LOREN
Loren waved a hand grandly, though he smiled to let Phoebe know he was still kidding. ”Apology accepted. But only because you did not qualify it as a noble would.” Hopefully that would be enough to get another laugh out of her: the darkness of the blight seemed almost entirely gone from her, and the summoner was much more satisfied with this version of the healer.As she mentioned that opening the doors of the Manor might be the only noble thing he’d ever done, he shrugged and took a bite of the sandwich to cover the embarrassed and sheepish look that stole over him. ”I guess. It seems like the least I could do, given...everything.” Everything he’d done, or rather failed to do, and everything his family actually had done, the horrors they’d inflicted on the people of the Hollowed Grounds. He swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat, but it was still there, so he took a lump of tea to see if that got rid of it. It didn’t. Still, he tried to summon up that easy smile that had come to him only moments ago. ”Well, if anyone else needs a temporary or even permanent place to stay, feel free to send them my way. I’m certainly not using the rooms.” Any of them, though he hoped she didn’t catch the slip and just assumed he meant the other bedrooms.
”It sounds nice. Though I do have to ask why you weren’t there much.” As she spoke about the Launceleyn Manor he couldn’t help flashing back to his less than ideal childhood there. He wasn’t sure what his face showed in that moment before he schooled it into a blank expression, but it couldn’t have been pretty. ”Basically, yes.” Complete with prisons and cells, where they’d kept unruly and weak children. Loren included.
A beggar's book
outworths
a noble's blood
