“Then I won’t,” Jae agreed quickly. “But I won’t let her touch you again. Or else…”

“Or else what?”

That question had to be on purpose. He stared at her, and she started to answer automatically, but there was no push from the Curse to force her. She had nothing to say, no or else to give him, and he sighed.

“You nearly killed her anyway. Look around.” He gestured with his free hand. “The whole estate is like this. We’re repairing the damage, but it’s a mess. And when the bricks fell, people got hurt. It’s lucky no one else died.”

“I didn’t want to kill anyone else,” she said. “I just wanted him to stop touching me.”

“I know,” Tal said, and he squeezed her hand. The Curse let him say it, so it couldn’t be a lie. Somehow, it didn’t make her feel any better. “I know, but you could have killed all of us.”

“I wasn’t trying to—”

“But you could have. You have all this power.” His voice was back to normal, calm and kind. “I can’t even imagine it. And now there’s nothing to stop you from using it. But the very first thing you did was kill someone, and—and really look at all of this.” He gestured around again. “Did you mean to do so much damage? Did you have any control at all?”

“You don’t understand!” She pulled her hand free and scrambled away, stunned to have him turn questions on her, grateful that there was no Curse compulsion to answer. Because he was right, she had killed Rannith, and she wasn’t sorry. She never would be. She just hated the way Tal was watching her, looking at her with that sad frown, dancing around whatever he wanted to say. As if he was afraid of her. As if she was one of them, as if she would ever hurt him.

She wouldn’t. But the room was in ruins, the beautiful designs in the walls missing pieces, cracked and marred. They’d be all but impossible to repair. She hadn’t meant to do that. She hadn’t thought at all about the house outside Rannith’s room, or the people in it. She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone but Rannith, but she could have—she could have hurt Tal.

Her throat burned, and she braced herself, squeezed her eyes shut. She’d spent the last seventeen years careful not to cry, to never let anyone except Tal see that she was hurt, but with Tal staring at her like this…

A hot tear splashed down onto her cheek, and he sighed, made a soothing shhh noise. He reached for her, and she let him, let him hold her and stroke her back.

“Oh, Jae. I didn’t mean to…It’s not like that at all. I know why you did it, and I…I wouldn’t have asked you not to. It’s just that you scared me.”

She clutched his shoulders and mumbled against his skin, “I’d never hurt you. Never.”

“I know,” he said, still stroking a soothing line up and down her back. “But you would hurt them, and they know it. They’re scared, too. What you did to Rannith…it was gruesome, and they’re terrified. I’m sorry for the question, but what do you think they’ll do to you for that?”

“They can’t hurt me anymore,” she said, and straightened up enough to mop at her face. “I’m free, and this magic…They can’t hurt me.”

“But they’ll try,” he said. “Lord Elan’s father is already on his way to Aredann, and when he finds out what happened here…Even if you didn’t have magic, even if you’d just been some Twill who’d killed an Avowed…They won’t just leave that be. If they can’t control you, they’ll try to kill you. And when you defend yourself…”

“What?” Jae asked.

“I’m scared,” he said simply, not hesitating or flinching from the compulsion to answer. “I want to help you. I don’t want anyone to hurt you, either. But, Jae…if you defend yourself like this again, a lot of people will get hurt.”

Elan shuddered, peeling himself off the wall where he’d been listening. Tal’s words echoed in his mind. A lot of people will get hurt. If Jae lost her temper, if anyone threatened her, she could destroy Aredann, just like mages during the War had disposed of whole armies.

Now that she was free of the Curse, there was no telling what she might do. He could only hope that she’d see reason, that she’d listen to Tal—he was the key to keeping her calm. Tal might only be a Closest, but Jae cared about what he said, and he’d already spoken to protect Lady Shirrad.

Which meant that Jae wasn’t entirely unreasonable. She was just angry. He couldn’t blame her for that, not knowing what Rannith had done to her. He couldn’t imagine being in her position, helpless to defend herself against a monster—in her place, he might have reacted the same way. And whether he would have or not, he understood why she’d done it. He just needed to make sure she knew that.

She didn’t like him much, either, but he wasn’t like Rannith. He wouldn’t hurt her; he never had. They could work together. In the end, they were on the same side. They both wanted to save Aredann from being abandoned, and to save the lives of the Closest who lived there.

He knocked on the door, and Jae and Tal both went silent inside. He didn’t wait for them to answer, just let himself in. He walked slowly, hands raised in front of him. Open, honest. Not a threat.

“Jae, I’d like to talk to you, if that’s all right,” he said carefully. “Tal, wait outside, please.”

Tal patted his sister’s shoulder once, then stood. He bowed to Elan, then scurried by and shut the door after himself.

“May I sit?” Elan asked, pointing at one of the cushions near the sleeping mat. It had been shaken free of dust and sand. Tal must have sat there, waiting for her to wake.

Jae shrugged and arranged herself on the sleeping mat, blanket pulled up to her waist, his shirt pulled down firmly. She ran a hand over her hair, which was still too short for her gesture to have much effect—but then again, it was also too short to be messed up by sleep.

“I wanted to talk to you about…I wanted to say,” he began carefully, contemplating every word before speaking it, “that I understand what you did to Rannith. It was brutal, yes, but deserved. I know that.”

She gave him a long, wary look, and finally said, “I doubt that, Elan.”

He blinked, shocked for a moment that she hadn’t used any honorific with his name. Even the Avowed did—but she wasn’t Avowed, or Closest, or even Twill. She wasn’t like anyone else in the world.