23.1 What the Heart Wants

General Summary

Day 381

We spend the day resting and enjoying each others' company in safety, finally. In a quiet moment I pull Mystery aside. Tonight Camellia and I will take oaths but the thought of Mystery not being part of my family has been weighing on me. I know that were we in the Empire she would be ensconced in both Mistress's and Doraal's families but here there is just me. Of course she has a place in my family if she wants it. She tells me that she can feel the closeness of family already to me and even the rest of my family, though they're more distant. I have to smile at this. Even if we don't have the memories the bonds of family are still there and the magic of those oaths persist. She feels it with Knotrael as well and I explain that he is part of Doraal's outer family. I think the two of them will have some things to talk about.   With Puddle's permission we gather around the small lake as dusk falls. The air is still cold, snow on the ground still slowly melting into the ever-growing body of water. Still, with the number of wizards in the family we can easily conjure flickering light and warmth around us.   As I guide Camellia through the ceremony I feel the Shard of the Empress stir within me, watching. Just like when I brought Bran and Hella into the family it feels heavier with her eyes upon us. When I speak my part of the oath I can feel the Empress' voice interwoven with mine. The words are mine but they are hers as well and I see Lyssa notice from my peripheral.   Our own mage lights dim as Camellia radiates her own soft light and the feeling of early morning shade. She is softer and gentler, early dawn before the light strengthens. I'm so lucky to have her. As we complete the ceremony I feel the Empress withdraw but the Shard itself is more awake than it has been before.   As our first act with her as a formal part of my family I offer the blood magic from Magdalena. One by one I share blood with each member of my family and by the end I can feel each of them like an extra sense: Flickering light attached to each person. Lyssa and Mystery both feel deeper and if I concentrate on their flame I can nearly see their figures through the magic.   Later at night, tangled up with Lyssa, she is radiating the intense affection of knowing that we'll have to leave one another again.  

Fate owes us a century

  It'll be easier this time with the bird letter carriers and the blood bond. I wish I'd had both of these things sooner! As we reflect on other times apart and how this one might be different she says something that surprises me.  

It feels like you've put together all the best pieces of you. Back home the bubble of formality was too thick. People looked at you with awe and reverence and fear and no one could get close. I used to wonder if anyone would be able to get as close to you as you needed. Being here has let you find more family...so while you're away if you find more...send them to me. I'll keep them safe.

  She's right. Between apprenticing to Mistress so young, being such a legendary student at the Academy, and then rising to be a Dread Lord I ascended much faster than most. And I wasn't born to a military family or one where this level of ascension was normal or even expected. The people I connect with are the same ones who can't get close to me. Coming here has meant being able to shake all of that off for a bit.   We stay up much later than she should, considering how early she wakes. It's tempting to lull her into sleep and just hold her for a bit but I don't want to rob her of these moments either. We can both afford to be tired tomorrow. I can't resist.  

Day 382

I rise late, as expected. The house is mostly empty by now and I send Lyssa to tend to some things so that it can stay like that while I find Magdalena and have a talk. When I settle down beside her with two mugs of tea she seems a bit surprised, a bit annoyed. Hard to tell, and she conjures an inky black bubble of privacy around us.   "You need pushing sometimes," "I would have told them," "I thought you might not tell them until after fetching Dal,"   At this, I almost laugh. I have pages on pages of notes in my journal reflecting on the best time to communicate this. I didn't want it hanging over Camellia's oath, I wanted a few more days with Lyssa free of that anxious intensity I know so well, and I needed them all to settle into the idea early enough that Dal would have people to lean on when I left him again. There is no way that Magdalena agonized over this decision the way I did. I didn't need my hand forced. It didn't help either of us to have my family see her forcing something.    

I'm sorry. You surprise me and I don't give you enough credit.   You and Andstella are to blame for some of this. It has been so long since I could think of anyone as family - she's the closest thing I could have to a daughter. You're...complicated. I'm not your mother and I don't exactly fit into your life as a big sister either. We may have to invent a new word for whatever we become, but I don't want to be your teacher anymore. There is more than that now. I've been clear about wanting you to travel with me after the rest of your people have passed on but now in a way you've awoken my envy, my jealousy, and some of my pettiness. I'm envious of your family and its closeness. I want to hasten us towards being able to build our own family; the three of us.

    So...family. Over the months we've had together now she's become intensely important to me and I've been holding myself back. I thought that whatever we had was going to have to wait until I had walked through the inevitable loss of everyone else in my family. I hadn't thought it was possible yet, or even something she wanted. So much of what she says is 'In a couple centuries' or 'In a few thousand years, when you're ready'. This is much, much more immediate.   "If I'm no longer your teacher then you get to be more wilful. You get to ask more of me, make me uncomfortable. Help me connect to the better part of the songs I carry; shake off some of the accumulated cruelty,"   She has never struck me as cruel. There are ramifications to the things she does that are weighed and calculated and accepted but this doesn't read as cruelty. But what she's asking is, in a way, the same as any other family member. That's what family is.   So for now she will work a little faster to collect the seventh component on my list. Maybe if she is fast enough we will be able to travel together for a bit. And she transforms back into the way she was when I first saw her - the petite elf teacher I studied with for years without knowing exactly what I was getting myself into. I hug her and it feels better than it ever has, even when she was the touchy-feeliest elf around and I was one of the few who didn't mind at all.   Stepping back she touches me with a tiny wisp of magic and I feel it flow through every part of me and back again into her hand.  

