood. In this case, its cost was the withholding of a punishment that should have been meted out.
"I understand, my brother," she said quietly in common.
"I'm glad someone does," Camara Tal grunted. "I hate it when you two do that."
"It used to drive my father crazy," Tarrin said absently, glancing at Allia. "Since there's not much to do for now, I'm going to leave you to talk about this. Allia, I want you and Dar to stay here and hear what they have to say, so you can hear what happened before you got here. I'm taking Jula out for a while, so we can talk privately. And to get her some clothes. That robe won't cut it."
"Be careful, my brother," Allia said. "We will talk when you return."
"I'm looking forward to it," he told her, patting her on the shoulder. "Jula, come with me," he ordered in a strong voice.
Without a word, Jula rose from her seat. She gave Allia a wide berth as she passed by her to reach the tent flap, and Tarrin herded her out.
She was quiet, and she kept her eyes on the ground. It was very faint, but he could sense her fear and anxieity through her bond. He'd been hard on her, but he was still angry, and that was making him probably a bit more harsh than he needed to be. She had just been restored from her insanity, and he hadn't taken that into account. The pain of her memories was still very raw, very fresh, and he was rubbing salt in her wounds. She didn't deserve any of his sympathy or compassion, but his duty to raise her properly chided him for being harder than he needed to be. He didn't like her. He still wanted to smash her for what she did to him, but his duty prevented it. If he gave in to his emotion, he would be surrendering himself to his own animalistic impulses.
Honor and Blood.
"I don't like you," he said in a growling tone.
"You've made that abundantly clear," she said with a sigh. "I never had anything against you, personally, Tarrin. I did what I did because I was told to do it." She glanced up at him. "I actually liked you."
"You liked me so much you treated me like your personal pet when you had that collar on me," he growled, glaring down at her.
"All I can say is I'm sorry," she said quietly. "We were on opposing sides."
"Not anymore," he told her. "Now that you can reflect on what happened to you, what do you think of the ki'zadun now?"
She was quiet for long moments. "I think I'd like to poke out Kravon's eyes and dunk him into a vat of acid," she replied in a low, emotional voice. "Slowly."
"I can only promise that I'll try to help you. You may not like me, and you may find me harsh, but I won't throw you away when I'm done with you."
"I believe you," she said sincerely.
"When this is done, we can part ways and never see each other again. You just have to deal with it until then."
She was quiet. "I tried to hold off the madness once before, and I failed. I won't go insane again. I just won't. If you think there's no hope for me, I want you to kill me."
"You didn't understand what was happening," he told her. "I'll teach you what to do to live with your other half. It just takes discipline."
"It didn't help me the first time."
"You didn't know how to apply it."
"I'm afraid, Tarrin," she said with a trembling voice. "I can feel it on the other side of the wall you created in my mind. It's sitting there, waiting for it to weaken. It wants me, it wants to enslave me again. I'm afaid of it."