Kingfisher(86)

“But how,” Vivien asked, her wide, lovely eyes never moving from Daimon’s, “did this knight find her way here?”

“Well,” Morrig mused, considering the question, “that might be Tavis’s fault, too. We might as well blame him. Everyone else did. He was always finding himself where he didn’t belong, and with those who might have given him a glimpse into overlapping realms. Dame Scotia could have inherited some of his sight. Fore and hind, over and in, as well as second—who knows exactly which sight drew her here?”

“She serves the wyvern,” Daimon’s mother said abruptly. She was veiled in black from hair to shoe, as they all were, shadow black, raven black, and she held what looked like a chain made of raven feathers that linked her to an odd, blurred bundle containing broken branches or bones, all of them constantly shifting, testing the strength of what held them imprisoned.

“Yet she sees us,” Vivien said, her voice curling to a question, a caress, in Daimon’s ear.

“He brought her here,” Ana said simply, and Daimon, startled, shook his head.

“Of course she serves my father,” he said, glimpsing undercurrents, and choosing words very carefully around them. “So do I, for that matter, though it hardly matters to you. She was following me only because she was asked to. She has no idea how she got here, and I’m sure, if you show her a way out, she’ll take it with great relief.”

“She has a voice,” Vivien commented, and gave Scotia a glimpse of her charming smile. “She could ask.”

“I could,” Dame Scotia agreed. “Ask.”

But she did not, just waited silently, while they gazed at her, waiting as well, then consulted one another.

“Generally speaking,” Morrig said to her, “you must be wanted.”

“Wanted?”

“Invited. To come here. As we asked Daimon. We permitted him to see our realm. Sometimes we allure, beguile, bewitch—we do whatever catches the attention of the one we wish to bring into our world. All that is a form of invitation. We did not invite you.”

“Yet here you are.” Under the changeless gray of water and sky, Vivien’s eyes found nothing to kindle the fire in them. “Who invited you?”

The controlled expression that had settled over Scotia’s face melted suddenly. She stared at the three, looking wide-eyed and tense, and answered incredulously, “Nobody invited me! I exceeded the speed limit on my bike and rode out of the world, maybe that’s how I got here. What can one knight pledged to serve the wyvern king matter to you? You’re already battling King Arden for his son, so that you can fight him for his realm. There’s nothing I can do except stay and bear witness, to do what I was asked to do: to stand with the king’s son until he casts me out. What else can I tell you?”

“You took something I want,” Vivien said simply.

“I didn’t—I have nothing—”

“You took Daimon’s attention. He brought you here.”

Daimon, astonished, gazed at the fay, enthralling face that had again and again drawn him across the threshold between worlds. Vivien smiled ruefully at him; he remembered the touch of her long, graceful fingers, the eerie, magical fires in her eyes. He had a sudden vision of her being crowned queen of her realm, while he stood beside her yet alone, watching without a word to say and with no one he knew at all standing with him in that strange land where he had lost himself.

He drew breath slowly, deeply, wondering what peculiar dream they had inhabited together, until they woke and neither knew where they were now.

“It’s called glamour,” Vivien said softly. “What you saw in me. I enchanted you. Now the glamour, the magic, is gone. You are disenchanted.”

“I didn’t intend to be,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I don’t— I can’t seem to find my way back to where we were. That place seems terrifying. If not impossible.”

“It’s not the first time we have tried this,” his mother said reluctantly. “I was hoping— I wanted this so much. For us. And for you.”

He gazed at her, the woman who had given him her face, and half his heart. “Maybe you could change the story? Talk to my father. Without the threats.”

“Oh, piffle,” his great-aunt declared to that. “Without the cauldron, what do we have to—”

“You have no cauldron. But still you have such power.”

“What power?”

He felt it again, the lingering touch of pain and desire, the dream of what had ensorcelled him. “All that power,” he said huskily, “you had over me. That still exists. Ravenhold exists. You showed it to me in so many ways. Open your boundaries. Invite others in. Show them what you showed me. The magic. The poetry. Invite my father.”

“I did, once,” his mother reminded him.

“And he never forgot you. Ever. You could show the human world what Wyvernhold is lacking. You don’t have to fight my father’s realm to get back your own. They can exist together. I know that. You revealed that in so many ways. Open your doors; let the magic flow into Wyvernhold. The more humans know of the lost Ravenhold, the more they will want it back. It is beautiful, dangerous, magical, frightening, ancient, and forever. I know that. You took me there.”

“Piffle,” Morrig murmured again, dourly. But he saw in her eyes the faint, unexpected gleam of possibilities. “I still want that cauldron,” she added. “If only because it’s ours, and I don’t see why Wyvernhold should have it.”