Dormongara was waiting at the foot of the dais. He fell in with them and gestured for them to bow with him.
The queen rose. “Lord Gara. Grau, Velsa, and Sorla Thanneau. Yesterday, you acted with great courage in protecting us from adversarial forces. Please accept the Badge of the Waxing Moon.” She stepped down to place small gold pins on each of their collars.
Prince Seldon joined his mother to give one of the badges to Sorla. “Brave or stupid? We know the answer now, don’t we?”
“Thank you—Prince—your highness—“ Sorla stammered. She was practically squirming with excitement.
Velsa had never expected any rewards to come of this. It seemed so impossible that she and Sorla would be honored by royalty when in the Daramon lands they were treated as property.
For all its imperfections, she thought, this really is our home.
The queen placed a small, heavy sack in Grau’s hand, coins clinking within. “To aid you and your family in necessary repairs,” she said.
She was cool as she gave Dormongara his badge. Perhaps they had argued. “Well wishes on your trip to Otare,” she said. “Tell King Evgar I said hello.”
Dormongara nodded, glancing at the prince.
As their party went to the stables to fetch Tomato—who had not been allowed to pee on the royal linens under any circumstances—and Dormongara’s carriage, Grau pulled Velsa aside.
“This is a good bit of money,” he said. “I have an idea for it, but I wanted to see what you think first. When we return to Dor-Temerna, I think we should open a cafe.”
“A cafe? All of us?”
He nodded. “Our town doesn’t have a cafe like the ones back home, and I’m sure it could support one. Sorla, of course, would manage the food, but I am pretty well acquainted with how to run a business. As another bonus, now that we are all Fanarlem, none of us can spread diseases. If anyone was hesitant to buy their food from Fanarlem, we can put it in their heads that you will never catch the blood cough from our shop.”
“Is it enough money for that?”
“Barely, but I think so. We’ll probably have to work harder than we ever have in our lives, at first. I wouldn’t mind, though. We can grow a lot of the food in our own garden.”
“I thought you were finally going to get to potion making.”
“That’s why I thought of it. If I pursue potion making, I’d need a proper kitchen. We might as well put it to more than one use.”
“Oh my.” Velsa clutched her head. “It would be a lot of work. But…I certainly could see people patronizing a cafe like the one you took me to when I was first able to eat. Nice to have a warm place to gather in the long winters…but won’t you start to yearn for a home out in the country?”
“Yes,” he said. “I certainly will. But I’ve realized, it isn’t my time to have that dream. You helped make things a little better for Fanarlem in town. The world is a bit of a mess. I feel as if we have a responsibility to keep participating. I can’t walk away now. Fate brought me here. Not as a punishment, but as a test.”
Velsa beamed. “Let’s do it.”
He lifted up her palm and dropped the bag into it, closing her fingers around the coins, and she knew he was thinking of the same moment she was. The small bag of coins that had paid for her, on a rainy night in the House of Perfumed Ribbons.
“How far we have come,” he said softly.
“Worth every coin and then some, wasn’t I?” she replied.
Epilogue
SIX MONTHS LATER
Some days, Velsa simply didn’t want to get up at the crack of dawn, but Blueberry made sure that no one would sleep in. The little blue wyvern really belonged to Sorla, who started having more nightmares when Kessily and Tomato weren’t sleeping with her downstairs anymore. But the creature was happy to pester any of them when given a chance. He licked Velsa’s face until she stirred, and when she didn’t open her eyes, he nipped her ear.
“I curse the day Grau made my ears taste good,” Velsa murmured. “All thanks to you.”
She blinked awake to the familiar sight of the photograph on her bedside table: she and Grau at the festival. When they returned home from the capital, they found that the photographer had left the pictures with Rovi and Clay. She never wanted to forget how he had been; sometimes she still had the strange experience of missing someone who was right beside her, while at the same time, bad things soon led to good things and before long it was impossible to imagine life going any other way.
Grau was already awake, still fussing with that hair growing spell no doubt, leaving a pile of rumpled covers. She made both sides of the bed, blinking away sleep.
Sorla would have been up before anyone, baking bread with Rumir. He had proved to be excellent in the kitchen, and since Velsa had learned that he was only twenty, she sometimes had little fantasies that Sorla and Rumir would fall in love—when Sorla was appropriately older, of course. (She hadn’t even mentioned the idea to Grau, lest he get protective.) Alas, for now, Sorla was shaping into a skilled flirt in her own circle of flesh and blood boys, all of whom seemed to be shooting up in height and developing disturbingly manly voices.
When Velsa hit the bottom of the stairs, Sorla was almost in tears, “Meirin! We forgot to prep the nuts last night! I told everyone I was making the hazelnut buns, and if I don’t, they’ll kill me.”
“Okay, okay, I doubt that, but okay.” Velsa pulled on an apron, spilled the nuts from the bucket, and steered Blueberry to get cracking. “Where’s Grau?”
“Feeding the horses.”
In another moment, he came in with drops of rain glistening in his hair, stamping his boots on the mat. “Big storm coming in.”
He helped Velsa rush through the nuts, handing a bowl of them to Sorla, and then Velsa got to peeling potatoes for the soup of the day.
The early morning hours flew by, rain soon lashing the windows, but inside all was cozy, warmed by oven and hearth. Velsa used to hate rainy days, because it was unpleasant for Fanarlem to go out and risk getting soaked, but it was so nice inside the cafe that she liked them now. Although she was still glad Grau was willing to go out into them.
