Yes, your daughter, she wants to snap back, as if she can read the emotions on his face perfectly; but she doesn’t snap back for all her wits tell her she does not want to face the simmering rage burbling just beneath Riptide’s surface.
Yes, she thinks again, like a cauldron. Riptide boiling away with all the ingredients she haphazardly poured into this spell, enchanting him with chaos and youth. That bitter regret is a flavor she saves only for herself, not allowing its nastiness to color her tone when she finally speaks.
“It was the Mountain,” Rel murmurs, turning from the gaze that might devour her whole if she peers into it for too long. “I could not control it. When I came to, it had been days—perhaps weeks.” Her voice does not waver but those amethyst eyes she keeps as strong as stone—they still do not seek the snake-creature out. In any other circumstance, she might consider herself weak; but Rel . . . she remembers what it was like to be a child.
She remembers how vulnerable she would have been had family not fought to keep her safe. That bitterness, the grossly overwhelming flavor on her tongue, it burns like acid down her throat.
“You wish to find her.”
It is not a question.
“I will help you find her.”
@Riptide