Shady

Jerica snorted, but then slowly realized it was a genuine question. And then she was dumbfounded for a long moment. He doesn't know anything about me. It felt so liberating ...

"I never said I'd throw an innocent person at you," Jerica said, a little indignant. She continued dryly, "I know everyone seems to think I'm a monster, but I don't ...

Jerica took a deep breath. That was a jarring change of topics -- from her hypotheticals to him asking about her values. She... didn't really get asked that. But, fair ...

What do you mean you don't know? Didn't you ever--? Jerica cut her own thoughts off as she looked over at him. He looked like a kicked puppy. Like Akeno ...

"I mean, duh." He really seemed to have a penchant for stating the obvious. And for missing the obvious, too. It was almost adorable how naive he could be, thinking ...

Her question upset him. I did ask you three times before this , she thought dryly. Still, he was talking now. Which was an improvement. So she needed to not ...

"Right, yeah," Jerica answered. She... vaguely... understood how healing magic worked. "When Aerik healed me he had to use his own energy to do it. I get it has to ...

"Okay." Jerica shrugged, she wasn't going to argue with something he clearly felt so strongly about. Nothing annoyed her quite so fast as someone explaining to her exactly what her ...

"Ohhh," Jerica answered. "That sounds like it'd suck worse. You could at least just kill an enemy or something... or do you not get to control who you take it ...

"I see," Jerica answered thoughtfully. "And the healing has to come from someone else? So, you hurt someone to heal you, and she hurts someone to heal someone else?"

"Yeah," Jerica agreed. She wouldn't know -- she'd never had a sister to miss. But she missed Rek as much as she missed Ranofer, so it was probably about the ...

Jerica was silent. How was she supposed to answer that question? How could she answer it? There was no quick way to explain why they'd been separated. Or why she ...

"I mean, Evan is fine." Jerica felt strangely defensive. She patted Evan's shoulder. "He's a... perfectly adequate horse." She sighed, thinking back to when she had a good horse instead. ...

"Aww, that's cute," Jerica said before she could stop herself. She sobered a bit. She got absurd about animals -- that wouldn't do in front of Elias. She needed to ...

"I mean like..." Jerica hesitated. She'd never really had friends before to know how this was supposed to work. She'd just always known about Rek and Derik since she knew ...