“Do you think you could guide us to the location of the Stone of Eventide, Brienna?” he asked after what felt like a season of silence.
“I would do my best, Monsieur,” I murmured. But when I dwelled on what he was asking, I felt the weight of an uncertain territory come to rest on my shoulders. I had never seen Maevana. I hardly knew anything about the Allenachs, or their land and woods. The old oak was marked by a T.A., but there was no assurance that I could comb through a forest and find such a tree.
“I want to make myself very clear,” Jourdain said after draining the last of his cordial. “If you accept my offer of patronage, it will be nothing as you expect. Yes, I would honor the binds of patronage, and I would take you as my own daughter. I would care for you and protect you, as a good father should. But my name comes with risks. My name is a shield, and beneath it are many secrets that you might never learn but all the same must guard as if they were yours, because it could mean something as vital as life or death.”
I stared back at him steadily, and asked, “And who are you, Monsieur?”
“To you? I am merely Aldéric Jourdain. That is as far as you need to know.”
By the Dowager’s shifting, I knew that she knew. She knew who he truly was, who the man beneath Aldéric Jourdain was.
Was he refusing to tell me for my own protection? Or because he did not trust me, with my Allenach roots?
How could I accept a patron if I did not know who he truly was?
“Are you a Kavanagh?” I dared to ask. If I was about to find the Stone of Eventide, I wanted to know if my patron father had the old dragon blood. Something sat wrong in my mind when I thought about recovering the stone only to restore his magic. I was not going to take the crown from Lannon only to give it to another king.
A smile softened his face; a gleam sparked in his eyes. I could tell I had amused him when he replied, “No.”
“Good,” I responded. “If you were, I don’t think this arrangement would be wise.”
The room seemed to grow colder, the candlelight receding as my implication clearly manifested. But Aldéric Jourdain hardly flinched.
“You and I want the same thing, Brienna,” he said. “We both desire to see Lannon removed, to see a queen ascend. This cannot happen if you and I do not unite our knowledge together. I need you; you need me. But this choice is ultimately yours. If you feel that you cannot trust me, then I think it best we part ways here.”
“I need to know what will happen once I find the stone,” I insisted, worry crowding my thoughts. “I need your word that it will not be misused.”
I expected a long-winded explanation. But all he said was, “The Stone of Eventide will be given to Isolde Kavanagh, the rightful queen of Maevana, who is currently in hiding.”
I blinked, stunned. I had not expected him to give me her name; it was an extraordinary measure of trust, since I was as much a stranger to him as he was to me.
“I know what I am asking you to do is precarious,” Jourdain continued gently. “The queen knows this as well. We would not expect any more than for you to help us find the location of the stone. And afterward . . . we would pay you abundantly.”
“Do you think I want riches?” I asked, my cheeks warming.
Jourdain merely stared at me, which made my blush deepen. Then he asked, “What do you want, Brienna Allenach?”
I had never heard my first and last name vocally acknowledged, linked together as summer and winter, given to the air, musical as it was painful. And I hesitated, battling what I thought I should say and what I desired to say.
“Would you want to join your father’s House?” Jourdain asked, very carefully, as if we were standing on ice. “If you do, I would honor your wishes. We can revoke the adoption after our mission. And I would not hold any ill will toward you for it.”
I couldn’t drown the small glimmer of desire, of hope. I couldn’t deny that I did want to see my blood father, that I wanted to know who he was, that I wanted him to see me. But all the same . . . I had grown up with the belief that illegitimate children were burdens, lives no one wanted. If I did ever come across my father, he most likely would turn his back on me.
And that image drove a blade into my heart, made me pitch forward slightly in the chair.
“No, monsieur,” I said once I knew my voice was steady. “I want nothing with the Allenachs. But I do ask for one thing.”
He waited, cocked his brow.
“Whatever plans you forge,” I began, “I want a voice in them. After the Stone of Eventide is found, it remains with me. I am the one to give it to the queen.”
Jourdain seemed to hold his breath, but his eyes never broke from mine. “Your input will be needed and appreciated in the plans. As for the stone . . . we need to wait and see as to what is the wisest strategy. If it is best for it to remain with you, it will. If it is best for it to remain with another, it will. All that being said, I can promise that you will be the one to present it to the queen.”
He was crafty with words, I thought as I picked apart his response. But my greatest worries were for the plans to proceed without my input, that the stone would fail to be given to the queen. On these two matters, I had his word, so I finally nodded and said, “Very well.”
“Now,” Jourdain said, glancing back to the Dowager as if I had never doubted his intentions. “The legality of this must wait. I cannot risk putting my name or hers through the royal scribes.”
The Dowager nodded, although I could tell she did not like this. “I understand, Aldéric. As long as you hold to your word.”
“You know that I will,” he replied. And then to me, he said, “Brienna, would you accept me as your patron?”
I was to become this man’s daughter. I was to take his name as my own, without knowing what it meant, what it had bloomed from. It felt wrong; it felt right. It felt dangerous; it felt liberating. And I smiled, for I was accustomed to feeling two conflicting desires at once.
“Yes, Monsieur Jourdain.”
He nodded, not quite smiling, not quite frowning, as if he was just as disharmonized as I was. “Good, very good.”
“There is one last thing you should note, Aldéric,” the Dowager said. “Brienna has not yet received her cloak.”
Jourdain cocked his brow at me, just now realizing I wore no passion cloak at my collar. “How come?”
“I am not impassioned yet,” I responded. “My master was going to provide me with my cloak when I took a patron.”
“I see.” His fingers thrummed along the armrests. “Well, we can work around that. I take it that every precaution has been extended to this arrangement, Renee?”
The Dowager inclined her head. “Yes. No one will know Brienna has departed in your care. Not even her grandfather, or her master.”
“Well, we can replicate a cloak for you,” Jourdain said.