Years of playing Carthaki politics had come in handy in a number of unexpected ways—like now, when she needed him to be calm despite what she'd just told him. Despite the horror and revulsion coiling in his stomach at the thought of her—this girl who wanted nothing more than a home and people to be kind to—being hunted by those who should have protected her.

He smiled softly, hoping he looked confident—hoping she couldn't see his fury because she needed someone to be her friend, not her avenger, in that moment.

"Now—just like meditation," he was already working his own breath into a controlled pattern when she nodded and closed her eyes. He placed his fingers against her temples, damp with salt-air—or dried tears, maybe both—and felt her shiver with the cold. Without words he added a dollop of his gift to the fire, stoking it for more warmth.

Her breathing slowed, along with her heartbeat, and he felt her body and mind relax with an ease she would have been incapable of even two months prior. He entered her mind carefully. He wanted to avoid startling her as much as he wanted to ensure he didn't delve too far—everyone deserved to keep their own secrets, and if he took hers from her he'd never again be able to hope she'd share them freely as she had earlier. He'd told her once that he couldn't see into her mind and it hadn't been a lie, not completely. He couldn't read thoughts like words, but this kind of connection—where she was allowing him in—was still intimate. Thoughts were just the surface of what one's mind contained, and he had no intention to explore anything more than he needed to.

He found his goal—a wellspring of copper fire swirling brightly at her center. He'd seen a tempest once, in his youth, and the similarities were startling—raw, swirling power churning in an endless current of force. Every so often, a tendril would lash out in breach of that pattern before falling back into the wellspring. He'd never seen something like it—which was becoming the norm when it came to her—even in the raw power of his own gift. He'd certainly never seen anything like how it tore into her core—her humanity, a paleness hidden behind the blinding copper light. There was something else, too. Something he must have missed when he tried to isolate the parts of her he needed from the parts that were supposed to be hers alone. Anger. Thudding and deep, rolling like a tide beneath everything. He pushed it away along with his concern because it wasn't his. Couldn't be his.

He waited for her to join him, and when she didn't nudged her awareness with his. Something had her attention and he was startled to discover it was his own heartbeat thundering in his chest. He controlled it, shielding his mind from hers more firmly. This wasn't about him.

She sighed and he felt her awareness shift again, but in the wrong way.

Inside , he said wordlessly and she pulled away from the sea lions to fall into herself. He could have built the wall without her awareness, but he wanted her to see—to understand—what he was doing. That understanding was as important to him as her consent.

He went to work. Building a thin barrier of his gift between her humanity and her magic should have been short work, but it fought him. Fought him in a way it shouldn't, but he didn't dare retract now. He'd promised he could help her and he couldn't be another broken promise to her. Keeping his hold on spreading his gift around her core, he inspected the white glow at its center.

There. Something wasn't right.

He didn't make a habit of delving into the center of someone's being, but he'd done it enough to know what it should look like—himself, Varice, Stefan, Lindhall, once, when he'd been feeling especially amenable—and this wasn't right. It should be pure-white; bright but transparent. Hers was close, but there was something pearly about it. More gray, no, silver. He didn't know what to make of it, another mystery to add to her growing tab, but he did know that it didn't want to let go of her wild magic.

His hypothesis before had been wrong: it wasn't how much wild magic she had. Stefan had enough to be trained but when Numair had tested him, his wild magic represented differently than someone gifted only in his abilities. It clicked, one mystery solved though it begged another—Stefan had wild magic; Daine was wild magic.

It was enough, and he changed tactics and returned his full attention to the task at hand. Runes, old ones pulled from years of esoteric study, anchored his spell. The tension eased but didn't break until he added one for unity, and another for balance—he couldn't separate the fires, not completely, but he could make them work side-by-side instead of as one. He hoped it would be enough.

Finally, the shadow of his magic connected on all sides and a transparent, shimmering wall of his gift held the copper from her center. He listened to her breathing, three long inhales, and when he saw that his work held he slipped quietly from her mind.

His hands shook and he clasped them in his lap. He didn't know what to make of what he discovered, or even if it was his to discover. He smiled when she stirred, speaking softly.

"How do you feel?"

