“And how many times will it take until you accept the truth?” Darshan let the slice of wood fall to the ground. “There is no shame in having magic, not even in your own culture. Being a spellster is not considered a sin like in Obuzan. I am not leading you down some shadowy path.”
Tears pricked his eyes. Nae shame? When spellsters all across Tirglas were shuffled off into distant cloisters or slain if they attempted to leave without permission? When his own mother refused to accept she had given birth to two daughters? “This is nae Udynea and you’re nae saying it’s just me.” His niece, his nephews, even Nora… they could all potentially have the same spark. They could already be using it unaware of the danger to others, to themselves. “You’re saying that I’m some weak spellster who—”
“Actually,” Darshan interjected. “Spellsters with minuscule magic such as yourself are referred to as specialists.”
“I dinnae care what they’re called!” he screeched. By the Goddess… He was going to burst. Every part of his being felt ready to rend itself from his bones. “You’re saying I deserve to be in there.” He jabbed a finger in the direction of the cloister.
“No,” his lover breathed. He clasped Hamish’s hands, turning them palm-side up. “I am aware that would have been your fate, had you more power, but I would never suggest you deserve to be there.”
“Where else would a Tirglasian spellster belong?”
If he hadn’t been so intent on Darshan’s face, he certainly would’ve missed the pity that welled in his lover’s eyes and tightened his features.
Darshan turned from him, one hand fastidiously smoothing down his moustache, although the hairs along his jaw were at least a half inch long. “Forgive me, I should not have brought this to your attention.” He bent to gather a small armful of the branches Hamish had collected and abandoned in his quest to prove Darshan wrong.
“Nae, you shouldnae have. But now I ken and you cannae take that away.” Even if it were possible, he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to forget.
Darshan paused in bundling up the rest of the branches. “We should get back to camp before the others think we’ve been beset upon by a bear and come to our rescue.”
“More like our burial.” He didn’t know if they had bears in Udynea, or how large they got, but the ones he had faced were big enough to bleed a man out with one bite.
“It is somewhat of a shame. I was hoping to see one that wasn’t stuffed and mounted.”
“You wouldnae be saying that if you’d ever seen any of the full-grown mountain brutes.” His brother certainly wouldn’t be thrilled to come across one on the way home. He shrugged. “But our journey’s nae over, maybe you’ll be fortunate to see one in passing.” His family always had the worst kind of luck. Why wouldn’t it hold back now?
His gaze slid to the segment of wood still holding two of his arrows. Luck. Just a few moments ago, he would’ve considered all his feats as a mixture of mere happenstance and skill.
Now?
Knowing the truth behind his records?
That he had…
Magic.
His mare stumbled, jolting Hamish from his musing. Snorting, she righted herself and carried on. Hamish glanced up to take in their surroundings. Nothing but trees and the castle looming through the leafy canopy.
His gaze dropped back to his hands. They held the reins a little tighter, but were no different than before.
The better part of a week had passed and he still couldn’t say with absolute certainty that his lover was wrong. Hamish couldn’t force the arrow to move in any fashion but how the Goddess had intended such projectiles should fly. He had tried shifting his focus to a completely different patch of undergrowth as he let go of his arrow. It had still hit his first focus point.
No matter how he tried, all of his attempts to replicate the trick he had witnessed in Darshan’s presence had failed. That had to mean something.
I cannae be a spellster.
Why did Darshan seem so certain? Did his lover attempt to deceive Hamish under the delusion that it would help Hamish leave Tirglas for good?
Would his mother believe it? Would he become another Caitlyn in her eyes, tainted and unworthy? And if being a spellster was all it took for her to forget all ties to her daughter, would she care if her son left for Udynea rather than the cloister?
He had expected Darshan to make several more attempts towards convincing him of his status as an extremely weak spellster—a specialist—but the man hadn’t spoken a word. Perhaps he waited for their return to Mullhind and the chance to test his theories on the rest of Hamish’s family.
Or perhaps his lover believed to have already made his point.
Maybe knowing also hindered the testing. How many rabbits, deer and wild pigs had he downed over the years? Always in the heart. Not even the most precise of hunters could make such a claim. How had he not seen it sooner? Why had no one else suspected more than pure skill on his part?
Where had the spark come from? That’d been the only question Darshan had asked since. Not his mother, that much was certain. His father’s side was the only other option but…
Were there any spellsters in his ancestry? Darshan’s words echoed through his thoughts. His father was an only child, raised in the midland sheep-fields. What little he knew of his grandparents on that side came only through stilted tales from his father.
What he did recall was a warning given the first time Hamish had turned his hand to shearing. His grandmother had cut herself and had fallen down dead. The other shearers had deemed it unfortunate, but not terribly uncommon amongst the impatient.
Except… The healers in the nearby cloister had claimed one of her veins had mysteriously collapsed and that had been the true cause of her death. Any enquiries by himself
