He pushed the heavy front door open. The great hall, a shadowy, drafty
remnant of a bygone age, held as many cobwebs as there were oddments to hang
them on. The full body armor of some long-dead knight stood on one side of the
huge fireplace so rarely lit that the pile of logs and driftwood in it
probably housed any number of creatures. The knight’s helm, a beaky thing
with slits for vision, seemed to stare speculatively at Pierce.
He asked impulsively, “Was my father a knight?”
Heloise sank into one of the worn couches scattered around the room. She eyed
the cold hearth expressionlessly; Pierce thought that, as ever, she would
maneuver around an answer. Her face crumpled abruptly. She tossed a streak of
fire at the dry wood with one hand, and with the other, brought the hem of the
apron to her eyes. The pile flamed amid explosions of resin, cracklings, and
keening that, to Pierce’s ears, might not have entirely been the voices of
wood.
“Yes,” she snapped. “Yes. And he still is.”
Pierce’s breath stopped. Everything stopped; his thoughts, his blood, even
the fierce, hungry ravages of the fire froze in a moment of absolute silence.
He sat down abruptly on the couch beside his mother. He took a breath,
another, staring at her, then heard the fire again, and his own breathing, as
ragged as though he had been running.
“He’s alive?” He felt the blood push into his face, the sting of what might
have been brine behind his eyes; he seemed, weirdly enough, on the verge of
crying for the man who had not died. “What—where?”
Her full lips pinched; her own face had flushed brightly, furiously. If he had
touched her cheek, she might have burned him. Her lips parted finally, gave
him the word, a hard, dry nugget of sound.
“Severluna.” He didn’t move, just let his eyes draw at her, asking, asking,
until she finally spoke again. “He has been, since before he was your age, a
knight in King Arden’s court. We met there—”
“You—”
She held up a hand; he waited. More words fell: flint; fossils; hard, cold
diamonds. “We met and married there.” His throat closed; he swallowed what
felt like fire. “I had a child. A son.”
His mouth opened; no words came. He felt the wave break again behind his eyes,
the ache of salt and blood.
“The year your father took my small son to King Arden’s court to be trained
and educated was the year I knew, beyond all doubt, that he had never loved
me. He loved the queen. Only her. Always her. Before, during, and even now.
“So I ran.” Her own eyes glittered. Pierce watched one tear fall, saw her
catch it in her palm, her fingers close over it, so rare it was, so powerful.
“I took you with me. I didn’t—I didn’t know that then. I came here, to the
place we chose, during the first year of our marriage, to be alone together. I
thought we were alone. I had not realized then that he had brought her with
us; even then he carried her everywhere in his heart.” His lips parted to
ask; she opened her empty hand to stop him. “No one lived here; it was his
inheritance. He came looking for me. Once. To ask me back to Severluna. I told
him no. Never again.
“By then I knew about you. I didn’t tell him. I kept you here, after you
were born, so far from king and court that you would know nothing of your
father’s life. Down there, no one gives a thought to the distant, isolated
margins of the world. I wanted to raise you so far from Severluna that
anything you heard or read about it would seem as unreal as a fairy tale.”
Pierce, motionless, staring at her, felt the world change shape under his
feet. No longer bounded by the sea, by the little, ancient town, the dark,
endless forest, the narrow road that circled the cape, it expanded to
immeasurable lengths, grew complex, noisy, mysterious, shocking.
He opened his mouth, realized with wonder, as no hand came up, that she was
waiting now for him to ask.
“Who is he?”
Her eyes grew luminous under tears she would not let fall; in that moment, he
thought she would answer. Then she stood up so fast she pulled the next breath
he drew into her wake. “Enough!” she told him fiercely, pacing in front of
the roaring fire, rumpling the hearthrug. Her hand, searching for something to
worry—beads, the restaurant key on a chain—found the apron front. She
glanced down at it with surprise, then untied it impatiently and tossed it on
the floor. Pierce, watching her, had a sudden, wrenching glimpse of the young
woman she had been in Severluna, married to an illusion and fleeing in pain
and fury to this difficult place, where memories rooted themselves more
implacably than anything she could coax out of the miserly soil.
“Who?” he pleaded again, his voice grating; she only shook her head.