Kingfisher(71)

Perdita took the sweater from him and sat on the arm of the couch, gripping the soft wool tightly. “It’s Daimon,” she said with that strange certainty, and the king nodded.

“What is it?” the queen said again, sharply. “What happened? Where is he?”

“He has gone questing, like half my other knights.” He paused, his eyes on his wife, narrowed slightly as against a dark and imminent tempest. “You asked me to tell him about his mother. I did. And now I think I should tell you.”

The queen stared at him. “She’s dead. That’s all I have ever wanted to know.”

“That’s almost all I know of her,” Arden said heavily. “We were together one very short night. Nine months later, she was dead.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m not so sure of anything, even that.”

The queen pulled herself from the door, sank into a chair. The blood rose swiftly, brightly, into her face. “You think she might be still alive? Does Daimon know her?”

“He’s been behaving very strangely. He comes and goes without a word; he is distant, preoccupied, and—most of the time—simply not there.”

“Not there where?”

“Behind his eyes. It’s as though he sees us as strangers. He can’t seem to remember who he is, why he’s here in this family. He has spent entire days, and even nights, away. He won’t say where. Sylvester thinks he’s enchanted.”

“So it sounds,” the queen said, her frown easing a little. “So he’s in love? Is that what you’re worried about? That she’s in some way inappropriate? So is he, for that matter. We all are, at one time or another—”

“Spellbound,” the king interrupted, and she was silent again, her eyes wide on his face. “As I might have been,” he added slowly, “so long ago.”

The queen gripped the hardwood arms of her chair. Perdita had never seen her eyes so cold. “Arden. What is the point of all this? He is in love the way you were in love?”

“No. It’s not my word. It’s Sylvester’s,” the king said, with odd emphasis, and Perdita’s lips parted.

“Yes,” she exclaimed. “Of course that’s it. That’s why Morrig— But who? Who is doing the enchanting?”

Her parents stared at her now.

“Morrig?” the queen echoed faintly.

“What do you know about this, Perdita?” the king asked with bewilderment.

“He as much as told me he had glimpsed his other heritage—his other half.”

The queen’s voice ratcheted up a notch. “So who was his mother?” she demanded of Arden. “And what,” she asked Perdita, “does Lady Seabrook have to do with any of this?”

“I think,” Perdita said, keeping her voice low in case Morrig was hovering around the keyhole, “that Great-aunt Morrig is anything but dotty. I believe she—or someone who does her bidding—led Scotia Malory and me on a wild-goose chase over most of Severluna when we tried to follow Daimon to see where he goes.”

The king held up his hand, patted the air between them. “Please. Let me say what I came to say. Sylvester put the pieces together, taught me the words for it. There was a realm once named Ravenhold. It existed along with many other small kingdoms before Arden Wyvernbourne conquered it. At least the human realm of Ravenhold disappeared within Wyvernbourne. The hidden realm, the invisible realm, whose boundaries once stretched across the whole of Wyvernbourne and beyond, never entirely disappeared. Neither did its powerful, magical people, who, Sylvester guesses, still live among us. He also guesses that, after all this time, they want their realm back.

“And that realm is Daimon’s other heritage. Where his mother came from. Where she still might be, for all I know. He is half-Wyvernbourne. His other—”

“You didn’t know?” the queen interrupted incredulously. “You did not know her well enough to know that?”

“I was enchanted,” the king said simply. “All that the word means. All.”

“And Daimon—”

“Spellbound as well, by the powers we have all forgotten, until they transform our hearts. My ancestor overran their realm, called himself their king. My son, half-wyvern, has been enchanted by the raven. I can’t guess what will come of it.”

“Why should anything come of a broken realm? How powerful can it be?”

“Lord Skelton has found evidence, in old myths and poetry,” the king answered steadily, “that they were powerful enough to make a great cauldron that brought their dead warriors back to life.”

“A cauldron,” Perdita said blankly. Then her eyes widened, riveted on her father. “A bowl. A pot. A vessel of enormous power—”

“Yes.” The wyvern’s eyes, holding hers, seemed dimmed, diminished by the idea of it. “And I have sent the knights of Wyvernhold out looking for it. Including my youngest son, who is under the raven’s spell.”

The queen rose abruptly, pacing the small room in six long strides. “It’s a tale,” she said harshly. “A scrap of myth.” She whirled, paced back. “Anyway, if it’s real, and your knights find it, they will bring it to you. Not that such a thing could possibly exist. Could it?” She came to a halt in front of Arden. “What does Sylvester think?”