Page 48 of Tempest

Sophie wrapped her arms around her middle. “You couldn’t protect her. I know.”

“But you aren’t Ophelia, Sophie.” Iason paused, then turned to her and held out a hand. Sophie looked at it in alarm before gingerly taking it. “Believe me when I say that. Perhaps, in some corner of my mind, I thought I was redeeming myself by saving you. But you are a person worthy of being saved in your own right. I don’t see Ophelia when I look at you, even if I do think you would get up to no end of trouble together.”

“Thank you.” Sophie squeezed his hand. “I think I know how she felt, a little. About what happened to you.” She took a shaky breath. “I read what was on the table last night, when you were gone. During the storm.”

Iason tensed. The papers. He’d left them out in the open while he followed Levi into the storm.

“They talked about you like you weren’t a person,” Sophie said, and looked away.

“I still followed their orders after I came of age,” Iason said. “I had many years to break free from their indoctrination.”

“But you’re free now. Aren’t you? Would you still follow their orders, now that you remember everything?”

Iason shook his head. “No. I would not. Perhaps I had to forget, first, to truly get away.” He turned to her. “I know none of this is ordinary. But I would like to ensure you have a childhood, strange though it is. That means school—a schedule, a routine. Something stable you can rely on.”

Sophie eyed him suspiciously. “Which means you aren’t going to dump me somewhere and disappear.”

She was right. If Sophie wasn’t merely his second chance to save Ophelia, he couldn’t put her on a shelf and ignore her when he was done. He had to be there.

“I suppose not.”

“Promise, then.” Sophie turned completely to face him and took his other hand. “Promise me you won’t go. We’ll stick it out—whatever that means. I’ll even go to school again if I have to.”

“I promise,” Iason said.

Sophie squeezed his hands and let go. “It’s a shame Levi will have to leave one day,” she said. “He’s weird, but he’s nice, too. He says I remind him of his sirens.”

Iason remembered lying atop Levi, baring himself in more than just body as the storm raged around them, and coughed into his fist. “He’s fine. But he’s a dragon. He should be free to live in his true form.”

“Seems pretty free living in this one,” Sophie said, laughing as Levi jumped off his board into the water. He emerged with the board a minute later, trudging toward them through the sand with a ridiculous grin that made something twinge oddly in Iason’s chest.

“Admiring the view?” Levi asked, flipping his hair over his shoulder.

Sophie snorted, and Iason fixed Levi with a dry look. “You admire yourself enough.”

“As I should. I don’t understand why you mortals insist on denying your positive qualities.”

“I don’t deny anything,” Sophie said. “But I was thinking, maybe I could dye my hair?”

“No,” Iason said, as Levi nodded enthusiastically. “Maybe. But it has to be a dye that won’t make your hair fall out.”

“Deal.”

Levi wound his arm around Iason’s as they headed toward the house. Iason found he didn’t mind it so much, and when Sophie took his other hand, he thought again of the night Ophelia tried to convince him to flee, how tightly she’d gripped his hand. He hadn’t been willing, then, to let go of the Archmage or the lies he’d been fed. But something had come loose inside him the night before, and with each step he took toward the little house they’d been given, he felt those old reservations falling away.

He was almost smiling when they reached the garden gate, where Levi had managed to rescue a few of Iason’s hardier flowers in time to plant them—and saw a woman waiting for them.

She was older, her black hair streaked with silver, and she was wearing a black housedress with a blue-and-silver shawl embroidered with stars. Rings glittered on her fingers, and her black eyes flashed as a demon hovered behind her—a humanoid woman with black scales over her sleek body and batlike wings. The mortal woman nodded at Iason, Levi, and Sophie as they approached, and she looked Iason in the eye.

“You may as well remove that illusion spell over your face.” Summer, the Archivist of Mislia, rebel leader, and one of the last members of the mage circle left alive, adjusted her shawl and tilted her head toward the house. “I need to have a word with all of you.”

“I expect you will,” Iason said, and slipped free.

* * *

Summer and her demon wife, Tanis, made themselves comfortable at the worn kitchen table while Iason poured lemonade into mismatched cups. Sophie was sitting on the kitchen counter next to Levi, petting Argo, who was curled up in a bowl of water in her lap. Tanis kept eyeing Sophie, and Iason made it a point to stand between them when he returned with the lemonade.

“Did you really get married?” Sophie asked, as Iason sat down.

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