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“I’m starving.” She offered him a warm smile. “Thank you.”
“For ordering lunch?”
“For your thoughtfulness.” She hesitated. “We can finish what we started later.”
With a wistful smile, he lifted a hand to touch her cheek, then curled his fingers and withdrew. “You’re clean and I’m not,” he noted ruefully.
“And I intend to stay that way. Take your time. Relax a little. Let me get to know your sister.” She kissed him again, lightly but hoping that her pleasure and relief conveyed themselves to him, then snagged her bag of cosmetics, including her comb and the bottled grooming imp. “Come on, Seliah, let’s have lunch, and I’ll tell you a story.”
“What kind of story?” Seliah demanded petulantly, but she went with Nic, a glint of curiosity in her eye.
Nic pulled the bathing chamber door shut behind her. Gabriel, bless him, had lit a fire, and the room was already considerably warmer and drier. She went to the closet containing her meager wardrobe. Dropping the towel, she pulled on the cozily soft bronze robe—all praise for dry clothes—then grabbed up the towel to dry her short curls. Eyeing Seliah, who was exploring the room with an unsophisticated lack of propriety, Nic wondered if the young woman had seen much of what had happened before Nic got in the bathtub. Surely Gabriel would’ve sensed her presence. But then, somehow Seliah had gotten past him to get up to the master suite.
“Why did you kiss my brother?”
“Because he’s my… husband,” Nic replied. Calling him her wizard still felt more true to her, but here in Meresin they only seemed to think in terms of marriage. Though that would get confusing fast if they had a wedding. Maybe she should say betrothed? This was why it was easier to just acknowledge him as her wizard master, except that Gabriel took such exception to it. She went to sit by the fire, coming out her curls. “Why don’t you sit with me?”
Seliah eyed her suspiciously but sat in the other chair, perching on the edge. With her snarled dark hair, wary brown eyes, and too-thin body, Seliah reminded Nic of the sparrows flitting about the marshes, skittish and barely glimpsed before they hid themselves in the rushes.
“You know, we’re sisters now,” Nic said. “That means we can share special secrets.”
“Like what?” Seliah asked, curiosity overcoming her wariness.
Nic held up the grooming imp’s bottle and waggled it. “Magic,” she whispered, and Seliah’s eyes grew round.
“My brother is a wizard,” the young woman confided.
“Yes, he is. A most powerful one.”
“I wish he wasn’t.”
“Why’s that?” Nic glanced at the bathing chamber door, confirming it remained firmly closed. Gabriel didn’t need more reasons to regret who he was.
Seliah fidgeted unhappily. “He’s always sad now, and he never was before.”
Nic bit back a sigh for her brooding wizard. “He’ll be happier now,” she said firmly, willing it to be true. She might not be a wizard who could shape reality with her thoughts, but she had a powerful will of her own. She was going to make Gabriel happy if she had to drive them both crazy to do it. The absurd thought made her smile, so she widened it for Seliah’s benefit. “Did you know we’re going to have a baby?” she asked on impulse.
Seliah’s gaze went to Nic’s lap, then lifted with shrewd distrust. “That’s what Mama said, but I saw you naked. You don’t have a baby belly.”
“It will get bigger,” Nic assured her. Something she needed to remind herself of, too. It would be good to have that healer on site, to check that her adventures hadn’t affected her unborn passenger. “And then you’ll be an aunt! Shall we call you Aunt Selly?”
“All right,” she breathed, face lighting. “Now tell me the story. You promised.”
Indeed she had. Nic considered what seeds she wanted to plant in Seliah’s mind. The young woman had no training in magic, no experience with it besides what she’d observed of her brother—and what she experienced internally due to its corrosive effect. Whether she was consciously aware of that effect or not, part of her would know.
“Once upon a time,” Nic began, pleased when Seliah wriggled happily, settling back in the chair, “there was a beautiful princess. Her brother was king, ruling over all the lands anyone could see, and he was a kind and good king.”
“Like Gabriel.”
“Just like Gabriel,” Nic agreed. “And the princess was kind and good, too, beloved by all. But she was unhappy, because all of her best qualities were trapped inside, where no one knew about them.”
Seliah touched her fingers to her ravaged face, eyes welling with sympathetic tears. “Why were they trapped?” she asked.
“Because she was cursed,” Nic explained gravely. “And when the princess tried to explain to everyone about the curse, no one understood her. Not even her brother. Though the princess spoke the words to tell them, what came out of her mouth wasn’t what she planned to say. The curse twisted her meaning, making it into something else. After a while, nothing she said made any sense at all, and people thought she wasn’t even trying to be understood. They became annoyed with her, telling her to speak clearly.”
Seliah nodded mutely.
“Finally the princess stopped trying to explain anything. Instead she ran away to the forest. The birds and the animals there didn’t need her to speak. They accepted her, and she made a life with them. But the curse didn’t go away. It only worsened, until the princess found that sometimes she didn’t even understand herself, as if her very thoughts had turned inside out, too.”
