Heirot

Havi rolled over onto his back, his long arms listless at his sides. Why get used to him, when they could get rid of him? He had no desire to say those words to her at the moment, so he let her comment slide. I'll be out in a minute, he agreed solemnly.

Vlad was sitting in a wingbacked chair that faced away from Tenara's quarters. He'd been sitting there like a grouchy gargoyle most of the night. When he heard his daughter's latch click, he leaned over to peer back at her. "You mother still sleeping?" he asked.

Tenara almost jumped out of her skin at her father's voice. "Merciful Gods," she hissed at him, dragging the door further open to find him in a chair nearby. She slipped out of the room, quietly closing the door behind her. "Yes. She's sleeping." Despite being a battle-hardened warrior, her mother was a surprisingly deep sleeper.

Now, Tenara was out. Next to him. Waiting for a scolding or a slew of questions.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You told me to stay with Grandmother, and I didn't. I wanted to, but things got... complicated." She wondered if he'd found Rami when investigating her second disappearance, or if Rami had fled with his heaping cart of gold somewhere else.

Tenara couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to be punished. She thought she could handle their anger better than pity or sadness or the quiet, knowing looks passed between them. Her mother looked at her like she was a broken thing someone poorly put back together, something she was afraid of breaking again—as if the words she held back were a hammer.

"I'd say complicated is an understatement," Vlad said. "Want to tell me about last night, or should we play 20 questions?"

Tenara felt heat in her cheeks no matter how much she tired not to feel anything about it. "You're not going to like the answer to any of those questions," she warned.

Vlad shook his head. "Tenara, think hard about this. We still know nothing about the power that connects you, or how it could be influencing you. Don't tell me you've forgotten that Arken brought him here, and they used a spell even dark mages consider taboo to do it. They brought him for a reason, and there's zero chance it's good."

Tenara frowned. She did, every now and then, think of all of that. Usually when Havitharon was being an ass.

She slipped into the chair across from her father. "Grandmother told me to practice my magic. Practicing might give me an upper hand on the sword. Control it or, at least, control my connection to it." She picked at her nightgown. "My magic is volatile and difficult to control, and... potent." She pinched and pulled the fabric, feeling heat burn her skin. "Its emotionally driven. Rage and fear, mostly, but when I choose to use it for things other than slaughter, it's... another sensation." She tugged at her ear, annoyed she was having this conversation at all. "Sometimes it's overwhelming. For both of us. I haven't had the chance to see if those sensations transfer to others when I use magic on them, or if it's only something Havitharon and I share."

Vlad pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "Believe or not, I can relate to that. But, this dynamic between you two works too much in his favor, and a young woman's emotions can be easy to manipulate. What have you really learned about him? Does he have any weaknesses?"

Tenele felt a bristling of anger at her father's suggesting she was being manipulated by her emotions. But then his next question rolled right in afterwards and Tenara stiffened. She knew nothing about Havitharon. Nothing accept he came from a world dominated by women who abused him. "He doesn't tell me anything about himself, save that women on his world are terrible and cruel. I think he barely even likes me. Hell, he probably doesn't even like me. He tolerates me." The words made her heart ache. "He doesn't trust me, especially not enough to divulge his weaknesses."

She sat back in the chair. "He's bound to the sword, and we don't understand the mechanics. He... is sometimes corporeal and sometimes not. When he's not, I can make him so. The condition of the sword affects him. If it's dirty, he feels pain. That's all. Oh, and if I'm unconscious, he can possess me. Which is awful, but useful under the right circumstances."

Vlad was starting to feel relieved. His daughter seemed much more objective about this than he'd feared. And the weaknesses she'd mentioned weren't small ones. If she could make him incorporeal, she could protect herself if needed.

At least, that was how he felt until she mentioned he could possess her.

He jerked up out of his chair. "He WHAT? What 'right circumstances' would those be?!"

Tenara flinched back in her chair. "The first time, I was drugged and alone on a ship with Shea's son. Havitharon cut his fingers off using my body. He didn't have form at the time, so he slipped in. Wore it like a suit. It was terrible. I hated it and I hated him for it, but he did a number on Elias. The next time was after those thieves attacked us in Ighten. He mostly just... camped out in it to avoid Grandmother, I think. And the next..." Tenara thought about the creatures. "The next time, I was going to be eaten by these creatures. I was weak and helpless and he slipped in. That time, it was different. He was in me, but... not over me. Not in control totally. I knew what to do, and when the world came back into focus, the beasts were dead."

She slipped forward in her chair. "Daddy, I know he is alien and, by all accounts, because Arken summoned him, we should fear him... But he has done nothing but try to keep me alive."

"If he actually cared about you, he would have told you to come home. Not kept you to himself in the woods for a week."

Tenara growled. "He didn't keep me in the woods for himself! Grandmother said to practice, and since I almost destroyed half her city in a fit of rage, I thought practicing where we'd landed was safer. I tried to tell you. I nearly burned down our shelter four times trying to send a letter. Then, the holy medallion burned my hand, and the bounty hunters showed up."

If Tenara was honest with herself, though, she loved the cottage. She'd loved being in it with Havitharon. She'd loved the quiet and the practice. But admitting to her father that she enjoyed being alone with Havitharon in the woods wouldn't help things any.

Vlad frowned at his daughter's temper. "You say a fit of rage... who exactly made you that angry in the first place? Him?"

The sound of the latch turning on the door to the other room cut in. Havitharon stepped out, a stern look pulling at his features as he sized up the father-daughter combo in the room. He was also wearing a woman's nightgown that did absolutely nothing to feminize his figure.

"Oh, so you were listening. Something you don't want her to tell me?" Vlad asked with a dark grin.

Tenara felt her stomach drop out of her. "I..." But then Havitharon was there... wearing a woman's nightgown. She almost laughed at him, but her father's question was a stab in her heart. So he hadn't found Rami when looking for her, or if he had, Rami lied. Of course he had.

"He didn't do anything to me!" Tenara said, forceful even as her voice cracked. She rose, snatching up the clothes on the table that were obviously actually meant for Havitharon. The nightgown had her father's prank style written all over it. She shoved the clothes into Havitharon's arms and turned on her father. "The man who sold me to Arken is in Ighten. The man I cared for. The one I'd been visiting under your nose for years, and went to visit the night they snatched me and..." Tenara's breath was coming quick and she was staring at her father, but no longer seeing him. She was seeing a ship. A dark room. Hearing the sound of waves crashing against a hull.

Red light bloomed in her eyes, blue fire danced on her fingertips. There was a man in the dark. A faceless, warped figure.

Vlad's expression lost all mirth. The man who sold her to Ighten? The man she cared for for years? Who? Who had put that haunted look on his little girl's face? He wasn't afraid of Tenara's magic; he had confronted it plenty of times as she grew up. But this was the first time since he'd gone away with Maxwell for a year that she'd turned that power at him.

He opened his mouth to ask more, but then he noticed for the first time the fierce look Havitharon was giving him. A look that said to back off. What did this alien know about Tenara that he'd been blind to in his own kingdom? What right did he have to butt into his relationship with his daughter?

Havitharon said nothing, but he reached forward and looped two long fingers lightly in Tenele's unhurt hand.