Transmigrated Teri is an ongoing isekai/portal fantasy series about Teri Graves, an embittered middle-age GenX office lady who gets into a massive car accident and wakes up in the world of the fantasy series she loves to hate, The Allisar Fireborn Chronicles. She knows the characters, she knows the plot, and she knows that its all a massive coma dream…except for how nothing is as it should be. Worse? She woke up in the body of the doomed evil stepmother! She escaped a pandemic for this?
Table of Contents
Previously: Teri decided to start (re)building alliances…
Lady Elisandar came back in later that morning to settle into her armchair with her embroidery, and it was like a bell ringing: everything was back to normal in Lady Greyrage’s quarters. The day had rolled out much as it had in the previous time loops, with Lady Sariat looking quietly nervous and Doctor Dourwin pushing Teri through an hour of physical therapy that she was fairly certain had been designed by someone who hated her specifically.
Or, more to the point, hated Lady Greyrage specifically.
She was sitting up in bed, a minor triumph, and her leg was propped on several pillows and covered with approximately four blankets, because Lady Elisandar had concerns about drafts only she could feel. Theo was draped across her other leg like a living heating pad, snoring with deep satisfaction.
Teri sipped her tea. She had Roos on the case, so it was time for the next thing on her list.
“Lady Sariat,” she said, when she had judged the morning sufficiently settled. “Would you please find Young Lord Robern and ask him to come see me?”
Lady Sariat’s curtsy was prompt and her exit swift, which Teri had come to recognize as her way of expressing anxiety. The door clicked shut behind her.
Lady Elisandar did not look up from her embroidery. “And what does milady want with the young lord?”
Teri sent her a look that she had been workshopping since her first loop—not quite Lady Greyrage’s withering glare, which she couldn’t pull off without feeling like she was doing a bad impression of herself doing a bad impression of a Disney villain, but something in the general neighborhood. She hoped it would keep Lady Elisandar in line, anyway.
It worked well enough. Lady Elisandar huffed softly and stabbed her needle back into the fabric.
The fire popped. Theo’s ear twitched.
She heard him before the knock on the door came. It was the careful, measured tread of a child who had learned to move through his own home like he was trying not to disturb anything or anyone. Teri was intimately familiar with that particular dance, and her heart twinged a little.
The tap was light, almost tentative.
“Come in,” Teri said.
Robern opened the door himself rather than waiting for Lady Sariat to do it for him, which probably indicated his nervousness. He stepped inside and stopped when he saw her sitting up, visibly recalibrating himself. He was clearly prepared for Lady Greyrage to be prone and diminished in a sickroom, and gotten something else entirely.
:PUPPY!: Theo announced, lifting his head.
“He’s pleased to see you,” Teri said. “You can pet him, he won’t bite.”
Robern looked at Theo, who was already pushing to his feet with lumbering enthusiasm and mostly slid off the bed as opposed to jumping. When he got to Robern, he plopped down on his haunches and gave the boy a hopeful grin. Cautiously, Robern scratched behind Theo’s ears, and some of the careful tension went out of his shoulders.
Lady Sariat had come in behind him and stationed herself at her quiet position near the window, hands folded in front, ready for anything by the looks of it. Lady Elisandar continued to embroider with focused energy, which probably meant she was listening very hard. It could not have been more obvious to Teri that everyone in the room was waiting for one of Lady Greyrage’s terrible temper tantrums.
Well, except Theo.
:No fighting!:
Teri ignored him to let the moment run on, hoping that petting Theo did the work of putting Robern a bit at ease.
“Sit down, Robern.” She nodded toward the small stool that had been pulled up near the bed.
He sat. He kept his hands on his knees, his back very straight, his eyes on her face, obviously braced for a blow, real or metaphorical, to land.
She looked at the careful way he was holding himself for a moment and decided to skip the preamble entirely, if only to put him out of his misery.
“It was Gervyn’s birthday,” she said. “Vycette organized the picnic. You got everyone out of lessons because you knew your father wouldn’t remember his birthday, and Gervyn didn’t either, which annoyed you considerably.”
The color drained out of his face so completely and so fast that Theo looked at him in concern.
“The hunt circled back around the old mine,” Teri continued, keeping her voice even. “That’s how my party crossed paths with yours.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, Milady.”
Lady Sariat was wide-eyed with worry, while Lady Elisandar lowered her embroidery slowly to rest in her lap. She studied Teri with an uncomfortably flat stare, her usual histrionics nowhere in sight.
“Robern, crossing paths with my hunting party was simply a mistake. I’m aware that you did not do it deliberately.”
Robern’s mouth opened. Closed. He looked, briefly, about half his age, which heightened his resemblance to Gervyn.
“How did you—” He stopped himself. Started again. “No one told you that.”
“No,” she agreed. “They didn’t.” She decided not to smile, since that would probably scare the hell out of him. She was not used to this body but everyone else was, and got different signals from it than she meant to relay. Something else she was going to have to work on, she realized.
“Skipping class, on the other hand, was not a mistake.”
He went back to looking traumatized again.
“I expect you not to repeat that lapse in judgment for the rest of the term.”
His brows knitted together in confusion. “The term?”
“The year. I meant, the rest of the year.”
“Yes, yes! I promise.”
“Good. Since you’ve given me your word, I am not going to tell your father about this whole incident.” Ferdiff already knew about it from his own spies, but that was immaterial. She needed the kids on her side, and Robern was the key to their loyalty.
Robern was still in shock, looking for his words, when the door opened fast and without ceremony. Vycette stepped inside, chin up, hands clasped in front of her.
