Kingfisher(26)



She scattered her past in riddles around the apartment. A photo of an ancient village hung on her wall; it seemed made entirely of stone, its cottages and streets and the lovely little bridge that arched over a meandering brook he could not find on any map. A hundred-year-old sketch of a hoary castle stood framed on the table beside her bed. It was ringed with water, one tower split and sagging, the drawbridge drawn up tight, like a mouth clamped over a secret. “Where I was born,” she explained of those things. “Only it’s not in that photo—that’s just the antique part of Ravensley.” When he asked about the name, she shrugged. “It’s old. Common in south Wyvernhold.” Again, he could not find it on a map. “Too small,” she told him, laughing. “The tiniest village in the world.”

She had come from there to Severluna, sometime in the previous year. Even that was vague. But her vagueness would be accompanied by that bewitching smile. He felt oddly comfortable with the lack of detail; it mirrored his own sense of something missing. Half of him seemed anchored to his Wyvernbourne heritage, but the other half lacked a solid place to stand. That part of himself drifted aimlessly, feeling the lack, wondering what it was he could not see.

He said, cutting into his steak, “I am glad my father finally told me about my mother. I wish he had told me what little he knew years ago. It would have put an end to my endless imaginings. And I wish there had been more to tell.”

“A happier ending?” Vivien guessed. “She didn’t die? But nothing in the world stays private these days. Her death made things tidy.” He eyed her; she lifted a shoulder. “Nothing to tell, no one to know, nothing muddled or messy.”

“Only between the queen and my father,” he said dryly.

“But Queen Genevra has been—” She paused. “Well. If not perfect, at least perfectly discreet.”

“Not entirely if such gossip travels even into tiny villages not on any map.”

She reached out quickly, wrapped her long, pale fingers around his wrist. “I’m sorry, Daimon. I shouldn’t have said that. The village of Ravensley might have been asleep the last hundred years for all it knows of court gossip. I picked up a thread of that rumor about the queen’s lover here in Severluna. But everyone here is discreet as well. Everyone is kind about the queen. No one blames her. And the story has been around so long, it’s beyond gossip now, anyway. It’s more like folklore.”

He studied her curiously, struck. “Folklore. Fairy tale. Is that the context in which you live?”

She sat back; shadow from a grill hood hid her eyes. “It’s where I grew up,” she said lightly. “Time passed so slowly there. Centuries overlapped. Like the cobblestone road through the village that bikers always take too fast, bouncing across it when the paved road suddenly vanishes. Here in Severluna, I might as well be on the moon; everything is still so strange.”

“Centuries overlap here, too.”

“But things change constantly; now is always becoming new.” She laughed at herself, shifting out of the shadow. “I still leave country dust in my footprints when I walk. I learned to cook in a cauldron.” She picked up a charred bit of parsnip with her fingers, absently or to prove her point, Daimon was unsure. He watched her mindlessly, her slender, graceful hand, the movements of her mouth, wanting to seize that hand, pull her away from the table, scatter plates, forks, chairs behind them as they ran for the door. She laughed at herself again, and at his expression, wiping her fingers on her napkin.

“Sorry,” she said again. “Bumpkin.”

“Alien.”

“Is that all you talked about at lunch?”

“I don’t remember.” Then he did, dimly. “Oh. My father brought up some artifact that Sylvester Skelton unearthed in his studies. Something even older than your village, and with mysterious, unlikely powers. My father talked about sending the knights out looking for it, to take their minds off—whatever it was. Politics. Reclaiming their ancient kingdoms. He’s calling an assembly. I’ll have to behave like a knight for a few days. Can we go?” he asked restively at the thought and snared the attention of a passing server. “I might not be able to get away so easily, then.”

Her eyes flared again, as nearby coals flamed; she looked like a wild thing, he thought, a deer, a fox. “Another fairy tale,” she breathed. “What is this marvelous thing?”

“I don’t know. A cup, a vessel, your cauldron for all anyone knows. Are you finished?”

She gave him her entrancing smile and stood up.

“I’ve barely begun.”





8


Above ground on the final afternoon of their weeklong shift at Calluna’s cave, Princess Perdita watched Daimon melt into the traffic on his electric bike. As though he felt her narrow-eyed gaze between his shoulder blades, he vanished quickly around the nearest corner. Meeting someone, she guessed, but no one he would talk about. She wondered why.

“Is something wrong?” Gareth asked.

She was standing in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, gripping him by his forearm with both hands, frowning intently at nothing. Total strangers were grinning at the couple, pulling out phones. Gareth wore that look he got when confronted with the powerful, exasperating bond between the half sibs. Perdita looked at him quickly and smiled, and his face eased.

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