Feyla had always found it somewhat comforting that Arilla was just as intimidating a guild leader as she was as a mother.

Arilla propped her chin on her folded hands and stared across the table at Feyla the same way she had when Feyla was a little girl bringing home her marks from school. "Now lovey, tell me what you've learned from that mage."

Feyla fiddled with her necklace, turning the polished gemstone over in her hand. They were all back at the table she and her mother had first argued over Sedgewick at. Daydrel had spread a map of the city out in front of them before sitting down between Delia and her mother. "Why don't we hear Daydrel's ideas first?" Feyla suggested, straining to keep her voice casual.

Arilla set Feyla with a withering look."Tell us what you learned, daughter," she repeated, her tone light but with an edge that brokered no disagreement.

The necklace slipped from her hand as she lowered her head, ignoring Delia's sympathetic smile. "Sedgewick—"

"Pardon?" Arilla asked innocently.

Feyla's lips thinned into a taut line. "Master Alverdyne," she corrected through clenched teeth. "Believes they're still in the city, probably hiding somewhere near the docks."

Delia nodded in agreement. "That makes sense. Desden stole his brother's records, and if memory serves, the guild reintroduced Dormaeus around here. What did the guild rename him?"

"Reiden," Feyla added quickly as genuine concern bubbled up. She might be lying to Sedgewick now, but she hadn't been when she'd told him Dormaeus wasn't alive the way he thought he was. Dormaeus as Sedgewick and Desden knew him had faded away the moment the guild had wiped his memories. "His name is Reiden."

It had been a ...experiment. A wizard who'd murdered people the way Dormaeus had was obviously sentenced to execution. The Healer's Guild saw an opportunity to prevent more loss of life and asked Queen Eleyna's predecessor, King Eldain, to consider another option. So Dormaeus the wizard had died and Reiden the dockworker had been born in his place. Feyla had only been in charge of helping him settle into his new life, but the other healers had told him that his lack of memories was the result of an accident.

Arilla thrummed her nails against the table. "If he's looking for his brother—"

"Then we have a problem," Daydrel cut in. "One of the first places I checked was Dormaeus' job and rented room. No one's seen him in days."

Everyone fell silent as the same question rose to the forefront of all their minds.

Feyla bit her lip and finally voiced it. "How likely is that spell to hold if Desden starts messing with it?"

Daydrel hissed air out through his teeth. "That's a Jaerick question."

Unlike the rest of them, Delia's husband wasn't a battle healer. His specialty was in research and he'd been one of the healers who had worked on the memory wipe spell.

"Go and fetch Jaerick for me," Arilla ordered, waving her hand at Daydrel and Delia.

Feyla moved to leave as well but Arilla raised her hand to stop her. "Patience, Feyla. There's something I wish to...check first." She tilted her head to another chair set apart from the rest with a small table beside it. Sitting on the table was a device shaped similarly to Sedgewick's spell-weaver, a tool he used to hold magic in place while crafting new or more complex spells as well as examining existing ones.

Anger sprouted up like a weed. Feyla stalked closer to her mother and dropped her voice low. "You can't be serious."

"I'd never joke about your health so, lovey. Now have a seat." Arilla took her arm and led her to the chair. She leaned closer. "And don't act like a child about this."

Feyla forced her ears not to slick back and kept her voice soft. "I'm not being checked for mind manipulation spells!"

Not soft enough. Delia nudged Daydrel and the two of them headed for the door. "We'll be back," she said.

Feyla's eyes snapped to Delia as she shook her head in a subtle "no". They were going to abandon her to her mother?

"That's fine." Arilla waved them away. She placed her hands on Feyla's shoulders and kept them there until Feyla finally yielded and sat down.

Another reason Feyla had been reluctant to rejoin. Spending all those years working with Sedgewick had almost made her forget what it was like to live in a place where even your friends listened to your mother over you. She shifted in her seat, but Arilla's hands continued to rest lightly on her shoulders.