Teri clocked her posture, the deliberate way she wasn’t looking at Robern yet, and how she stationed herself at an equitable distance between them, creating a triangle between Teri, Robern, and herself. She stood there, quiet for the moment, taking it all in, and analyzing it with her ruthless brain.
Twelve years old, Teri thought. Good God.
“I thought I would see how milady was feeling,” Vycette said. Her eyes moved over Teri with careful attention before cutting, just once and briefly, to Robern.
Whatever she saw in him made her chin come up another fraction.
“Vycette,” Robern started.
“I’m sure Milady doesn’t mind the company.” She was already moving further into the room.
From the hallway came a muted scuffle and Gervyn’s furious whispered let go, followed by Aurguth’s emphatic no. Lady Sariat pressed her lips together in an effort not to laugh. Lady Elisandar paused, rolled her eyes, then resumed her embroidery.
Theo abandoned Robern and planted himself directly in front of Vycette, clearly waiting for more ear scratches. She looked down at him and quickly looked back up. She stood quietly, wordless, waiting. Teri had to admire that.
“Is your sister sitting on Gervyn?”
“Aurguth takes her responsibilities seriously.” Vycette nodded.
“She does. As do you, clearly.” She watched as Vycette’s expression betrayed her confusion. Behind her, Lady Sariat went and closed the door, shutting out the muffled argument from the hallway.
“I want you to do something for me.” Teri turned her attention back to Robern. “Research void howler attacks and magical disruption. Specifically whether a second attack can affect the outcome of a first one. Whatever you can find in the library.”
Robern blinked. Whatever he had been bracing for, it was not that. “You want me to—uhm, is that my punishment?”
No, it wasn’t... but Teri knew letting him off scot-free would come across as even more suspicious behavior for “Lady Greyrage.” So, she nodded, but then added, “Call it what you will.”
“Yes, I can do that.” The relief in his voice was poorly concealed, and he straightened a little, some color coming back into his face. “There are several texts on void howler taxonomy in the shadow hunt section of the library, and I believe Maester Colwith has a treatise on umbruus disruption that might—”
“Good,” Teri said, before he could fully disappear into the bibliography. “That’s exactly what I need.”
Vycette had not moved from her spot near the door. Teri didn’t look at her directly, but she didn’t need to in order to clock the girl’s confusion.
Robern stood, remembered himself, and bowed. “Thank you, mil—” He stopped. Swallowed. “Thank you.”
She nodded once, and let it be enough. He would be calling her “Auntie Bonarae” soon enough, she was sure.
The door swung open and Ota swept in wearing an overly exuberant expression of cheer, as pasted on as his lip gloss. His ensemble was aggressively monochromatic in a shade of amber that was expensive and ostentatious. He came into the room flapping a brightly feathered fan, no doubt dyed to contrast all the glowy amber he was encased in.
“Ah! There you all are!” He beamed at the room as though he’d been looking for everyone for ages and was surprised to find them here. “Robern, excellent, I need your opinion on the new pavilion arrangement—completely wrong, obviously, the whole east corner wants rethinking, and you have such a good eye for proportion.” He was already pivoting toward Vycette. “And you, my dear, the Merrevane Players have sent over their program selections and I cannot make heads or tails of the running order, someone with actual musical sense needs to—”
He stopped.
It lasted less than a second. A flicker, there and gone, as his eyes moved across the room, taking in Robern’s posture, Vycette’s stillness, Teri sitting up in bed watching him with her tea cooling in her hands. Something shifted behind his face. Not the expression itself, which remained perfectly pleasant, but something underneath it, sudden and sharp and entirely different from the man performing confusion about pavilion arrangements.
Then it was gone. What the hell, Teri thought before he started carrying on again.
“Well!” he said, pivoting smoothly back to elaborate uncertainty. “I suppose I could come back, if milady is in conference?”
“We were just finishing,” Teri said, flapping a hand at Robern in dismissal.
Ota had Robern by the shoulder and was steering him toward the door before she had finished talking, already yammering on about pavilion arrangements. Teri was starting to realize that Ota did more to protect the kids than it had ever been hinted at in the books, which was something of a relief. At least she wasn’t the only one who cared for them.
She watched as Vycette slowly walked behind her uncle, and paused in the doorway just long enough to look back at Teri once.
Teri didn’t look away. Neither did Vycette.
Then she was gone.
“Ooof!” Lord Kerelyn was in the doorway before the door finished swinging closed, and he nearly collided with Gervyn, who was being towed past by Aurguth at speed. He stepped aside, and watched all four children disappear down the corridor with Ota flapping after them. When he turned back to the room his expression was pleasant and entirely unreadable.
He looked at Lady Sariat first. It was a brief and thorough examination, and Teri didn’t like it.
“Milady.” He bowed to Teri. “I heard the young lord had been called for. I came to see if I could be of any assistance with his punishment.”
So he could watch the show, she figured. He was a murderer who cheated on his best friend with that friend’s wife, and a man like that was someone who probably enjoyed watching children get beaten. Unlike Roos, he had nothing Teri needed.
“As you can see,” Teri said, “none was required.”
“So I see.” He let his eyes move around the room, taking in Lady Elisandar’s embroidery; Theo watching him from the middle of the room; Teri sitting up with her tea. “You seem remarkably well.”
“I am improving,” she said.
He smiled. “Indeed you are. I shall take my leave.”
He bowed again and left.
Teri looked at Lady Sariat, who had gone very still by the window.
“Come sit down,” Teri said. “We should talk about what the children will wear to the spring gala.”
NEXT: Euxina Moonshadow
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