The good thing about cooking rather than cleaning was that it let him warm himself by the fire, a boon he sorely needed with the cold rain that insisted on hanging over the Dunlath Valley.

He was stoking the fire, Daine slicing chunks of ham that he was sure would go more to Kit and the cubs than the pot of soup, when the hairs on his neck stood on end. Silver bloomed from the entrance of the den, making him blink. He could only just see Daine through the glare, and how she shielded her eyes in a smooth motion while feeding another piece of rind to Kit—her nonchalance the only reason he didn't call a spell to the ready. Not fully, anyway.

—This is very nice,— a gravelly voice, but also something that was as much a feeling as a sound, said in his mind. By the way Daine and Kit turned he knew the speaker was addressing them all.—Cozy, especially on a rainy afternoon.—

His eyes cleared and he turned to the cave entrance where the silver light was fading, and an aggressively large badger had appeared. The badger god, because it could only be him, waddled towards them and shook water from his coat. It occurred to Numair, idly, to comment on how the fire was only spared at the expense of his pack. He'd like to say he thought better of it but the truth was that particular thought was buried far beneath several others occurring to him in rapid succession.

He watched the light at the entrance fade fully because he knew it was important, but couldn't think of why. Something about the color—silver, but not the silver of a trinket, and opaque but alive and—

His eyes flicked to Daine, who was toying with the badger's claw at her throat—pulled from her shirt now—and sitting eye-to-eye with the badger who had settled between them. That was important too. The claw; the same silver. Of course, the claw came from the badger so that connection was obvious but there was something else. Something about her.

Unsure if they were speaking privately or if they were waiting for him to be polite, he swallowed and hoped his voice would be steady.

"Daine, is this—?" He faltered as soon as the badger began to turn towards him, a moment of clarity hitting himself full in the chest. As physical a sensation as any, enough to knock the wind from him. The answer was so simple—right in front of him this whole time—that he felt stupid not to have considered it before. Perhaps his own experiences, and those Alanna had shared with him, had made him complacent in considering the relationship between the mortal and the divine.

—I told her father I would keep an eye on her. So you are her teacher. She tells me a great deal about you, when I visit her.—

That pleased him far more than he expected it would. Enough to eclipse, briefly, the confirmation the badger had inadvertently—or perhaps not—given him already. Enough for another more academic question to be recalled, his lifetime as a scholar hard to ignore even in the wake of the information churning through his mind.

"May I ask you something?" He asked, noting the roll of Daine's eyes.

—I am an immortal, the first male creature of my kind. The male badger god, if you like. That is what you wished to ask, is it not?—

Numair hesitated. It was startling to have his wards breached without so much as an inkling, and he had not missed the inflection in the badger's final question—because if he had known his simple question, he certainly knew of all the others on the tip of his tongue. Knew the one he had been about to ask, brashly and without thought to the fact that it was Daine's to ask—not his.

"Yes, and I thank you," he said, finally, "I—thought I had shielded my mind from any kind of magical reading or probe—"

—Perhaps that works with mortal wizards,— the badger huffed. —Perhaps it works with lesser immortals, such as Stormwings. I am neither.—

Numair blushed, feeling heat creep up from his collar and into his face. The badger's unspoken message was clear—ask carefully, and accept whatever answer he received. Daine, at least, was enjoying herself and failing to conceal it. He looked at her, thoughtful—there was something important he should be focusing on, wasn't there?

Something about her—something that had been heavy in his mind just moments before. She was right, perhaps, that he spent too much time with his head in the clouds.

"Another question, then," he faltered, as nervous of pushing his luck with the god as he was about whatever it was that had slipped from his thoughts. "Since I have the opportunity to ask. You can resolve a number of academic debates, actually."

—Ask.— The badger's tone was patient—barely.

"The inhabitants of the Divine Realms are called by men 'immortals', but the term itself isn't entirely accurate. I know that unless they are killed in some accident or by deliberate intent, creatures such as Stormwings, spiders, and so on will live forever. They don't age, either. But how are they 'lesser immortals' compared to you, or to other gods?"

