The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(83)
“We’ve spoken of this day many times,” Cleo said with a wistful look toward her lover. “He was always prepared to turn himself in to free you of this burden.”
“But you can’t. Not now. I’ve only just found you both.”
“That, my daughter, is sometimes the price of love.”
Love? All she felt was pain and confusion. Once on the verge of having all she’d wished for, she was now faced with the sacrifice of her father. If that was the price, it was more than she could bear.
She sensed Oberon’s gaze upon her. His eyes were narrowed and his lips pursed, as if gauging the validity of her outburst. Oberon closed his eyes and inhaled, only to open them again in mild surprise. “This one’s moods are astonishingly capricious.”
“Oh là là, are you really going to stand there and let him turn himself in? They’ll take his head if he’s convicted!”
Oberon turned to Cleo in an aside. “She gets that spark from her grandmother,” he said. He then looked at Tulane. “Were you aware of this deadly aspect of the law when you volunteered to turn yourself in for the sake of the girl’s freedom?”
“It is the fate of all those convicted of murder in this country,” Tulane said. “That or exile to a penal colony.”
Monsieur Whiskers mewed and leaped into Tulane’s arms despite the restraints. The artist held the cat close in the crook of his elbow and whispered in his ear to watch after Yvette.
“I do not like to measure one man’s value against another’s,” Oberon said after a moment of contemplation. “There’s a certain vulgarity in assigning worth to any individual life when each represents a piece in the mosaic of the whole.” He approached Nettles. “And yet I find I can no longer accept the risk to this man’s life, he whom I know as a good fellow, in payment for the murder of a man who sought first to do great harm to another that I love.”
“But the law requires . . . ,” Nettles began.
“The law is an ass,” Oberon said to much snickering from his robe’s hitchhikers. “Or so I am oft reminded.” The King of the Fairies then walked up to Tulane, threw off his manacles without so much as a spoken incantation, and instructed the artist to take his place once more beside his daughter. “If exile be an acceptable punishment in the eyes of your law,” he said to Nettles, “then you have my honor that this man will never again have the freedom to leave my realm, whereupon he shall be confined to a piece of land beside a river where the moonlight is just a little too harsh against the trees in autumn. He’ll never be able to paint it with any satisfaction as long as he lives.”
Nettles opened his mouth to explain. “But we have a process. A court system. The matter must be officially adjudicated.”
Oberon’s lip curled in a snarl eerily similar to Yvette’s whenever she stared down an idiot in her path.
“I . . . I’ll write up the report,” Nettles said in defeat, picking up his broken manacles off the floor.
Oberon nodded as if the issue were settled. “I expect my granddaughter to be fully exonerated in the matter. However, if your paper-pushing superiors in the Bureau have any objection to my decision concerning her father, they are free to send an extradition request to my representatives.” The creatures in the robe again exploded in gales of laughter. “I’m sure they’ll give it its due attention.”
“Of course, Majesty.”
Oberon, apparently grown bored with the trifles of mortals and witches, announced he was ready to return home for a good long walk beside a meadow. He gently tapped Cleo’s chin when she thanked him, then told her it was time for Yvette to make her choice. “See that it is done,” he said.
The King of the Fairies gathered his robe around his body, bid his farewell, and shimmered into nothingness through some invisible gap between worlds. A trail of tiny trilling voices followed in the wake of his leaving until they, too, dissipated into silence.
Still stunned by his reprieve, Tulane cradled the cat in his arms and kissed Cleo’s temple. Then they both looked at Yvette with cautious optimism.
“We hope to get to know you better, and for you to know us,” Tulane said, gazing at his daughter as though he saw only the brightest, shiniest parts of her. “It’s uncanny, but you do have your mother’s eyes.”
“But perhaps your father’s stubbornness,” Cleo teased.
Harmony. That’s what surged inside Yvette when she looked at them. The notion was as foreign to her as a family dinner, yet she thought it was one of those things a person could get used to, like cold baths in the summer and long, starry nights in winter.
“Would I live with you?”
“Everyone lives where they like there.” Her mother took a step nearer. “But it would be easier to teach you if we were to share the same roof of stars. You need to know how your power works. How to control your glamour. How to guide it. How to give back in exchange for what you have been given so you may stay in balance.”
“Would I have to stay there forever? What if I didn’t like it?” She stole a look at Henri. “Could I come back?”
Cleo held a finger to her lips. “It would be wise to spend as much time there as you need to discover the answers to your questions, but you should know the hours and days work differently in the Fée lands. Sometimes moving fast, sometimes slow. ‘Forever’ is not a term we use.”