and bitter sound. “I never gave her a chance. I was determined to keep Mark’s secret, both for his sake, and for yours. I worried that the new baroness might seek to get rid of you if she found out. Since I refused to tell her what happened, or who your father was—well, she was always quick to judge. She assumed the worst.”
It was unfair, unjust, and painful to think about. “But she was your mom,” said Will at last. He couldn’t imagine a circumstance that would make his own mother treat him so badly. “She should have trusted you.”
Erisa’s eyes were brimming even though her face was smooth. “And that’s why I will never do the same to you, Will. No matter what happens. I will always be on your side, no matter what anyone says.” She was on her feet and without thinking, Will stood and hugged her.
His eyes were burning as he told her, “I know, Mom. I’m almost grown now. I’ll always take care of you, no matter what.”
She cried some at that, and Will joined her, but their sadness was short lived. While it felt as though the foundation of the world had shifted beneath his feet now that he knew who his father was, nothing had really changed, and the events she had told him about were long ago. They moved on to simple talk after that.
When he left to go back to Arrogan’s home that evening, he walked slowly, taking his time so he could mull over what she had told him. A lot of things made more sense to him now, but in the end his life was still the same.
Chapter 21
“Today I’m putting the spell-cage back on,” Arrogan informed him. “You’ve had enough light duty. It’s time to get back to work.”
Will was relieved. No matter what the old man called it, his light duty had been a pain in the ass.
“Clamp down on your source,” ordered his grandfather.
He did, and he was surprised at how easy it was. He had been worried that the two-week break might have caused him to regress, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Will felt a wave of fatigue and light-headedness as his turyn shrank, but it passed after a few minutes. His body was already drawing in energy to replace the turyn that he was no longer producing.
His grandfather nodded, observing him closely. “That’s good. How do you feel?”
“It was easier than I expected,” admitted Will. “I felt tired for a minute, but it didn’t last long.”
Arrogan raised one brow. “Really?”
Will had the feeling the old man might be on the verge of giving him a compliment, so he seized the moment. “Did I surprise you?” he asked, grinning proudly.
The old man ‘harrumphed’ and his features turned sour. “In a way, I guess. You might not be as completely useless as I anticipated.”
He felt a warm glow. For Arrogan, ‘not completely useless’ was as close to praise as anyone could expect. “Be careful, old man,” warned Will. “If word gets out that you’ve gone soft, you’ll have people lining up outside to be your apprentice.”
Arrogan snorted. “If that happened, I could quit wasting food on the moron I’ve been training. I’m sure even a village idiot would be better than you,” said his grandfather. Without warning, he conjured a new spell-cage, and in the space of a few seconds, had reapplied it to Will.
“We’ll spar and work on your studies the rest of the day, to give you time to readjust. Tomorrow we’ll see if your explosive breakthrough taught you anything,” Arrogan informed him.
The next day found Will frustrated, but he did have some success. After an hour of false starts, he did manage to ‘express’ his turyn as Arrogan described it, but it was far from being what his teacher wanted. No sooner than he had pushed some of his turyn out, it faded, dissipating like steam on a cold day.
“The idea is to contain and control it,” repeated his grandfather for perhaps the tenth time. “Don’t just push it out and forget about it. Don’t try to do magic like you’re passing gas.”
It was a week before he managed to create a well-contained outer layer of turyn around what his grandfather described as his ‘personal’ layer. The terms confused Will a little at first, though. “Shouldn’t my personal turyn be the tiny amount trapped inside the spell-cage?” he asked. “The turyn outside it is what I’m absorbing from the environment.”
“You