—They are "lesser" because they can be slain. I can no more be killed than can Mithros, or the Goddess, or the other gods worshiped by two-leggers. "Immortals" is the most fitting term to use. It is not particularly correct, but it is the best you two-leggers can manage.—

Numair was speechless—the gods: that was what he had forgotten. That Daine was—even at his worst he was not so absent-minded as to forget such a realization, which meant that the badger was influencing his thoughts to make him forget. He didn't want Daine to know who—what—her father was. Numair swallowed the hot anger that swelled up within him, threatening to spill over. Whatever his personal thoughts, defying a god was poor form. He forced his attention back to the present in time to hear his tutelage called into question.

Feeling less welcoming to their guest than he had moments before, he straightened in his seat to his full height and looked down at the badger. "If you feel I have omitted something, by all means, enlighten us."

He listened quietly. Of course he hadn't considered the possibility of her entering the minds of the people. There wasn't any precedent for it—not in the way the badger was implying, anyway—among two-leggers, and there was so little theory for wild magic in existence compared to the gift. If she could do that, and after such a short period of training, then it begged the question of what else she could do—and the badger clearly wanted her to question it, based on his ominous words. Didn't he know she hated surprises?

He'd thought she'd reached the limits of her abilities, what with them being so far beyond what he'd ever seen before. For there to be more to discover implied her magic was more than even he thought, and—Mithros, Mynoss, and Shakith , what was he forgetting? He flexed his hand and controlled his breathing. He knew there was something important that he'd known just moments before, and moments before that—and yet it was gone.

He listened with half an ear as Daine promised to try and as Kit conversed easily with the god, like he was an old friend, in a series of chirps, whistles, clicks, and trills. No matter how he reached, whatever it was he needed to know was beyond him.

—I must go back to my home sett,— The badger announced and Numair started, having missed when the badger had returned to sit next to them again. —Things in the Divine Realms have been hectic since the protective wall was breached and the lesser immortals were released into your world.—

"Do you know who did it?" He asked without thinking. "We've been searching for the culprit for two years now." He knew who it was, in his bones, but he wanted—needed—something to back it up. Something to help set the Eastern Lands against Ozorne in what was as much a personal vendetta as a noble one.

—Why in the name of the Lady of Beasts would I know something like that?—The badger growled. —I have more than enough to do in the mortal realms simply keeping an eye on her.—

"Don't be angry," Daine reached out to set her hand against the badger's fur in what Numair considered a startling display of familiarity with a divine being. "He thought you might know, since you know so much already."

Numair withdrew into himself. That thought—the one he wanted—so close again. The way she spoke to the badger without fear. Her ease with the situation. His hair was still standing on end—could she not feel the tension surrounding the god? If not—

He watched them closely as she walked the badger to the mouth of the cave, feeling very apart from them both. He stood when the silver light flared again, stroking the bridge of his nose in thought. When she turned back he sighed, dropping his hand.

"Well," he said, and stopped. He had too many thoughts at work, and none of them the one he wanted. He was turning back to the stew, picking up the stirrer and hoping it hadn't gone too long already when she interrupted.

"I think he puts a magic on me," she huffed. He glanced at her, smirking at how her hands went to her hips and she blew an errant curl from her face.

"How so?" He was inclined to agree, but best let her make her own conclusions.

"Every time I see him, I mean to ask who my da is, and every time I forget! And he's the only one who can tell me, too, drat him." She sank to her knees to attend to Kit, who was trilling, while Numair's vision paled as the missing piece returned to him. Her da. Of course.

She was looking at him and he tried to laugh, because he wasn't ready to say anything about something like this until he had time to think. "Somehow I doubt the badger is interested in what's fair."

She accepted it with more humor than he personally felt capable of, and he took the opportunity to steer the conversation elsewhere, to the new potential of her magic and was relieved when she agreed. He had more than enough to think about, and it was easier without balancing conversation lest he say something he shouldn't.

An hour of external peace, and he'd turned the information over in his mind in every direction with no resolution. He felt she should know—but the gods had decided not to tell her, and if he told her she'd feel betrayed by the badger. She'd already been betrayed by so many, and there was true affection between her and the god. He didn't want to take that away from her.

He did what little he could to push it from his mind when he called her for dinner and jumped at the chance to take on the evening's cleaning so she could sleep. He wouldn't be able to sleep for a long while.