I'm sorry I haven't updated this story in a really long time. Here are my excuses:
1. My mom was sick. In fact, I had to drive her to the doctors, and I have already forgotten how to drive. (It's just like riding a bike. Oh wait, I forgot how to do that, too.)
2. I caught the cold from my mom.
3. I had a lot of trouble making this little confrontation as non-romanticized and non-romantic as possible, which was hard. In any other story I would possibly write, the hero and heroine would have dissolved in a passionate, slimy fit of disgusting kisses halfway through this chapter. But this isn't one of my usual fanfictions.
Anyway, as penance, I made this chapter extra long for your enjoyment.
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When Briar was showed into a private office by an outrageously obsequious servant, Lord Gerntyl was ensconced behind the most enormous desk Briar had ever seen. Presumably, the man's girth and ego required the boost of an imposing façade of power. It must be hard to be a huge pile of lard and still feel good about yourself, thought Briar.
"Lord Gerntyl, you requested my presence?" Briar said, face perfectly blank.
The mound of dark brown velvet shifted. "Mage Briar Moss," it said, "it has come to my attention that certain excursions have been recently made to the city. My servants have seen you leave my castle on foot, and return from the Eastern quarter."
"Yes, Lord Gerntyl."
Briar's apparent obtuseness went unchecked by the lord. "Certain- er- security measures are necessary, due to conflicts with our neighbor Narol. Perhaps you see why it is essential to know the purpose of your visits to the city."
"My lord, the matter is simply the generous salary you have bestowed upon me as Lady Adellaine's instructor. I understand the less wealthy of the city are hard-pressed during times of war, and I hoped to ease the burden upon those I had the opportunity to meet before I came to your castle."
Gerntyl's face had reddened slightly at the mention of the poor. "If I may tell my security advisors that you are merely sowing your own money to the needy?"
"Yes, my Lord. You see, my sympathies are quite harmlessly biased. Before my fortunes changed, I, too, grew up on the streets."
"Ah, yes." The fat Lord managed to scoot his chair slightly away from his desk. "I had one more subject to discuss with you. My servants have informed me that my daughter Adellaine has, at present, locked herself in her rooms. Might you, Mage Briar Moss, know why she has done so?"
"Please, my Lord, call me Briar." You stinking pig of a father, who calls his own daughter demon, tells his other children to shun his wicked daughter for their own good, and only shows the slightest bit of interest when someone famous with a big name begins to call her mage-
A slight "ahem" alerted Briar to the fact that he had been silent for several long moments. At least he hadn't said his thoughts out loud.
"Perhaps, Lord Gerntyl," Briar said slowly, "my student has made inquiries of her own regarding certain rumors about myself."
"Which rumors would these be?"
Briar smiled grimly. "I'll find out when I talk to her, won't I?" A chuckle escaped from the lord; perhaps even Gerntyl had known Del long enough to appreciate the set look on Briar's face.
Gerntyl leaned back in his chair, the wood squeaking under his weight. "Of course, due to your prestige, I give you full benefit of the doubt concerning these stories, since usually less than half of what reaches Kenat is true."
More than slightly incensed, Briar was about to excuse himself when a dirt-covered messenger burst into the room. "My Lord!" the man gasped, thrusting a torn piece of paper at Gerntyl. Though he kept a straight face, Briar was shocked to see a thin line of dried blood marking the inside of the courier's arm. "Please, it's urgent! From General Wanden," he finished weakly, leaning feebly against the table.
"Thank you." A servant timidly appeared at the Lord's beckon. "Peale, bring food and water for this man. And a washbasin."
"My Lord." The servant disappeared in the direction of the kitchens.
"Mage Briar Moss," Gerntyl said, face smiling broadly over clenched teeth. "Just let me remind you not to make a habit of impregnating noble females."
Briar could have stabbed the Lord; however, he didn't fancy the unpalatable consequences such an action would undoubtedly bring. "I think, Lord Gerntyl, the gossips have given me far too much credit." Excusing himself with the bare minimum of formality, Briar quelled the murder in his heart and merely walked away.
