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“Well, buster, humans aren’t like that. We have to learn how to swim, and it’s a whole thing. But I figured it out that day. . .so I didn’t drown.”
“Then it worked.”
“It was unnecessarily traumatic,” Liz says. “All those other kids learned over a period of several weeks. They started by putting their faces in the water and blowing bubbles. And then slowly, surely, one paddle at a time, the instructor drew farther and farther away and they learned to move their bodies the right way to navigate through the water.”
“But you learned what took them weeks and weeks in mere minutes.”
“Yes,” she says, “but I could have died doing it.”
“Your mother would have pulled you out.”
“Maybe,” she says. “Maybe it would’ve been too late.” She looks more annoyed than angry now, and the bond is much calmer. This closer bond, paired with watching her face and her words, is helping me a lot with understanding how to read humans.
“Alright, what kind of training did you have in mind?” I ask.
“I didn’t think we’d be doing it around nice, breakable things, and I didn’t expect that you’d have no idea what you were doing. Weren’t you trained? Can’t you do for me what they did for you?”
“I wasn’t dropped into a pool, but that was a lot closer to how my training went.”
“What does that mean?”
“When it was time for me to fly, I was shoved off a cliff.”
Liz edges away from the window.
I laugh. “I’m hardly going to push you out the window. You don’t even have wings.”
“Euphrasia seems nice. I didn’t expect that from her.”
“She didn’t do it,” I say. “She can’t fly herself. It was my father. He also encouraged my brothers to try and kill me. That’s how I learned to fight.”
“Your dad sounds lovely. I can’t wait to meet him.” She frowns. “Did he hear you’re entwined? Is that why he’s demanding that you go back?”
“Not exactly,” I say. “I was supposed to be going back periodically for meetings, since flame blessed are the only ones who can teleport, but then I met you and I couldn’t leave you here, so. . .”
She closes her eyes and the bond grows heavy. “Great.”
“What?” I step closer. It used to amuse me, but now that we’re entwined, I find that I hate when she’s upset.
She shakes her head and opens her eyes. “It feels like every problem you have is my fault.”
“I’m the one who broke the vase and incinerated the table.”
She rolls her eyes.
“The other stuff isn’t your fault either,” I say. “You’re not the cause of my huge secret, and it’s not your fault your mother’s bond can’t be transferred but people think it probably can. Those things are my fault.”
“The fact that your dad’s all demanding and sending you a fabulous fiancée isn’t my fault either.” Her bottom lip’s poking out now.
“I don’t understand why you seem upset by the mere existence of Asteria. You looked like you were getting along earlier.”
She huffs and then starts pacing again, so something about Asteria’s definitely agitating Liz. It’s a good thing I haven’t yet shared Hyperion’s plan.
I’ve learned Liz usually does this, the huffing and the pacing, right before she explodes with a lot of angry words. Sometimes she just needs a little nudge to spit them out. “Do you like her or hate her? And why?”
She stops, pivots on her heel, and faces me head on.
Here it comes.
