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Her mother eyed her, unbothered. “I sometimes think I loved you more because of it.”
Stella had no words. She knew her mother loved her—she could, of course, feel it—but she also sensed her mother’s frustration with her.
“Don’t look like that,” Ami said, fluttering a hand at her. “I love all my children equally, but with you… Well, I always felt a bit like a beggar at the door with you, Nilly, grateful for any scrap of love you tossed my way.”
“It wasn’t like that…” Stella began, but couldn’t finish.
Ami nodded, then shook her head. “When you were abducted as an infant, all those long terrifying weeks Ash and I searched for you, I worried that you wouldn’t know me for your mother when we finally found you. You know that they took you before I ever put you to my breast, and I thought—oh, I don’t know.” She wiped away a few tears, crystalline drops that somehow only made her lovelier. “I was so afraid you’d hate me for losing you, for nursing your brother and singing him to sleep while you were in the hands of the enemy.”
“Oh, Mother,” Stella whispered, unbearably moved, Ami’s pain a palpable presence in the room. “You never said.”
“Well, I didn’t want to inflict my emotions on you, did I?” Ami replied with indignation, using her napkin to delicately blot her tears. “Even as a baby you were so sensitive, not liking to be held too long. It was a while before Andi explained the reasons, that we understood you were an empath on top of having the mark and being a healer and everything that went with it. From the beginning you felt more like Andi’s child than mine, which wasn’t easy for me to swallow.” She produced a miserable smile. “I’ve never quite mastered being unselfish, as I should.”
“You are the most generous and loving person I know,” Stella told her fervently, knowing it to be true. For all of Ami’s histrionics, she loved with unstinting generosity, giving full vent to her passions in all things in a way Stella had only begun to grasp, only recently beginning to chip away at the walls of restraint she’d surrounded herself with all her life.
“I doubt that,” Ami replied, rolling her gorgeous eyes. “I must confess, though I’ll deny it if you tell another soul, that I’ve been jealous of Jak.”
Jealous?
“Your face,” her mother said, with a little laugh at herself. “But it’s true. I’ve never seen you so at ease with anyone as you are with that scoundrel. Not even with Willy, who you always loved better than you loved me.”
“Not true,” Stella protested, alarmed at the prospect that her mother might believe such a thing.
“Oh, I know you love me,” Ami said on a heartfelt sigh, “but you never wanted to be close to me, like you always were with Willy, and as you are now with Jak. I also know it hasn’t been easy for you, being so vulnerable to the world. I don’t pretend to understand why Jak can touch you without giving you pain, but the bare fact of it is that he can. Perhaps because you love and trust him like no one else.”
“We… became close, on our journeys,” Stella explained, knowing it was no explanation at all. How to describe the sensation of being in Jak’s head and moving his limbs for him? Where her peculiar sensitivities had set her apart from everyone, even her close family, she’d experienced searing intimacy with Jak.
Ami, watching her intently, nodded. “He’s the one for you, no doubt of it. That’s probably why you sent him away.”
“That makes no sense,” Stella replied faintly.
“It makes no sense to your head,” Ami agreed, “but don’t forget what I said about you being born of love, too. You, more than anyone, are the living essence of emotion. You walk around the world with your heart laid bare, raw, and vulnerable. Being married to Jak will mean you’ll have to give up the possibility of sealing yourself away from all of that, which I’m sure must betempting. He’ll be there with you, every moment of every day, whether you’re physically together or not.
“It’s a commitment to partnership and—I say this with love, Nilly darling—you are not a person to whom partnership comes naturally. Your First Form is a jaguar, and they are lone hunters. Don’t look at me like that. Just because I’m not a shapeshifter doesn’t mean I don’t understand the Tala nature. Some of my children are shapeshifters; others are not—and one thing I can say with certainty is that there is a difference, and for you shapeshifters, your First Form informs your thinking and perception of the world on a deep level.” Ami sat back in her chair, sipping from her cup and observing her daughter with a canny gaze.
For her part, Stella kicked herself yet again for underestimating her mother. “I had no idea you’d thought about these things so deeply,” she said in a faint tone.
Ami raised elegant red-gold brows. “Because you didn’t imagine I think deeply about anything?”
Stella flushed. “No, that’s not—”
“Don’t fret over it, Nilly dear,” her mother interrupted. “I’ve deliberately cultivated the appearance of frivolity and brainlessness. It comes in very handy. I suppose I’m just surprised that you, with all your empathy and sorcerous ability, were taken in by it.”
She shouldn’t have been, but her mother also had a point that Stella had never felt close to Ami—and, being honest with herself—she’d never tried to change that. This conversation with her mother was a first.
Stella had always had Astar. They’d been Willy and Nilly, the terrible twins, from her early consciousness. She didn’t remember the abduction at all, unless it was on some subconscious level below active memory. Perhaps having Astar as a constant companion, another person almost like herself,had made her lazy. It was salient, probably, to note that it wasn’t until Astar fell in love with Zeph, closing off some of his heart to his twin as part and parcel of cleaving to someone else, that Stella had even considered Jak’s determined flirtations.
Had she only clung to Jak out of fear of being finally and utterly alone?
“Are you saying you believe I shouldn’t get married?” Stella asked cautiously, aware of how her heart sank with damp dread at the prospect, which was ridiculous. She’d always been so sure she’d never marry—or have a relationship with anyone beyond distant friendship—before Jak. Maybe her previous conviction had been the correct choice and the mistake had been getting close to Jak at all.
“Did you not hear the part where I said I have no doubt that Jak is the one for you?” her mother asked with irritation.
“I definitely heard the part where you pointed out that I’m a lone hunter by my shapeshifter nature and not equipped to be a partner to anyone by all the rest of my oddities,” Stella replied mildly, attempting to contain her own annoyance.
“I said it doesn’t come to younaturally,” Ami said with pointed asperity. “I believe I also spent considerable breath on explaining that parts of you come from me. Love has made you bloom, Nilly darling. I admit I was surprised you wanted to marry anyone at all, but if you are going to do it, then young Jak is the one.”
“The only problem there is the minor detail that I sent him away,” Stella replied, braced this time for the stab of pain, regret, and—unfairly to Jak—anger at him that he’d taken her at her word and left. Without even a goodbye. Or a note. “He’s not going to marry me now.”
