Hidden Spirit

Chapter Fifteen: "Partner"?

Feren was caught staring at her. Not for the first time, either. He'd been mad after that morning. Mad at how he was supposed to be taking her in, and not in the way Andrew intended. In a complicated struggle of fact, conflicting thoughts, and feelings toward the girl, it was finally decided that he might not mind a partner, even if he could have her for not more than a year.

Now all he could see when he looked at Amelia was a girl walking on ground that threatened to throw her. As unstable as her past few months had been, he didn't blame her for treading so lightly. He didn't hate her. He hated the idea of her.

No, didn't hate. Disliked.

And not just the idea of her. The idea of a partner.

He hated everyone who'd made her earth so unstable she could break at something as silly the thought of losing another person.

He hated every single reason she was there in the first place, from the destroyed country to the arranged marriage.

He hated the fact that they put her there where their kind were all but persecuted. Hated that she had to go through what he had gone through. Hated that while he had the freedom to go wherever he liked, avoid whomever he liked, she was forced to show face and live inside, as if she were any noble human and as if they liked her at all.

There were many things Feren hated.

But not her. He didn't hate her.

What would he do with her, though?

Feren was not a particularly bright Voerr. In either the spiritual or the educational sense. He did, however, have his very own theories, and his latest was this:

Amelia, as any animal, was trying very desperately to cling to the one thing that set her apart from everyone, and everything, else. And in trying to protect such an identity, needed the next part that could prove once and for all who she was meant to be. She needed a partner.

In seeing how she reacted to the arrangement with Andrew, Feren saw quite clearly how opposed she was to any sort of political relationship. Especially arranged. As if she could support something like that while the only world she knew might as well be fragments from a fairytale.

His thoughts then moved so far away from his original view that he became confused and threw them from his mind.

The one thing he knew... the one thing he was reminded of each time he set his eyes upon her, was that Amelia was no princess. She was a girl who had been forged in the fire of a strong family, shaped with harsh blows from the heavy hand of war, and then thrown like a blade in ice water into this world. All that lacked was a bit of shaping, sharpening, and care.

The dynamic was too dramatic for Feren, then. He didn't care about all reasons political or essential or secular. Constentine had rarely been a thought in his mind before the spring, and the details as to how their country had crumbled were unclear to him. The few details he had gotten had sounded like the ramblings of a fairytale; the murmurs of creatures and demons and witches that spread through the small minds of these Firicans like wildfire. So no, he did not care to engage in such ideas or thoughts. Though he did feel responsible for the product of them: that raven-haired girl who suffered because of it, true or not.

So, he decided that he could take her suggestion. He could share his time and his space. He could give her at least that much, because Heavens knew Feren had never done, and would never do again, anything for anyone but himself. But for Amelia, he could do that much. He could let her into his world.

And maybe he would benefit from it, as well.

He blinked, again bringing her present image to his eyes. She had her arms wrapped around her knees, eyes pressed into her skirts. There was a sniffle coming from her, but she was otherwise silent. Feren kneeled beside her; her beauty controlled his softer movements.