“Terril, hama, you must not weep,” his voice came then, startlingly right behind me. His hand stroked my hair as he sat down next to me, and then he was pulling me to him. “There is nothing that would cause me to not desire you, this you cannot doubt. My love will not fail you.”
“You said you can’t cope with an empath,” I sobbed, throwing my arms around him as I buried my face in his chest. “You can’t tell me you were lying to make me feel better, because I know you weren’t. I don’t want to be beyond you—I’d rather be crippled!”
“No, hama-sadendra, I was not lying.” He sighed as he tightened his arms around me, and I could feel the sadness flowing through his calm. “I did indeed have difficulty coping with a woman with the power, yet this difficulty did not, in fine, cause me to turn from her. No less a thing than death could do so. Fool that I am, I should not have refrained from saying this sooner, yet I had not thought your power would return. As for being beyond me-wenda, should Lenham be correct, that will never again be so. Perhaps now I may be beyond you.”
“You think you’re better than a trained Prime?” I exclaimed, shocked into leaning back away from him. And then I saw his grin and heard the chuckle in his mind, and understood what he’d done. “You said that deliberately to get a rise out of me,” I accused with a black look, then couldn’t help laughing. “You’re a mean, nasty beast of a barbarian, but I love you anyway. Even if you are too good for me.”
“I may perhaps be too good for you after you have aided me in the use of this—power,” he said with a grimace, wiping the last of the tears off my cheek. “Sooner would I have no more than a woman with the power, for the difficulties are bound to be many and large.”
“We’ll take care of them together,” I reassured him, hugging him around again. I’d train him to use what he had, and somehow get back to Central to retrieve our child, and do my damnedest to help him conquer the whole damned universe, if that’s what he wanted. I’d heard that Cinnan had rescued Aesnil from her slavery, and the two of them had worked things out even better than Tammad and I had. We’d probably leave Gerleth with them and go back to Grelana for the rest of Tammad’s l’lendaa, and then we’d head back home. After that we had the Amalgamation to tackle, and I was actually looking forward to it.
“We’ll take care of everything together,” I repeated, still hugging him. “Especially getting you trained. I wouldn’t want you in danger of being punished any longer than necessary.”
“Speaking of punishment,” Len drawled, “did I mention, Tammad, how Garth and I knew Terry had regained her abilities? You see, we were in the exercise court just below this window, and all of a sudden . . . .”
“Len, don’t!” I squeaked suddenly filled with pure panic, but it was much too late. The unreasonably large arms around me were no longer gently soft, and a cloud of anger was rolling straight through the billowing calm. I looked up to see two hard blue eyes staring down at me, and frantically shook my head. “It was an accident!” I pleaded, trying to make Tammad believe me. “I didn’t do it on purpose just to get even for what they did to me! I didn’t! You can’t punish me for an accident!”
Damned barbarian. He did.