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"The story doesn't say, my Lady, where Briar Moss had come from. He appeared at Winding Circle Temple at the age of ten, along with three other young wizards: a weather witch, a smith-mage, and the famously dead Lady Sandrilene. I doubt there's anyone on the continent that hasn't heard of her, not with so many powerful mages working so hard to keep her alive, scrying their hearts out to find Mage Briar Moss before she died. He disappeared for months, you see, without even making an 'understanding' with the poor Lady. Even in her last days she called for him, her other two friends already at her side. Especially he should have been there, my Lady, after all the harm he'd done. When he did come home, he left almost as quickly as he returned, too, before her uncle the Duke could get his hands on him.
"Imagine! Such a scandal when word came out that Lady Sandrilene, high noble she was, had been-"
Not for the first time that day, Del banged her head into the surface of her dressing table to knock the maid's words out of her unobliging head. Briar was no doubt wondering where his student was hiding, since she had ignored various knocks on her door. As she had done since she had spoken to Angella.
Del wondered what Briar was doing with his sudden excess of free time. She hadn't thought about it before, but morning lessons, noon meals, and afternoon lessons had filled both their days since the plant-mage had set up residence in her father's castle. Shutting herself in her room all day was hideous, but even Del's need to leave was hampered by her Briar-spawned fear of apparating somewhere distasteful.
Adding to Del's wrath was the time of day; it was nighttime, which had always been the period in which Del was most inspired to disappear.
It always had been, Del reflected, since it was almost the only time of day when the perfect silence rang deafeningly in the ears until her own thoughts pushed the sound away. And she usually didn't like her own thoughts.
She especially hated these.
At times she would burn hot, and felt the need to rage around the confining room until she had slapped her emotions back into control. Whereupon she would burn cold, until once again fire consumed her. She wanted to punch Briar in the stomach; she wanted to cry; she wanted to break the mirror that was so mercilessly reflecting her own accusing eyes back at her.
Del's only conclusion, frustratingly enough, was that she was jealous. Which she had trouble mentally accepting, of course, but her speculations hadn't turned up any other solutions.
For example, she hadn't felt this way when her younger brothers and sisters had abandoned her to solitude after she had started performing her odd magical disappearing tricks. Or when her distantly loving mother died and was almost immediately replaced by a distantly disdaining stepmother. Or when the first cries of "Mad Lady Ad" had rang out from the crowd. None of these had the stomach-dropping effect of hearing that Lady Sandrilene had very nearly borne the child of Mage Briar Moss.
Of course he couldn't live more than half a life when one Lady Sandrilene had already taken his heart with her to the other world.
Still in her gown, Del perched on the window-seat in her sleeping chambers, the little plant ensconced next to her. Playing with the little silver bell she had tied to one large leaf of the plant, she tried to control the urge to scream, and only mostly succeeded.
"Not fair," she whispered bitterly to the nearly full moon, before she smiled at herself for using such a childish phrase.
Immature as it was, however, this really wasn't fair. Del was tired of seeing Briar constantly struggle between enjoying himself and controlling what she knew now to be his relentless sorrow. If this exquisitely beautiful and powerful Lady Sandrilene was such a good friend, she would not have wanted him to live this way.
And while Del was no Lady Sandrilene, she didn't want that kind of future for Briar, either.
Not that Del felt her presence would ever be able to bring that much joy into her teacher's life. But the knowledge that he had loved someone else enough to destroy his spirit when she died- somehow that made everything seem more hopeless. Though Del wasn't even sure what "everything" was.
The tiny bell jingled. Briar sometimes awoke from nightmares while Del was taking a catnap, and the bell effectively woke her when her plant trembled with the magic he briefly lost control over.
She wondered what he had been dreaming tonight. Of Lady Sandrilene?
"Have to face him sometime," Del murmured, and concentrated on an image of his sleeping chambers. "If I don't accidentally merge with an obliging piece of furniture, first."
