Sorceress, Interrupted - By A. J. Menden Page 0,72
telling you. Not right now.”
“But you’ll tell me someday?” I teased as he lay down next to me.
“Maybe. If you’re good.” He kissed me.
“If it’s not actually a ward and is just something dirty, tell me.” I laughed. “I’m not going to get mad. It washes off.”
“Maybe I should convince you to get it tattooed for real, then tell you what it means,” he suggested.
“You can’t tattoo wards, remember? They lose effectiveness eventually.”
“This one won’t.”
“Besides,” I continued. “I’m fairly sure tattoos won’t work on me because of the invulnerability thing. Another mystery of being Fantazia,” I joked.
“Speaking of mysteries . . .” He twirled a strand of my hair around his finger. “Were you doing magic at some point during all that?”
I felt a wave of embarrassment flood me. “N-no. That wasn’t magic talk.”
He smiled. “I had a feeling it wasn’t. I’m just going to have to learn Italian then, to know what you’re saying when you’re talking dirty.” He dropped a kiss on my throat.
I relaxed a bit. “That was a very old dialect of Italian.”
“Ancient dirty talk. I love it.” He kissed my neck again. “I’ll have to ask the Old One what it means.”
“I wouldn’t recommend doing that,” I said, brushing a finger over his lips. “He’ll figure out where you heard it.”
“So?”
“Well, I kind of doubt it’ll get him pissed off, since we’re not that close anymore, but it’s bound to weird him out. I certainly wouldn’t want to hear any details about him and Lainey doing it. Emily’s enough evidence of that.” I shivered. It’s a definite mood-killer, thinking of your father’s sex life. Especially when you’re kind of angry at your father anyway.
Cyrus was looking at me strangely. “Not that close anymore?”
“Well, it’s not like he’s been much of a father for years. Still, I doubt he wants details of you sleeping with his daughter. That’s all I’m saying. It’s bound to be a bit strange.”
Cyrus stared. “W-what?”
I eyed him blankly. “What do you mean, what?”
He sat up. “You’re his daughter?”
I’d forgotten he didn’t know. Then again, to be fair, my mind was elsewhere—on agendas and things like that.
“I thought for sure you knew,” I muttered. “All of the rest of the EHJ know.” I processed the surprise on his face. “Wow. You really didn’t know. Yes, I’m his daughter. From an extremely long time ago, obviously. Possibly from his first life, though no one is certain just when that was. Didn’t you ever wonder about the shared Italian, about the shared magic?”
“I just thought you two were together at some point.”
“Ew!” I squealed. “Why does everyone’s minds always go there? Why didn’t you process the not-aging thing? Why didn’t you think, ‘Oh, the Reincarnist lives forever, and so does Fantazia. She must be his daughter’?”
“Toby’s related to him and no one in his family does that.”
I shrugged. “I’m different.”
Cyrus lay back on the bed. “Holy shit. I’m in bed with the Reincarnist’s daughter.”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“He’s going to kill me!”
I gave him an annoyed look. “I doubt it. Even if I wasn’t thousands of years past having a curfew, he doesn’t care that much.” At Cyrus’s incredulity, I shrugged. “We haven’t been close in a very long time.”
Cyrus shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. You’re still his daughter. He’s going to be weirded out.”
“No, he won’t,” I repeated. “He forgot me. The moment his life as my birth father ended, he came back as a new person who thought I was just some servant girl. I let him think that. We moved so he could get a fresh start, and this was right around when my powers started kicking in. He became my magical teacher, but I couldn’t handle that was all he thought I was to him, a servant and a pupil. When I left home, he didn’t try to stop me.” I bit my lip because I was not going to cry about this. Not now.
Damn it! Stupid life-altering sex. It was making me soft.
“Sweetheart.” Cyrus brushed a tear from the corner of my eye but wisely said nothing about it. “This explains so much.”
I shrugged. “What? Why I’m such a mess? Sure, why not. It’s the oldest story in the book: I have Daddy issues.”
Cyrus looked concerned. “Whatever he believed in that first reincarnation, he knows now. He knows now that you’re his child. You said yourself that he wouldn’t want confirmation about me sleeping with his daughter.”
I laughed bitterly. “Yeah. That was my doing. I got depressed one day when