Book 2 Chapter 61

As expected, Miss Mu did not take the news well. It had taken a couple of days for her to arrive back from her mission, but Willow had made a point of telling her as soon as possible.

“Why in the infinite hells would you agree to such a risky fight?” His mentor fumed as soon as he’d told her.

Willow shrunk in on himself, but after drawing on his spirits for support he stood straight again. “Mister Matias would get punished if I didn’t agree. I know how far a great house will go to hurt someone if they cross them. I couldn’t let that happen to him.”

He was of course thinking of what had happened to his own family. House Petros had killed both of his grandparents on his father’s side and his mother after all.

All because Alexandra hadn’t wanted to be a pawn of her family and gone along with what they wanted.

Miss Mu angrily puffed on her pipe as she considered her apprentice. “While your heart is in the right place, this whole thing is far too dangerous for you. You’re supposed to be keepin’ a low profile, remember? You’re certainly not supposed to place yourself in direct opposition to the Li clan.”

Willow set his feet. “But if I stick to just using Xandra and lose then there shouldn’t be any issues, right? Since for this fight it’s known that I have your support they wouldn’t try to kidnap me like that one woman did for her husband.”

Mu shook her head. “We don’t know that for sure and there’s a chance they’ll recognize your harmonisation technique for what it is. The Li clan are experts with Yin energies, and while I doubt the people watching will be able to tell, your opponent almost certainly will considerin’ how close the two of you will be while fightin’.”

He considered their options, and unfortunately came to one he didn’t like but he felt the need to voice it anyways. “Couldn’t we just leave town after the fight? If it’s only the girl I’m fighting that’d notice what it is I’m doing then it should take a little while for her to report it. Which should give us time to leave.”

His mentor stared at him intensely. “Why are you so intent on doing this to yourself? If you’re suggesting we leave town, we could just as well do it now and save ourselves the headache of having the Li clan be aware of you.”

Willow didn’t even notice when he’d clenched his hands into fists. “I don’t want Mister Matias to die.”

Mu’s intense stare turned into a frown and her voice softened as she saw how this discussion was affecting her apprentice. “Who said he would die?”

He took a shaky breath. “It’s how my Ma…” He swallowed past a growing lump in his throat. “It’s why my family was in the Vale.”

Willow hadn’t told his mentor about his family’s history with House Petros just yet, but at this point he trusted the wanderer woman with his life.

So what was revealing one more secret?

“My Ma was Alexandra Petros, and her brother tried to kill my family because she married a farmer while keeping the spirit she got from her family.”

Mu’s frown deepened and Willow watched as her eyes began to dart around as she connected pieces of information in her head.

She took a deep drag on her pipe and leaned back in the chair she was sitting in, staring at the ceiling of their shared room before letting out a cloud of that sweet smelling smoke into the air.

Willow fidgeted in place despite the training he’d received from Madame Park, he trusted Miss Mu, but he also knew that this was a tough piece of information to just drop in someone’s lap. She’d already stuck her neck out for him and here he was asking her to do it again.

Sudden laughter broke the silence hanging over the room, and Willow was shocked to see a grin on her face.

“I’d wondered why your sister looked familiar to me when I first met her. When it turned out that I knew your father I just chalked it up to that, when in reality it was your grandmother I was recognizing in her. If I hadn’t wandered around it myself to know how big it is first hand, I’d swear this world was tiny.”

Willow blinked a few times trying to process the sudden shift in his mentor’s mood.

Then he fully processed what it was she said.

“You know my grandma?” He hadn’t met his grandparents on either side of his family. He conceptually knew that everyone’s parents had to have parents of their own, but he didn’t quite know how that was supposed to work in practice.

Mu nodded, her smile still wide. “Aye, she was a real treat to talk to as well. Wouldn’t let me examine her spirit at all, but she was quite the conversationalist and had information on a rare concept so it was well worth my time.”

He felt a slight sting of jealousy that she’d met his grandmother yet he had not. Though that feeling was also tempered by the possibility that she was involved with sending out his uncle and causing his mother’s death. He was also confused by something.

“How’d you meet her? I thought you didn’t like meeting with the clans and houses?”

At that her smile finally dropped. “First of all, despite not likin’ it, I do still have to meet with the bigwigs for certain missions. It was in fact on one such mission where I met her, though there can be some quibbling on whether or not she counted as a member of a great house at the time.”

Willow was now even more confused. “What do you mean? Did something happen to her?”

Miss Mu fiddled with her pipe as she considered her apprentice’s questions. “She got into a bit of a spat with her husband following the complete disappearance and assumed deaths of two of her children. Apparently the two of them had quite different ideas on how to solve the issue of their sole daughter running off. The two of them fought when they lost their youngest son as well, and the result of that fight had Thea seeking out the Wanderers to help hide her. I just happened to be one of the individuals who was a part of that particular mission.”

His shoulders slumped a bit, some of the tension lost. It now at least seemed unlikely that his grandmother had much to do with the death of so much of his family.

Mu continued to stare at him, seeming deep in thought.

“Going back to our early topic of discussion, I doubt that Matty will be punished as harshly as you think he’ll be. What happened to your mother was a rather extreme situation, and I don’t believe it was supposed to escalate in the manner it had.”

She let out another cloud of smoke. “Though I imagine that’s a cold comfort for you.”

Willow scratched at his arm while not meeting his mentor’s eyes. “I still don’t want him to get in trouble over something he had little control over.”

Mu let out another chuckle. “Fine then. I’ll have Rotter prepped to go on the day of the fight. You’ve even given me a marvelous idea of where we can go to lay low for a time before the big meetup with my sect.”

Willow noticeably brightened at the news.

Before immediately deflating again.

He’d just made a friend, but now he’d have to leave her behind far sooner than he had wanted.