Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

With his hands, he began to peel an orange object.

I drank. “This juice is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

He separated off a wedge of fruit and held it out. “Here.”

It looked moist and cool, so I set down the cup and tried it. I had to close my eyes because the texture melted so sweetly inside my mouth.

“Just spit out the seeds,” he said, holding out a piece of the peel.

He fed me half the fruit wedge by wedge before I recollected myself and said, “You have some.”

“You look sunburned and yet you’re pale beneath it, so you’ve got to eat,” he said. “You’d be cooler with that jacket off.”

My healing bite itched like an accusation. “It comforts me to keep it on.”

He shrugged, and fed me the rest.

I licked the sticky juice from my fingers, watching him self-consciously carve the knife through the peelings as he tried not to stare at me. “Am I still in the spirit world?” I asked.

“No. Why would you think so?”

“Are you really wearing a rope as a belt? Working as a carpenter?”

Had he been a horse, I would have said he bridled. “It’s perfectly respectable work. I’m good at it.”

“Of course you’re good at it. You’re good at everything you do.”

“Is that meant as a criticism?”

Here was the haughty Andevai I knew! The other one—the polite, caring one so intent on feeding me—was beginning to unsettle me. “Why would you think it a criticism? Mightn’t it have just been a description?”

His mouth twitched down. “I’m not sure how I’m meant to answer that. Agree, and I’m proud and vain. Disagree…”

“You’d still be proud and vain, and worse, you’d appear falsely humble. You, a cold mage of rare and unexpected potency. The favored son of Four Moons House.”

“Is that what you think? That they favored me?”

“You can’t mean they kicked you out?”

“No. I just meant they resent me.”

“Yes, I can understand that. A village boy raised to be a laborer whose entire clan serves Four Moons House in clientage. It must have been difficult for the young men raised in all the privilege of the house to see you walk in and best them all.”

His mouth twitched up, shading his expression to one of nostalgic triumph. “They hated it.”

“And they hated you, too, evidently. But the mansa cannot want to lose you. Nor would your family, for though you were taken away from them to serve as a cold mage, it was clear they love you. So why are you here?”

“I might ask you the same question.”

“Yes, you might. I’m amazed you haven’t yet done so.”

He crossed his arms over his chest in a way that unfortunately displayed his muscular forearms to advantage. “Good manners and simple common sense dictate that I should wait until you have a chance to eat.”

I laughed.

“Why are you laughing?” he demanded.

“Why do you think I’m laughing?”