Page 108 of The Shadowed Oracle
The silencebetween them wasn’t bland, nor comfortable. Impatience pushed Ingrid to think of ways to address the issue, apologize for distancing herself, to admit to her trepidation, apologize for not sensing he was burning himself out, but in the end, stubbornness kept her lips closed tightly.
She wanted—no, needed Dean to speak first.
Just as the sun poked over the islands in the distance, a dazzling mixture of burnt orange and faded purple dancing in the sky, he did.
“I know I already said this.” He turned to her, a welcoming levity in his voice. “But I’m sorry. I’d be pretty ashamed if Callinora heard what I’d just implied behind her back.”
“She’d get it.” Ingrid knew that with absolute certainty.
“Yeah, which makes it even worse,” Dean said. “Here I am, in the heart of it all, while Callinora can sit at home and hope. Miles and miles away, while—well, you know.” Dean gripped the railing of the bow, lowering himself to sit just left of center, leaving room for Ingrid to join his side. “I know she grew up differently,” he added. “I imagine she can temper herself better than most. But still.”
“Diplomacy over everything,” Ingrid agreed. She eyed the spot next to him, hesitating a moment before sitting. “Do you remember that story about her alchemy tutor? Or the etiquette classes she talked about? Can’t imagine what her actual schooling was like.”
“Worse than yours, you think?” Dean said gently.
“Or yours?”
“Hey, it’s not a competition.” His voice had turned raspy, the post-outburst crash turning it harsh, but inversely making his mood softer, more vulnerable. “Seriously, though,” he said. “Aside from the whole… knowing about another world stuff, my fear was almost normal for a kid. While Callinora was taught to fear herself.” He paused, glancing at Ingrid for a half-second before continuing. “Have to admit, it makes for a great leader. Putting rationality over emotion. That’s something I’ve never been good at.”
Ingrid scoffed, reacting almost involuntarily. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“Right.” Dean turned to her, chuckling.
“And now you’re laughing at me?” Ingrid asked with a snort.
“A little.”
“Ridiculing my lifelong struggle. Great. Very helpful.”
Dean emphatically threw his nose up at that. “I’d hardly call your temper your lifelong struggle,” he said. “Plenty of things top that. For example, has anyone told you you’re too hard on yourself?”
“Someone has, yes,” Ingrid said. “Me. I tell myself that all the time. It’s one of the thousands of things I don’t like about myself.”
“And the cycle continues.”
Now Ingrid was the one laughing. “So idiotic, really. It’s like getting mad yourself for getting mad at yourself.”
“I’ve actually done that before.” He winced, picking at a loose piece of thread on his borrowed pants. The pants that were supposed to make him look more like a merchant and less like a fighter, but weren’t all that effective. “I can’t remember what the lesson was that day,” he said. “Maybe I was using throwing knives, or maybe it was grammar?”
Ingrid rocked her head up and down knowingly. “The two pillars of elementary education, of course.”
Flatly, Dean replied, “Either murder 101 or biology, can’t remember.” He brought one leg up to rest on the dock, the other still dangling over the edge. “Either way, I was fucking up. And I started to get mad. And I got madder because I was mad. And then I was just… total insanity. Or at least that’s what my mom told me when I woke up. I’d blacked out.”
There was another moment of silence, though comfortable this time.
Dean recalled, “The weirdest part, though, after I woke up, was that my mom was treating me completely different. Overnight, she became the nurturing, caring, overprotective mother. Her version of it, at least. She even gave me the rest of the day off, which never happened. Not if I was sick in bed, had a fever, throwing up. Never.” The details didn’t match his casual delivery, periodically looking up at Ingrid as if he were explaining something mundane. “I found out a few weeks later that it was because she thought it was my power surfacing. That I’d used it unknowingly, and passed out from the magic flowing through me.”
“That’s quite the assumption,” Ingrid said. “How did you find out?”
“I asked her. I had to. After a year or so, it was obvious that the magic wasn’t in me, so the training got worse. Much worse.” He brought his hand up to his chest. “That’s how I got my scars.She brought back a few of the tamer monsters from Peloria forest and put me in the jail cell with them.”
Ingrid took a moment, biting back anger, tears and nausea all at once.
“Did she ever speak to you about it?” she asked finally, “Did she ever… I don’t know, try to explain herself?”
Explain how, in a sick and backward way, she might’ve done it out of concern for him. Seeing him as disadvantaged, maybe she pushed him harder so that he would hold his own, become a true warrior in a world full of killers.
“I don’t think it would’ve mattered to me at that point,” Dean said. “I was a kid. And kids rarely make the distinction between protectiveness and harshness. But, no, she didn’t explain.” He tried to stress his distance from the pain with a laugh. “She gave me some truly diabolical guilt trips when I was older, about all she sacrificed for me, all she did for me, but she never accepted criticism. Never showed weakness.”
