Abaddon's Gift

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Theon looked up as Naena walked in with the folio in hand.

Over the course of a long, sleepless night, Theon had considered Arcdon's words and how Naena had looked over Ren's letter of rejection. The thoughts swirled around and around, keeping him awake and nagging at his half-sleeping dreams.

She held the folio out to Theon, and he glared at it, then past the folio, to Naena.

"Read it to me," he commanded.

Naena frowned at him. Her hand gave a little jerk as if she were about to pull the folio back to herself, then it settled back in place.

Theon stood, pulling a switch up with him.

It was little more than a stick he had carved a protection ward or two into, to keep students from stopping or incinerating the item. He typically used it during testing of war mages.

Naena's eyes went immediately to the switch and remained on it as Theon walked around the desk. Her weight shifted, but she didn't try to flee as he stopped at the corner of his desk. The switch hung in his hand, the tip of it brushing the floor as he watched her.

"Read it to me," he commanded.

She pulled the folio toward herself and opened it. As she read Ren's letter of rejection, Theon resisted the urge to beat her with the switch.

Her lies had cost them both time. Had he known she could have read, he could have immediately assigned reading and journals. They could have moved on to more complex subjects, subjects that could have saved her, had someone attempted to attack her with magic. He could have armed her with a set of the rules and laws of the university and the Seven.

She could have been protected.

When Naena finished reading, she closed the folio and dropped it onto his desk. A boiling rage burned in her eyes as she turned her otherwise expressionless face to him.

"My mother may have raised a stupid child, but she made it clear to me from the start," she said. "I am responsible for my own education."

"You can read," he snarled.

Or, at the very least, he tried to snarl.

The sentence devolved rather quickly. The last word was little more than an animalistic growl as Naena continued to stare at him. Something that may have been shame or humiliation passed over her features. It was hard for Theon to separate the two when he saw it in other people because he was fairly certain he had never felt shame himself.

"The first thing I was told upon entrance to Amos was to tell no one what I knew," she said. "It is hardly my fault that I took the warning to heart."

Her words were spoken with cold indifference. The words were succinct and to the point, allowing no logical questions to counter what she said. Her tone dared him to take action.

Not going so far as to suggest he couldn't succeed but instead leaving an unspoken threat hanging upon the air.

"You can read!" he bellowed again.

The moment that followed happened so quickly that Theon could barely sort out how it happened. He raised the switch and felt the instinctive magic wrap around it.

Naena's magic.

Unlike the petty souls Ren sent him, Naena knew what a switch was and its use. She didn't think it was a fake sword, and her reaction to it was so ingrained that her magic lashed out, attempting to remove the threat as Theon struck her with it.