"It's for your own good, lovey." Arilla finally removed her hand to pat Feyla's hair. "At least I chose someone you were comfortable with."

Feyla wanted to glare up at her mother but knowing the outcome of that, chose to bore a hole through the door instead. "Mother, please. I'm not under a spell and Sedgewick isn't manipulating me. If you'd just let me show you then you'd realize that."

Arilla sighed, touching her temple in frustration. "Please, lovey, don't act like a child over this."

Feyla's neck warmed as she was once again thrust back into the role of a chastised little girl. Questioning her maturity had been one of her mother's favorite criticisms. What Arilla's request—or more likely demand—said stung worse than her speaking the words. Your feelings can't be trusted and neither can your judgment.

If it had been anyone else accusing Sedgewick of something so horrible as twisting her mind to love him, she would have said something but... this was her mother. Arilla might be overprotective and strict, but she'd also always been so proud of Feyla.

Father's disinterest after he and Arilla had separated had stung, but that had always been blunted by her mother's approval, even if sometimes it was hard-won. Feyla's heart cracked at the thought of going without it, especially since Mother's approval would make or break the acceptance of so many others.

Oh, just give in, Feyla scolded herself. Fighting with the woman who had raised her felt wrong, and besides, maybe if she gave in, Mother would feel reassured.

"I'm trying to protect you, lovey. Would you rather I toss you to the mages and let them have their way with you?

The familiar weight of guilt fell on her chest as Feyla lowered her head in acquiescence.

A knock sounded at the door. Arilla patted Feyla's cheek and called out. "Come in, Jaerick."

Delia's husband entered the room and promptly began sucking most of the air out of it. "Hullo, Feyla! It's been a while, well, not quite a while. Only a century or so—why didn't you visit bye-the-bye?—and really what is a mere century compared to the ages of the world? Especially since we ourselves are mere vessels waiting to pass on to a more permanent plane?"

He took a breath and removed the pointed leather and metal mask that he claimed filtered out the poor air in cities. Seeing Jaerick for the first time in a while, similarities between him and Sedgewick began to pop out like matching patterns in different tapestries. If memory served, Jaerick had grown up in the Elberic Peaks as well. His skin was just as pale as Sedgewick's while his hair straddled the line between brown and auburn. Both were thin with sharp noses, but unlike Sedgewick, Jaerick was tall, surpassing his wife and Daydrel.

Feyla smiled. Mother was right about one thing. If a healer was going to be poking around her head for spells, she'd want it to be Jaerick. "It's good to see you too. Are you liking the capital?"

Arilla sighed and Feyla grinned at the rant they both knew was coming.

"Oh, it's all right, I suppose, if one ignores the facts that cities are festering piles of diseases waiting to spread, that the tainted air is slowly stealing years out of our lives, and that my wife's reason for wanting to come is partially in ashes." He shrugged. "But things could be worse, hmm? I could be under the spell of a corrupt mage."

Arilla grasped at the chance to cut Jaerick off. "Yes, now get to work on fixing that," she snapped.

"I'm not under a spell!" Feyla insisted again.

"Oh, don't worry, Everbloom the Younger." Jaerick dragged a chair up next to her and stretched his long legs out. "Nothing festers worse than an old mind manipulation spell," he said, giving her a smile that wouldn't have been out of place on a deranged wizard. "And I'm an expert at finding things that fester."

Feyla laughed nervously as she settled back into her seat. Jaerick scooted the spell weaver closer and gestured for Feyla to hold her hand out over it. She did so, clenching her hand into a fist before opening it up slowly. Three crescent-shaped arches swung up and pulled a small orb of her pink magic out of her skin. It snapped flat and stayed suspended between the three arches.

Jaerick leaned over her magic, examining it with a critical eye. "Everything appears to be in order. I see no signs of curses or the like. Have you been experiencing any dramatic shifts in terms of feels, behavior, or patterns of thought?"

"Yes," Arilla cut in.

"No!" Feyla corrected firmly. She swallowed, glancing timidly up at her mother. "I've had the same feelings for a long time."