There. Now there is nowhere you could go that I could not find you.

  And for a moment her eyes unfocus and I can almost see thoughts forming in her head before she speaks. The things from my heart...like my heartsong, she says, that might be your personal magic.   It's adjacent to what I've thought before of myself. Seeing Lyssa's ease with lightning, Bran's innate sense of the weave of fate, Alder with shadows. All these personal magics that are strengthened by what they've been taught and for a while I thought mine was blood. But that hasn't always been there, and the blood feels like it only brushes the surface of what has always been the root of my strength. From my earliest memories of the people in my small village to being here so far from home and finding family wherever I go - I've thought that perhaps the core of my magic is heartsblood. This makes sense...the heart itself - the bonds that exist between people who love each other.   Magdalena reaches into nothingness and pulls a book out of it. For a moment I'm speechless. Why wasn't this the very first thing she ever taught me to do? I can raze cities and destroy armies but I can't bring a book with me without having to carry it myself. I'm almost affronted. She tells me that she has her own library elsewhere and simply knows the location of her thousands of books so she can withdraw them through space magic. I make a note to myself to experiment with translocation some more. I will always be eager to learn from her but there is a joy to creating your own solution, like Amytri's ever-expanding journal.   The book itself is ancient and illegible to me until she taps my forehead with yet more magic and I see that it simply does not have a title. It's a journal, or a notebook of sorts.  

As much as I despise it...maybe it is time to let go of that feeling. This is one of my sisters' accumulated notes on our mother's magic: The Heart of Song. I think it will be useful to you. And I have a small hope that perhaps I can ask you to learn this magic and maybe one day start to help me heal from the things I did to make myself immune to it. If I can bear to be so vulnerable.

  First of all, I will learn whatever magic there is to learn. I have to. That's how this whole wizardry thing works, no two ways about it. And I will be willing to heal her however she needs. It will only be returning the favour (a favour that ceases to be counted amongst family, anyway). Still, I guess it'll take time.   For now she says she'll meet us again just short of the Witch Queen's grove. Until then she has other business to attend to. She does take a bird, which makes me indescribably happy. And then she vanishes, as she is wont to do.   Bran finds me shortly thereafter cleaning our two mugs and lost in thought. He leans up against the counter and watches me scrub the same spot absently before I turn to smile at him. I think I'll invite Dawn, Nina, and Miriam into my outer family. It feels right, and he agrees. He says that sometimes he catches glimpses of me and my thread and it feels like it's still heading somewhere less bloody.   He's certainly right on this side of the Barrier but I worry about returning home and getting swept up in the war and politics again. That said...nearly all of the people who used to manoeuvre around me in the Court would struggle to do so now. It's a lot harder to push around a Hand.   The rest of the day deserves to be less complicated. We head out to see Spindle and check whether my bloodletting dagger is ready.   The shop itself is mostly repaired with new planters and most of the repaired armour cleared away. A young dwarven woman greets us and goes to fetch Spindle for us. He is glad to see us and tells us that the girl, Rikka, might be his next apprentice. She has a year to prove herself.   The dagger, when he presents it, is perfect in every aspect. It is beautiful balanced, quick and sharp, and the sheathe is decorated with exquisitely organic engravings of leaves, vines, and flowers. It is nothing less than I would have expected from him and I'm delighted with it in my hand.   He has me test it against an old suit of armour in the shop and I'm surprised to see it slice through the metal with ease. Though the blade is not intended for combat, he gave it magic to cut through anything it might need to. Especially after having heard of my presence at the betrayal by the Collective he wanted me to have a blade that could easily slice through the tough hide of some of their races.   Even though I carry many weapons and spells now, this is a worthy addition. My bloodletting dagger is the last thing someone might hope to take from me. It is an excellent weapon of last resort.   Ricka, then, fetches a leather belt that complements the delicate sheathe. It is not the same organic design but it is intricate and precise in a way that suits it well. Spindle says that she's made more than a dozen of them before finally presenting one to him as the best she could do right now. The craftswork combined with the knowledge of her own limitations is impressive. I hope to see more beautiful work from her in the future and I'm glad to own one of her first.   It's wonderful to think that Spindle has found a worthy apprentice and even more so to see that he's found a dwarf. He comments that when that Barrier finally comes down it will feel like the beginning of still a newer Empire with more than just elves and Carthians. It must have felt similar when the Empress brought the Carthians under our banner so long ago.