“You wouldn’t. I had to wear many faces, many disguises, to watch my
son grow up. Morrig helped me on every occasion, with every changing face. It
was the only way I could see him.”
Perdita backed up a little, felt the stone on which she had been sitting
reassuringly solid against her. “What is it you want? My father? My mother?
Daimon isn’t here.”
“You are, Princess Perdita. Morrig sent me to answer questions; she said she
left you in a mist—”
“Totally blank,” Perdita agreed with feeling. “Who are you?”
“We are remnants of an ancient realm. We have all our hope in Daimon to help
us recover our lost land. And we are all very grateful for the queen’s care
for him, for your love—”
“You—you sound as though you’re taking him away from us. You, and Aunt
Morrig, and that Vivien—”
“Vivien Ravensley. She is heir, by a very long bloodline, to both the human
and the not-so-human thrones of Ravenhold. The realm had a king once, in its
early days. He grew so terrible we had to drive him out. Since then, only
daughters rule. When they marry, the child of both the wyvern and the raven
will unite the wyvern’s power as well to Ravenhold, in the daughter who will
be their heir.”
Perdita felt her knees give way; she sat down abruptly on the hard granite. “
Marry? Exactly how far away from us are you taking him? Does he know? Or is he
too spellbound—”
“He knows, of course. How far he goes is up to him.”
“Is it? Are they in love? Or is it an enchantment of convenience?”
Ana paused before she answered. “I think,” she said with surprising honesty,
“that, beyond the enchantment, they are in love enough. Certainly attracted.
And not, so far as I know, in love with anyone else. Vivien is extremely
ambitious. And Daimon is—”
“Like his father,” Perdita finished tightly. “Susceptible.”
Ana was silent again, gazing at the princess. “We have made our decision. How
simple or difficult the matter will be will depend on the king. If he chooses
the wyvern over the raven, then Daimon will make his own choices. One of which
may well be the Wyvernhold throne.”
Perdita felt the blood leave her face. “You have that power over him?”
“If that’s what Daimon wants, we will get it for him. My own preference for
the return of our realm would be under far happier and easier circumstances.
The king could simply offer it to the new queen and her consort as a wedding
gift.”
“Who are you?” Her voice shook. “You three?”
“We are different faces of the raven. We have survived in many bodies, behind
many faces, for time beyond measure.” She smiled again, a cold moon’s smile;
Perdita glimpsed the raven’s eye within hers. “We hope for all the best. But
we will spread our wings and bring on the night if we are challenged.” She
paused again, looking at once inward and into the distance. “I must go. I am
attracting Lord Skelton’s attention.”
“Wait,” Perdita pleaded, and the blurring lines stilled. “Does my father
know all this?”
“In his heart he knows. It is what he fears most.”
She was gone, drained out of the air like the candle flame on a river stone,
dwindling into the memory of fire.
Perdita, her wyvern’s eyes narrowed, gold reflecting fire, left the goddess
to her own devices and went to call the questing Scotia Malory.
22
At the waning end of the endless day on the road that had begun at dawn in the
sorceress’s driveway, Pierce recognized the snapped sapling, the gashed tree
trunk, and the mangled milepost he had damaged in passing during his previous
existence. He realized that they were nearly at Chimera Bay.
He opened his mouth to say so, groggy with travel and full of wonder that here
he was again, in such unpredictable circumstances, and for far different
reasons. He was with family; his life had purpose, destiny, if only, at the
moment, to return what he had stolen from the kindly owners of the Kingfisher
Inn. It had, he thought dazedly, fulfilled its own unlikely purpose. Val,
listening to music and lightly snoozing across from him, opened one eye
blearily, as though he had sensed the languid tremor of mental activity.
Leith, texting someone as his sons sprawled in weary stupor around him,
glanced at them, thumbed a brief end to his message.
Pierce said, “We’re here.”
A dark tide roared up behind the limo on the quiet stretch of highway, washed
around it in a fragmented whirl of faces, emblems painted on helmets, black
leather gloves trailing colorful windswept leather ties raised in greeting, or
maybe just signaling, bulky baggage tied to every possible space on the noisy
bikes, all of which bore familiar crests. They forced the limo to slow, then
abruptly turned in one long dark stream around it and onto a side road whose
modest sign proclaimed it: Proffit Slough Lane.