A Glimmering Girl (25 page)

“The article which must be returned before any mischief occurs,” Ross said. “But it will have to be tomorrow. I can’t leave the castle while Lord Sarumen is here or he’ll suspect something.”

“Let me return it to the Lady,” Braedon said. “Please give me that honor.”

“With my blessing,” Ross said. “Go.”

He left Braedon and went inside the castle, up the stone stairs, past his room, and up to the roof. He took the scoping glass from his pocket and ran his fingers over the etched apple blossoms. Pain seared his heart. He couldn’t understand how it was possible that his lungs kept breathing, his mind kept working, or that his heart kept beating—when she was not alive in the world.

Through the glass, he watched young Braedon ride out until the lad disappeared into the Small Wood. In truth Ross had chosen the name Bausiney not to please anyone else but to comfort himself. It called to mind the one site of all the moments of happiness in his life.

Days later, when Ross’s father had been properly buried and the grand people had gone back to London, Ross eluded his well-wishers and escaped the castle to go for a solitary ride. Despite all intentions to clear his mind of memory and pain, he found himself at Nine Hazel Lake.

As he dismounted outside the hunter’s cottage, he saw someone at the lake’s edge, staring out at the water. She was standing on the flat piece of slate Igraine had called the pounding rock, lost in thought, unmoving as he approached.

“Hello,” he said when he was at her back, and she swirled around, startled. She started to move her hands as Igraine had to weave a wyrd, and Ross grabbed her wrists to stop her.

“You!” He saw the ring on her finger, as Igraine had described, a double band, one silver, one gold. “You’re Elyse of Glimmer Cottage. You’re the most powerful wyrding woman who ever lived.”

Igraine may not have said
that
exactly, but Ross had learned that all manner of magical person liked to be known as the most powerful of their kind.

“What of it?”

“Have mercy on me. I’ve lost the only woman I can ever love. It hurts so much—I could die of the pain.”

“If I could change things, don’t you think I would?”

“But can you make this pain go away?”

Silence. Then…

“I can. But you must do something for me first.”

“What is it?”

“Your queen has made you an earl and given you lands on which to build a manor house. You will build exactly where I prescribe and precisely as I tell you.”

“I will if it’s possible.”

“It is.
Athena
.” Elyse mounted a horse, which Ross hadn’t even noticed until that moment. “Come with me.”

He followed her on his own horse. It took mere minutes to find what she wanted.

“This is the trooping trail.” She pointed at the ground they rode over. After another half an hour she said, “This is the fairy circle. A sacred place, where the fae must perform the ceremony to crown their next king. Build here, so that this clearing is at an innermost recess of your manor, enclosed by walls and roof, with no exterior windows. All doors and windows of the house must be rectangular, with hard angles. There must be no circular or curved orifices allowing ingress to the structure, and every door and window casement must be lined with cold iron.”

“Cold iron?”

“The cheap kind—iron from beyond Dumnos.”

“Done,” said Lord Dumnos. “Your hatred for the fae must run deep.”

“They killed her,” Elyse said. “I gave her to Kaelyn to keep her safe, and the fae found her anyway.”

“Then I hate them as well. I’ll gladly build over of their circle.” Ross said. “And what else?”

“That is all.”

“And you will take away this pain? You really can do it?”

“I can,” Elyse said. “I will. When the manor is completed.”

“How can I find you when it’s done?”

She smiled at him as if he was a fool. “I’ll know. I’ll find you.”

It took two years to build Faeview, manor of the first earl of Dumnos. Ross didn’t see Elyse in all that time. One night soon after he’d moved from the old cold castle to his comfortable new home, he went up to the roof, driven by loneliness, to look at the stars and perhaps see the northern lights.

He was beginning to wonder if Elyse had only used him to spite the fae.

“When will you come, wyrding woman, and fulfill your promise?”

“All is ready.” Elyse appeared there on the roof as if out of the air, holding a crystal vial containing a sparkling blue liquid. She held it up to the full moon and chanted:

Source of sorrow unending

Source of unbearable pain

Wash clean the wretched memory

But let the vengeance remain

“It is nearly done.” She handed the vial to Ross. “I kept my promise. Drink half. There’s a dose for me too.”

“This?” Ross said. “But it’s so beautiful—the color of her eyes. What is it?”

“Decoction of Lethe,” Elyse said, “with an intensification wyrd to endure throughout the subjects’ natural life. You and I are the subjects.”

“Lethe…” Ross stopped the vial at his lips. “Lethe, as in the River Lethe? You mean I’ll forget her?”

Elyse shrugged her shoulders. “It’s the only way.”

“Then I…” Ross pressed the vial into Elyse’s hands. “To forget her, purposely… No. It would be like murdering her all over again. I’d rather live with the pain.”

