Page 53 of Elemental Affections

“We wanted it for you both. Calya needs you to balance her impulses. HNE needs your business sense.”

“It doesn’t. I don’t have any, not to run it.”

“See, you know to be humble.”

“It isn’t modesty, Mother. Just truth.”

Her mother tutted. “You were forging connections. You handled projects. With Brint and the relationship a union with the Avenors—”

“That’s never happening.”

Disappointment washed over Dae. It carried a new level of bitterness than that which she’d felt the last time she’d tried and failed to get her mother to see.

Silence reigned once more. The familiar urge to break it, to apologize and have things be all right between them, lurked beneath Dae’s surface. A part of her that had always craved her mother’s approval, and so often received it. Validation and praise could be hers if only she would pay with the life she was trying to build for herself. But the part of her that yearned for such affection was small. Smaller than the last time she’d had to sit with Mina’s disappointment.

“I know you want—” Dae started to say.

Mina interrupted, her tone businesslike. “Starker mentioned wanting to retire in the next five years,” she said, naming Helm Naval’s research lead for magic applications. “He’d like an apprentice to train up to take over when it’s time. It could be you.”

“I…” Dae was taken aback. In a sense, it was ideal. She wouldn’t be thrown in without support, would have someone to guide her. She’d already learned so much in one semester of dedicated study. Working at Helm Naval would narrow her scope a considerable amount, but she could apply herself wholeheartedly if that was her job rather than maintaining social contacts favorable to Brint.

Calya would love it. It was her grand plan, where the two of them steered the company to new heights. The Helm daughters reunited once more. Perhaps that was her mother’s aim in dangling the proposition. To have her daughters close, where she could keep an eye on their aspirations. An invisible hand to nudge them along. Dae had always been the more tractable one, and she could rein in Calya’s wilder ambitions. And if Dae was close, she knew she’d end up consulting with her parents. Maybe try to avoid it at first while tempers were still fresh, but a vein of unconditional loyalty ran in her. A desire for her mother’s approval, maybe even respect. Dae held those wants, enough for her and Calya both. Couldn’t be truly rid of them. If she came back, that thorned vine would regrow, as insidious a recurrence as the poison in Rhell. Without the Valley, her studies, her friends, the connections and love she’d found in her new life—without them she knew she would fall back into old patterns. Mother’s intentions were not nefarious—she wanted what was best for all of them. But that rigidity dismissed individual wants.

Somehow, Calya was able to withstand the constant wearing against her will. Dae could not. It had taken years, but she knew herself well enough now. Had acknowledged it, and made an escape whose success relied on distance.

“We wouldn’t press for you to reconcile with Brint,” her mother said, interpreting Dae’s silence as consideration. “As much as your father would like it, our relationship with the Avenors existed before children came along.”

The offer was tempting. Safe. An easy way to return to so much that was familiar.

Dae thought of her father’s stubborn disinterest in the last several months of her life. Even longer, if she was honest with herself; since he’d gotten into the Transportation division and moved into the world of politics. She thought of how he butted heads with Calya over a company neither he nor his wife wanted to lead any longer, only manage from afar, whether out of pride or a reflexive need for control. Maybe even a bit of sentimentality, since Helm Naval’s early successes had made everything else possible.

A part of Dae could understand that. Could believe that her parents wanted what was best for the family as a whole. Even if it meant seeing their children as something they weren’t.

“Good,” Dae said at last. “Calya’s been putting together good work with AG. She’ll continue to do so without me.”

“Ana.”

Dae hesitated, but there was only so much rebellion in her. “Do you miss it?” she asked, voice soft, a plea hidden somewhere in the words. Dae called on her magic, drawing tea from her cup and turning it into a ball of ice she danced across her knuckles. “You used to be in the workshop every day.” She returned the ice to the cup, melting it back to liquid.

Mina regarded her for a long moment, face unreadable. Dae would never have managed such a trick when she was younger, her lessons only sporadic tutoring sessions. Even with her affinity for water magic, back then, she’d always had to expend more energy and focus on minor spells. Nothing like that effortless summoning of her light.

Mina’s hand lifted, and she gazed at it for a moment, fingers twitching. She returned her hand to her side. “No, I don’t.” A small, wistful smile answered Dae’s bald disappointment. “But perhaps we want different things of our lives.”

She went to a small desk and withdrew a folded piece of paper, placing it in front of Dae.

Dae opened it, eyebrows going up as she read. “Is this…?”

“It’s what we decided was a fair amount of recompensation.”

The figure on the promissory note wasn’t the entirety of what Dae was owed after years of working for the company, but close enough. It meant stability and freedom. Yet, it also had a tinge of finality, as if the note was a crossroads and she could never come back.We decided.A calculation of all outcomes.

“I don’t know what to say,” Dae murmured. She tried to smile. “Thanks? It—it feels like I’m being let go from the family.”

“You’re always welcome here,” Mina said.

An unspokenbutlingered in the air. Their eyes met over the table, acknowledging that which was left unsaid.But this isn’t your home anymore.

And it wasn’t. There had still been ties, nostalgic or otherwise, when she’d gone to live with Brint. But the Valley felt more like home than the house of her childhood. Strange, how that had happened. How the Valley’s claim, a thing that inspired notoriety and awe, was in truth a subtle touch. A sense of belonging whose absence she noticed only when she looked for it. Now that she noticed it, Dae felt slightly hollow, as if there was a niche carved out in her chest. Graelynd had been her home for so long, yet it lacked the unity she’d already formed back in the Valley. In both places she’d had friends, family, love—or at least the illusion of it. But at Sylveren she felt complete, and here in Central something was missing. The innate understanding that she was wanted, that shefit.Her childhood home no longer held that. Perhaps it never had, and she only noticed the lack of it because she finally knew better. Such knowledge hurt, even though she now felt freed.

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