"I didn't know you had any step siblings." said Terry. "What's his name?"
He knew she'd mentioned something about that before. After all, Lady Selina had been married a few times. Although Helena didn't like to talk about that.
"You never talk about your stepfathers or anything." he continued.
"They weren't really my stepfathers." Helena replied. "They were Mai's husbands."
"Wouldn't that make them your stepfathers?"
"No. I simply saw them as men Mai was married to. Nothing else. There's a huge difference. And I never spoke to them. I never saw them if I could help it."
"How could you avoid seeing them?"
"I simply never came out."
"You never came out? I find that very hard to believe."
"It's not hard. I just made sure when I did come out, I wouldn't encounter them. I saw as little of them as I could. I managed it by my cats telling me where and when."
She did seem to have some bond with her cats. Terry had wondered if perhaps she did have some kind of telepathic communication with them. But that was a ridiculous idea.
"You never liked them at all, did you?"
"No! I highly disliked them."
"All of them?"
"All of them." she confirmed.
Adela hissed as Helena spoke, as always, to emphasize her words.
"Why?" he asked. "Didn't Lady Selina want you to get along with them?
"I didn't have to get along with anyone I didn't like if I didn't want to."
Terry certainly believed that.
"They were married to her, not to me. It was maybe the only thing Mai and I were at odds."
"And the only time you didn't get your way, am I right?"
"You are. I never wanted her to marry, but she did. And I hated it. And nothing I did to stop it worked most of the time, either!"
"What did you do to stop them?"
"What didn't I do to stop them? I did everything I could think of. I despised them very much."
"So you didn't like your step siblings, either?"
"Only one or two of them when we shared a common interest or anything like that."
"But you like this one?"
"He speaks my language. It will be nice to speak to someone in my own language again."
Sometimes, Helena would teach him a few words or phrases. Not that he was that great at languages. And of course, he didn't know enough to have a conversation.
"I learned a little bit, didn't I?"
"I like it better when people speak it without a foreign accent."
"My accent can't be so horrible, can it? Lady Selina speaks it with an accent, doesn't she?"
"Yes, she does. Someone I knew always found it humorous. But Mai has a larger vocabulary, even if she is horrible at sentence structure and especially pronunciation."
"You like him only because he speaks your language?"
"One grows to appreciate it things like that when you move around so much. At least I did."
"Was his father Lady's Selina's first husband?"
They must be step siblings from the Lady's first marriage, as it was a language not spoken outside Aragon, so it must have been when Helena still lived there. Terry knew she had left when she was four.
"He was." she confirmed. "But we got along because we share some common interests."
Terry looked at Adela.
"He likes cats, too? You wouldn't fail to like someone who likes cats, after all."
"He likes them. At least he doesn't mind them at all."
She looked fondly at Adela.
"So what interests do you share?"
"He does like art, but he doesn't paint or anything. And we know some of the same people as well. We're also both fond of all animals. And he would always make me smile."
"You still haven't told me his name, by the way."
"Oh. I didn't, did I? It's Ferrando."