“And I can’t bear the thought of remembering her—for centuries!”

Elyse drank the blue liquid, both doses, tears streaming from under her closed eyelids. She began convulsed and dropped the vial, then leaned against Ross. When the shaking stopped, she she looked up at him and pulled away.

“How… how did I get here?” She stepped back, her eyes fixed on him with no sign of recognition, and circled her hand above her head. “Unseen!”

She was gone, and he heard a horse whinny in the distance. At the fading sound of hooves on the ground, he ran to the roof’s edge. There was no sight of horse or rider.

« Chapter 24 »
Wennie

Thirteen years later. Faeview

Lord Tintagos dipped a cup into the cauldron hanging over the fire in Lord Dumnos’s chamber. He filled two goblets with mulled wine and set one on the bedside table. It would be cool enough when Ross woke.

As he did every evening since the Battle of Tintagos Field, Braedon’s well-loved mentor and brother—for that is what Ross Bausiney had become to him—had predicted he’d likely die in his sleep tonight.

The earl’s heart had proved stronger than he’d expected, or wanted.

Two short raps on the door, and the new girl entered the chamber. Without thinking, Braedon smiled and rose to his feet. It was a strange sensation, this shyness he felt around her. At thirty-two years, he was too old for it, but he had to admit it was wonderful.

“Good day, Lowenwyn,” he said.

“Lord Tintagos, I told you. Call me Wennie.”

So lovely. Her smile brought sunshine into the room. She smelled like spring flowers, and her ginger hair was a joyful riot of curls and color.

“Wennie,” said the man in the bed, the joker. Ross was awake after all. The earl shuffled up to a seated position and fell back against the bed pillows with the effort. “That’s a name for a chambermaid.”

“Call me Lowenwyn, then.” Wennie’s eyes twinkled as she arranged flowers in a vase. “If it feels more elegant on your lips.”

“Lowenwyn,” Lord Dumnos said. “I knew someone once… Her name was like yours. Rozenwyn.”

“That was my mother’s name, though I never knew her,” Wennie said. “What was she like, your Rozenwyn?”

“Oh, she wasn’t my… well, perhaps she was, for a time.” The earl eyed Wennie more closely. “Ah, how long ago was it, now? Eighteen… twenty years, maybe.”

“I’m nineteen. Perhaps I’m your long lost daughter.” Wennie winked at Braedon.

Always joking, making the world a lighter place. No one could be with her and be unhappy.

“What was Rozenwyn like, you ask?” Ross said. He hadn’t been this engaged with the world in months. “Quite like you, if I recall. Different hair, not a ginger. But with your lively hazel eyes. Her father was one of my father’s knights. Sir Yestin died at the Battle of Tintagos Field, defending the castle with honor.”

“Not what she looked like,” Wennie said. Just like a woman to ignore the part about bravery and sacrifice. She was adorable. “What was
she
like? Her character?”

“Oh, yes. I suppose that’s what really matters, eh?”

Wennie was wise as well as lovely. A child’s eagerness played on her face, hunger for knowledge of a never-known mother made of stories. Braedon’s heart went out to her.

“No one could know Rozenwyn and not love her,” Lord Dumnos said. “Everyone was brokenhearted when she died.”

“Were you there?”

“I was gone from Tintagos at the time, off on some fool’s errand, with this fool here.”

Nice.
At last, acknowledgement Braedon was in the room.

“But that’s how well she was loved,” Ross said. “Her memory lived on, and I heard of it when I returned.” He fell forward suddenly. His goblet crashed to the floor, and Wennie bent down to clean it up.

“My lord? Ross?” Braedon grabbed his friend’s hand.

“Braedon, lad. I believe the light is truly going out at last.”

“Don’t talk that way, Ross.” Braedon turned to Wennie. “Fetch Prior Marrek. Quickly!”

“Yes, my lord.” Her eyes glistened with unspilled tears. “Where is he, my lord?”

“What do you mean? Aren’t you from the cloister?”

“A nun, my lord?” Her eyes widened, and she burst out laughing. “No, my lord. No worries. I’ll find him.”

Braedon sat down to an equal look of hilarity on Ross’s face.

“She’s not from the cloister,” said the earl.

“But you told me the nuns sent her to care for you.”

“An abbess,” Ross said. “Lowenwyn told me an abbess sent her from an island of perpetual spring. I’d think she must be fae, but her eyes are the wrong color.”

“That explains why she always smells like flowers then.” Braedon shook his head at Ross’s foolishness. “Wherever she comes from, you don’t deserve her, the way you grouse and grumble.”

“Aye, I’ll grant you that,” Ross said.