Taking a deep breath, she took the jump.
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Briar waited patiently in his darkened room. He had asked the little miniature daisy to ring its charming little bell, which the daisy found quite amusing.
This was a dirty trick, he admitted, but sometimes he just didn't feel like the adult he was supposed to be- especially when it came to matters of Del.
Briar asked the daisy to jostle her bell again, but he shouldn't have bothered. The tell-tale sparkles of magic were already forming across the room.
When Del winked into sight in his room, he was standing less than four feet away, therefore effectively towering over her as planned.
She let out a little squeak and immediately jumped back. "What are you doing?" Del hissed. "You're supposed to be in bed, having your dratted nightmares!"
"And you're supposed to be coming to lessons!"
Obviously, she couldn't argue with that logic. A very satisfied Briar watched as his student's mouth opened and then set itself into a tight, dissatisfied line. "Fine. I admit that."
"You're also not supposed to gossip about me with dim-witted maidservants who are easily bribed with a very, very small coin."
Del crossed her arms. "You did the bribing, I imagine."
"Of course."
Silence.
Briar, who knew Del was capable of spitefully keeping quiet for hours on end, sighed and gave in. "Did you find out what you wanted?" he asked her. "What was it like, hearing about my life as a lying scoundrel?"
His voice, meant to be lightly taunting, only sounded heavy and dead. Nonetheless, Del stepped backwards as if she had been slapped.
A wave of regret passed over Briar. Impulsively he moved forward; a mere step brought him face to face with the dark-haired girl. "Del, I-"he said, absolutely bewildered, reaching for her hand.
Reaching for her hand.
Lord Gerntyl's tacit threat flew into his brain- sentiments that, at the moment, Briar himself energetically seconded. No touching of any kind, he warned his hand, fat man would just love to string you up like a fish. But against his will it kept rising upwards to grab Del's upraised palm.
Of course, thanks to Del herself, all questions of hand-holding were immediately rendered academic.
While Briar was deep in thought with his conscience, her hand emerged from the shadows to plant itself firmly on his chest; to his surprise, it rather strongly pushed him backwards. And despite his street-trained sense of balance, he was shocked enough to stumble ungracefully into a chair.
When he had regained his balance, a chagrined Briar turned to his student with a self-deprecating grimace.
She glared at him, taking his expression as criticism of her action. "Okay, I shouldn't have pushed you. But you didn't have to expect me to believe all the garbage people spread about under the pretense of story-telling."
"Well, then, if you hadn't wanted to hear the sensational version after all, then why didn't you ask me in the first place?"
Del paused. "I suppose," she said slowly, "I didn't think very hard about that." Hearing Briar's soft snort, she pursed her lips. "You didn't have to trick me into coming here."
Admittedly, that was true, too, but of course Briar couldn't let Del end with the last word. "You didn't have to push me."
"I already said that."
"To be entirely honest, I snuck around, too," Briar said somewhat sheepishly. "Only reason I found out you'd been making the rounds was that I went and asked about you."
"Why didn't you ask me in the first place?" Del mimicked rather convincingly, but her mouth began to smile even before she finished speaking. "So I almost got away with it."
"Almost. And, by the way," Briar warned, "you don't get away with anything 'round me."
Del threw up her hands. "I don't know if I ever expected any less." She tried to settle into the seat of a couch, but the heavy backrest felt too much like a rock against her spine. "By the way, what did you find out about me?"
Briar was busy knocking every single cushion and pillow in the room to the floor in front of the fireplace. He sat in the pile, and motioned for Del to join him. "That your fat father's an ass and you were a demon baby."
She rolled her eyes. "Thanks. Except that story just came about after I started doing weird things. I only really started using my magic when I was around ten or eleven. Which makes me only demon-possessed, not demon-born."
"I don't know," Briar said, teasingly. "I never could tell the difference between demons and ten-year-old girls. Believe me, I grew up with three particularly vigorous ones."
