Will’s head continued to ache, which only served to accentuate his sour mood. The long ride back from the worksite had done nothing to ease his anger at Stephanie Beresford’s attitude. Being attacked as soon as he entered the house certainly didn’t help either. His ears picked up the soft sound of Blake’s footsteps just moments before the other door into the sitting room opened.
Blake looked askance at him. “Should I brew something for a headache, sir?” He barely glanced at Tailtiu, even though she visually appeared to be his mistress, Selene.
Tailtiu’s probably right, thought Will. He’d show more deference to her if he really believed she was the princess. “That might be nice, though I don’t know if it will help,” answered Will with a look of gratitude.
Blake nodded, already turning back toward the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
A short while later Will sat in relative comfort, sipping a cup of willow bark tea. It tasted awful, acrid and bitter, but he knew from experience how well it worked for aches and pains. It had been one of the first things his mother had taught him. He was seated in a wide, cushioned chair, a luxury he had come to take for granted more quickly than he would have previously believed. When he thought about it, it bothered him. His new life was changing him, making him soft in certain ways. Of course, at the same time it was making him tougher in others. His eyes landed on Tailtiu as that thought crossed his mind and he pursed his lips. She met his gaze and lifted one brow in an unspoken question. As usual, she’s probably wondering if I’m looking at her physical attributes, he noted mentally. He glanced away, telegraphing his lack of interest—he hoped.
His aunt’s random acts of violence served to keep him alert. At one point in the past he had attempted to call her bluff by refusing to react to one of her faux assassination attempts. His operating theory had been that she wouldn’t dare to actually harm him, so if he refused to play the game she would have to give up. That lesson had cost him one of his three remaining regeneration potions to mend a broken arm and replace a lost tooth, not to mention the bruises that accompanied those injuries.
As Arrogan had originally shown him, pain was an excellent teacher.
His headache put a damper on his desire to cook. Blake was excellent in almost every regard, but the man was mediocre in the kitchen. It had been Blake’s original suggestion to hire a cook, but Will had refused, preferring to handle those chores himself. Today he regretted it. “I don’t feel like cooking,” he pronounced.
“Shall I, then?” asked his manservant.
Will grimaced. “Cured ham and bread will be enough. Don’t trouble yourself.”
Taitiu smiled, showing teeth that would probably have been pointed if Blake hadn’t been in the room. “I’ll never understand your desire for cold meat. It’s much better warm.”
Will knew what she really meant. Tailtiu’s idea of cooking meant making sure her food’s heartbeat stopped before she finished eating it. Preferably somewhere in the middle of the process. He repressed a shudder at the thought.
Blake stood and went to a small side table in the front entry hall. He returned a moment later with a small wooden bowl, which he offered to Will. Inside were several calling cards.
“How many were there today?” asked Will.
“Just three.”
Will nodded, waving the bowl away. “I’m not seeing any of them.”
“One of them was from Laina Nerrow,” Blake informed him before glancing in Tailtiu’s direction. Laina was the older daughter of the baron Mark Nerrow, and unbeknownst to most, including herself, she was Will’s half-sister. More importantly, she was Selene’s closest friend, and over the recent months she had been growing increasingly impatient with her inability to meet with Selene face-to-face.
Tailtiu rose from her seat and gave Blake her best look of indifference. “Tell her I’m indisposed. I haven’t been feeling well recently.” She patted one cheek as though to comfort herself. “I think I’ll retire early.” She gave Will a smoldering look. “I’ll be waiting for you in the bedroom.”
Will gave Blake a helpless look and shrugged. “I’ll be in my study. Bring the meat and bread up when you have them ready.”
“You can’t ignore her forever,” suggested Blake.
“You might be surprised,” Will responded, getting to his feet and heading for the private office where he did most of his studying. He had never imagined having something so pretentious as an office of his own, much less the grand house it was located within, but he was learning to adapt to the circumstances.
He found his place in the cushioned chair and put his feet up on the desk. Then he summoned the limnthal and addressed the ring he wore on his right hand. “I think I hurt myself today.”
Arrogan’s sour voice replied from the air in front of him, “And so you felt the need to wake me up to cry about it? Don’t be such a titty baby.”
It had been a considerable length of time since he had last spoken to the spirit of his former master, so the language caught him off guard. “What?” he sputtered.
“You heard me.”
Will’s eyes narrowed, though the expression was pointless since the ring had no eyes to see his face. “It’s been well over a month since we last talked.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” said Arrogan. “I told you before. I have no sense of time when I’m inactive. For all intents and purposes, I cease to exist, so every time you speak to me it feels as though our last conversation was just seconds ago.”
“I guess that makes it easy to remember what we were talking about then.”
“It’s damned annoying,” the ring shot back. “My entire existence is one endless conversation—with you. Think about that from my perspective for a moment.”
“I see,” said Will without sympathy.
“The hell you do, otherwise you’d be screaming as the existential horror seeped into that lard-filled bag you use for a brain.”
Will found himself snickering. He’d missed the old man’s biting conversations. “I’ll try to meditate on your misery later. In the meantime, I really do think I hurt myself.”
The ring sighed. “And that’s the extent of the sympathy I can expect. I suppose I should be happy with that much. I’m just a piece of jewelry after all. Fine, let’s talk about your problem. I’m sure it’s serious.”
“And you called me a ‘titty baby’ just a minute ago.”
A long pause followed before Arrogan finally responded, “Point taken. All right, tell me what’s wrong with you this time.”
Will did his best to describe what he had experienced at the dam when he had been struggling to draw enough turyn to maintain his spell, but he had difficulty finding words to express what he had done. “I sort of pulled all my turyn into a tightly concentrated knot, but I kept the outer shell I was using to draw turyn in with large, even though it was mostly empty.”