"I...see," Jaerick said, lacking his usual verboseness. He shut down the spell weaver and Feyla's magic sunk back into her hand. Her mother finally stepped aside as he circled around Feyla and placed his hands on her temple. He paused until Feyla gripped the side of her chair and nodded for him to continue. If Mother refused to listen to her about Sedgewick then maybe submitting to a more thorough check would help her accept things. Jaerick's pale hands lit up the color of sandstone as his magic ignited and he began examining her for spells more deeply hidden.

Feyla sucked in air through her nose and resisted to urge to pull away. Having someone else's magic in her felt tingly and out-of-place even when she was just getting a cut healed. Another person's magic essence skimming around her head—even someone she knew and trusted like Jaerick—made her feel like a crab whose shell was being peeked into.

Jaerick's magic skimmed across her mind, triggering flashes of recent memories. The fire's heat, Sedgewick's hand on her waist, Daydrel's pleading, her mother twisting her hair up, all rushed by too fast to focus on and left her stomach churning in their wake. Finally, Jaerick pulled away. Feyla relaxed back into her seat. Goodness, was she glad being bonded to Sedgewick wouldn't feel like that. Otherwise no one would do it.

"Cleaner than a freshly-scrubbed bathhouse," Jaerick said as he pulled his gloves back on. "Although, honestly, I've always questioned how a place filled with so many people could be a hygienic—"

"You're positive?" Arilla snapped, not at all interested in Jaerick's public health postulations.

"Theoretically, I suppose there could be something there beyond my ability to detect—there are so few true certainties in this world—but it's unlikely." Jaerick smiled at Feyla. "Delia and I will be getting an invitation to the house-binding, I hope?"

Feyla blushed but her mother pressed on before she could answer. "There's nothing else that you could check? Love potions? Other spells? Anything?"

Jaerick's chipper demeanor slacked. He gave his glove another sharp tug. "As hard as it may be to believe, your daughter is under no worse influence than anyone else in love is. Or at least I assume you love him?"

"Very much," Feyla managed to get out. She smiled in relief while Arilla frowned like a foolproof treatment had failed.

"Good, good. Although love is a bit like a spell, don't you think? Why, I remember when I met my Delia, I—"

Arilla crosses her arms over her stomach. Her voice snapped as she cut Jaerick off and promptly changed the subject. "How likely is the spell on Dormaeus to hold if his brother starts interfering with it?"

Jaerick seemed puzzled for the first time since entering the room. "I'm not sure. I might use magic, but I'm not a mage. It would depend on the interference which is why I warned Daydrel and the guild that they ought to test the project on someone without any strong familial connects. Desden Carrow's been with his brother since his birth. There's a lot of memories he could dredge up, especially if he's using magic to try and reverse the spell."

"What's the worst thing that could happen?" Feyla asked.

"Dormaeus has a mind manipulation spell on him. It's not black magic and we applied it carefully, but like I said...nothing festers worse than a fading mind manipulation spell. And given what Desden did to my wife's healing house, and what Dormaeus did to that lord's family, the last thing we want is two unstable wizards with a vendetta against us and a fire obsession running free in a city made of wood in the middle of a rather dry summer."

"Then it's time to make sure that doesn't happen." Arilla stepped beside Feyla and tilted her chin up. "You're a healer, lovey, no matter what that man has you thinking. Grab the others and start planning a search of the docks. I want you to find those wizards before the mages do."

*****************
Author's Note: Eeeee, Jaerick! What does everyone think of him? Any new thoughts on Arilla? Will Feyla be able to gain her mother's approval?

I almost pushed this update back a week but I managed to get it edited in time. There was some old dialogue that needed cut and changed to reflect what happens later better. I'm not going to have a snippet this time because I'm debating changing the order of the next chapter. Also...my buffer is running low, guys. I'm going to try to keep up with my schedule but I've got a busy semester going on and I don't want to back myself into a corner by forcing out a chapter before it's ready.