Tangled Webs by Anne Bishop

said, his voice strained by the effort not to lash out at Allista. “I should have been informed if Tersa was acting unusual in any way.”
    Allista stared at him, clearly struggling with the need to balance loyalties. Being here was part of her own education—all Black Widows took the risk of becoming lost in the Twisted Kingdom—and in that, her loyalty was to the Hourglass Coven and to Tersa. But he ruled Dhemlan, and he was the one who provided her with a quarterly income to show his appreciation of her care—just as his father had done before him.
    She came to a decision. She raised her chin, squared her shoulders, and said, “She didn’t want you to know.”
    He was out of the kitchen and bounding up the stairs before Allista could sputter a protest.
    The physical lock on the attic door was undone, but when he tried to open the door, he heard the rattle of another lock on the other side. And he felt the tangle of a Craft-shaped lock. If Tersa had made it, that lock was potentially dangerous, even to someone with his power.
    “Tersa?” He pounded on the attic door. “Tersa! Open the door!”
    «Go away,» she replied on a psychic thread.
    «No, I will not go away.»
    Annoyance came through the thread. And a trace of fear.
    «Wait.»
    He paced the upstairs hallway, and he waited. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes.
    Finally the attic door opened and Tersa slipped into the hallway. She was as thin as she’d always been, despite the regular meals, but her clothes were new and her hair, still as tangled as her mind, was clean.
    “Tersa.” He couldn’t read her emotions, couldn’t untangle them enough to get a feel for what was going on. That she was unhappy about his presence hurt, but he set the hurt aside.
    “It’s a surprise,” she said, a pleading note in her voice that he’d rarely heard before. “For the boy. Just a little surprise for the boy.”
    The boy. Meaning him. He often wondered what she saw when she looked at him. Was it like looking into a shattered mirror with each piece holding an image from the past? Sometimes he knew she was seeing him as the child he had been before Dorothea took him away from her and drove her out of Hayll. Sometimes she saw him as the youth he had been when he’d met her again, thinking it was the first time because he didn’t remember who she was. And sometimes she saw him as he was here and now. But within all the broken pieces of her mind, he was always the boy.
    Knowing why she didn’t want him there eased the hurt. She was making something for him, and she was afraid he would insist on seeing it before she had finished it.
    He ducked his head and looked at her through his lashes. “When do I get my surprise?”
    A moment’s startled hesitation. Then her gold eyes narrowed. “You are teasing me?”
    “Just a little.” He gave her his best boyish grin.
    Her eyes narrowed a little more, but he noticed the change in her psychic scent as she absorbed the fact that he was being playful instead of demanding answers.
    “When do I get my surprise?” he asked again.
    “Soon. But not today.”
    He waited, watching her make the effort to hold on to the ordinary world.
    “Today you can have nutcakes.” Tersa took his arm and tugged him toward the stairs leading to the first floor—and away from the surprise in the attic. “And milk.”
    “I don’t need milk,” he said, hustling down the stairs to keep up with her.
    “Boys get milk with nutcakes. It’s a rule. Manny told me so.”
    He clamped his teeth together. He couldn’t argue with a rule that gave Tersa a way to cope with something other people saw as simple and mundane, not when he knew Sylvia’s son Mikal was a frequent visitor. Manny, no doubt, had established the rule for Mikal’s benefit.
    “Fine,” he said, trying not to snarl. “I’ll drink the”— damn— “milk.”
    Tersa stopped just inside the kitchen and shook her finger at him. “And no using Craft to vanish the milk.