“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.
“Maybe nothing. Maybe not.” Wind blew her long black hair across her face;
she pushed it away, laughing. “I’m starving, and my hair smells like Calluna
’s cave. No respectable place will let me in. There’s the car.”
He grimaced as he folded his tall body, packed as it was with knightly virtues
and muscles, into her tiny Greenwing. “Be easier to carry this under my arm,
” he grumbled.
“I know, I know, but father says it’s good for the earth and sets an
example. More likely he had Lord Skelton put a spell on the engine that makes
it impossible to speed. What’s the greasiest, smokiest, darkest pub you know?
”
He thought a moment, then guided her there.