Briar's light words hung in the air between them like jewels as Del stared at him. "You almost never talk about them, not like that," she said, and his face carefully arranged itself into a blank expression. "Do you- do you miss them?"
Briar didn't answer her question, but his eyes obviously said yes. "We were close," he said, almost whispering.
She was incredibly curious, but Del managed to keep her voice low and mild. "Then how come you're all the way out here in Kenat?"
He blinked. "I swear, Del, didn't you ask your servants to tell you?"
Del's resolve to remain soothing broke. "And you just told me a few minutes ago that I should ask you. Besides, I don't believe what they say, you know," she told him.
Briar smiled crookedly. "Believe what? That I'm a cowardly scoundrel or a worthless friend?" The smile dropped off his face, and Briar turned a carefully blank face to his student. "At least believe the second one, if not the first."
"No," she said forcefully.
Propping himself up on one elbow, he stared upwards into her face, hidden by the tangled veil of dark hair. "And why not?" His voice sounded so dreadfully tired, even to himself.
Briar couldn't be sure in the half-light, but he thought Del's face was unnaturally flushed. "Because maybe I don't think you'd abandon your friends."
"But Del, even if the stories aren't all true, I really did."
"Then how did you?" Del snapped.
"I wasn't there!" Briar almost shouted, letting himself fall backwards into the pillows. "Maybe I could have saved her. They tried, you know, we've done it before."
"What?" Del stared at Briar, who, half-buried in cushions had flung an arm over his face. "What do you mean, you've done it before?"
"Rosethorn. My teacher." One emerald eye opened underneath his arm to glare at Del. "She was a lot better at teaching than me, just to let you know. We were helping Winding Circle find the cure for this plague- we called it the Blue Pox."
"Epidemics," Del murmured with a shudder.
"Rosethorn caught it. The going got better once we found the cure, but she already had pneumonia and died. The four of us- me, Sandry, Tris, and Daja- kind of went in after her and pulled her back into her body.
"Ok, so I admit we had no clear idea what we did to save Rosethorn. But maybe if I had been there this second time around, we could've done it again, long enough to force Sandry into accepting healing magic. At least that's what I keep telling myself."
The words were beginning to come faster from his mouth, and Del leaned closer to hear his fading voice. She didn't dare speak lest her interference stop Briar's story.
"Daja and Tris had been keeping her in her body for nearly a month. They were so tired by the time she –she went, that they weren't able to grab her tightly enough. If I had been there, fresh, maybe we would have had enough strength between us to do it.
"But then, sometimes I tell myself that maybe we would have all died, instead. Tris and Daja have such strong wills to live, lots of things they want to do. All I had was Rosethorn and plants, and our Circle. I probably would have died before I let Sandry go, and then Tris and Daja would have been forced to try and stop me, and we'd all be dead."
She thought he had forgotten that she was there, but Briar's eyes suddenly refocused and went to her face. Grabbing her wrist with one sweat-dampened hand, he gripped it so hard she needed to grit her teeth to remain quiet. "Del, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to talk for so long. Go to sleep."
If he had been one of her younger brothers or sisters- though, of course, she hadn't been allowed contact with them for almost seven years- Del might have pulled Briar into her lap, sang him a long and silly song, and then firmly insisted he go to bed. Or if they had been gentle lovers in a romantic ballad, she would have put her arms around him and sang him sweet songs until his heart was at ease, or some swill like that. But since it was Briar...
"Oh, come off it," she said, managing to let a degree of impatience to leak into her voice. "You can't just send me to bed, you're not that much older than me. And don't apologize for talking too much, Master Briar Moss, please remember I asked you to talk to me."
A little bit more of Briar crept back into his eyes. "Fine, your Royal Highness. I talk, if you command."
"I do command," Del told him, taking his sweaty hand in hers, ignoring the slipperiness of his skin.
He closed his eyes, though whether in pain or relief she couldn't tell. "Let me tell you about the Detani jungle."