“Bad day on the battlefields,” Grau mused.
Storms always favored the Daramons. They were more skilled at elemental sorcery and could pull strength from weather, as Grau knew from experience.
People stopped in to speculate and discuss; most of them had family who had joined the war effort. Young men and women alike were in shorter supply than before. Rovi’s husband had gone and she often spent her mornings in their cafe with a comforting cup of tea.
“Have you heard from Clay lately?” Grau asked.
“Yes, a few days ago. He mostly talked about the cold; they censor the details but I heard from Sisa that they’ve been bringing down every plane that tries to reach the mainland.” She sounded pleased. “Have you heard from Kessily?”
“Not in a few weeks,” Velsa said, hurrying by with food for the blacksmith’s daughters.
“She and Lord Gara are both full blooded Daramons, aren’t they?”
“As far as we know,” Grau said, a little absently as he held a hair up with tweezers, still messing with his spell.
There was a new magical sickness going around, a fever that often led to pneumonia, and it only hit people with Miralem blood. It had proved a potent weapon for the Daramons, keeping the Miralem skittish about traveling into infected regions, although the Daramons themselves were trying to halt the sickness because it was killing their Miralem allies as well.
“Feirin, can you please please stop working with hair where the customers can see you?” Sorla came bustling by with a tray of fresh hazelnut buns, which everyone instantly wanted.
“Sorry,” Grau said. “I was up last night…”
“Have you tried any essence of rocks?” Rovi asked, taking a healer’s interest in Grau’s spell development.
“That wouldn’t work. Putting rock in a spell slows everything down. I�
��m trying to jumpstart growth.”
“Weeds?”
He laughed dryly. “I hate working with weeds. Too unpredictable. Which ones, do you think?”
“Please,” Sorla said. “Put the hair away and make change for nut buns!”
Velsa could not intervene with Grau and his hair; she was busy now pouring cups of coffee. The early part of the day was always steady through the afternoon, keeping her on her feet. There were people in town who would never come into a shop run by Fanarlem from Nalim Ima, but the ones who did became loyal customers and friends. Velsa knew what their children liked and heard all the town gossip as soon as it hit the streets. Velsa was always amazed by the efficiency of chains of Miralem gossip, now that she was used to relying on it instead of the newspaper. They pieced together the war from letters, rumors, and telepathic messages.
Most satisfyingly, sometimes the Fanarlem from Madam Blazar’s came to the cafe for lunch. When Velsa and Grau hired Rumir away, they had to replace him with a flesh and blood girl and suddenly, everyone was granted a lunch break. Even the girls who once scorned Velsa eventually came around, no longer so loyal to Madam Blazar. When Velsa had time, she sat down with them. There was something deeply comforting about having friends of her own race, all of whom had once been bold enough to escape slavery.
After the afternoon rush, Sorla and Rumir were able to handle serving and the icy rain had stopped, so Velsa walked to the city hall to see if they had any mail.
“A letter from Kessily today,” she reported to Grau, who was in the garden.
“What’s the latest from Otare? Is she ever coming home?”
“Sort of. See for yourself!” Velsa handed him the paper.
“A wedding invitation? She never has anything complimentary to say about the man!”
“I told you,” Velsa said. “She protests too much.”
“I guess people do strange things in wartime.”
“We’ll have a lot to talk about when she gets back.” She grabbed a bucket to pick herbs with him. There wasn’t much to do in the garden in the cold season, but with clever use of sorcery and a miniature greenhouse he had built from stone and glass, they had some vegetables even in the winter.
“When is she coming? I think you and I need to plan a little trip ourselves. You’ve been working so hard and I’m out of replacement skin.”
“Out of skin? Stop burning yourself. Do you think it’s dangerous to go to the capital now?”
“I’m not worried about a short trip. I’d like to take you to the theater, just once, when we’re not battling bandits and barbarians. Maybe finagle an invitation to a royal ball. I’m sure they’d let us in if we wear our pins.”
“Us, at a royal ball? I don’t know. I’d rather go to the markets and look for secondhand books. If the weather clears up.”
This was the part of the day where they often began to talk of other plans and dreams, wishing she might see the movie theaters opening in Nalim Ima, or make that trip to Drai to see the dragons.
Whatever happened, perhaps a part of them would always be dreaming of something else, of the days when all they needed was a horse to carry them and a barn to sleep in.
But for today, they were home.
Thank you for reading! I had so much fun writing this book and I hope you enjoyed it too. As you may have guessed, this concludes The Telepath and the Sorcerer, but there will be other stories to come covering the war years, as well as the Magical Mafia Chronicles which takes place about 100 years later. (AKA, like, now.)
Don’t miss out on new releases and extra behind-the-scenes tidbits, subscribe to my mailing list! I usually send it out once a month and I promise it’s not spammy…!
Also in the Hidden Lands Series
(Series can be read in any order)
THE TELEPATH AND THE SORCERER (New Adult Fantasy):
Book 1: The Sorcerer’s Concubine
Book 2: The Sorcerer’s Wife
Book 3: The Sorcerer’s Equal
THE HEIRESS AND THE VAMPIRE:
Book 1: The Vampire’s Doll (Spring 2017)
THE MAGICAL MAFIA CHRONICLES:
Book 1: Fortune’s Curse (Spring 2017)
About the Author
Jaclyn Dolamore has a passion for history, vintage dresses, David Bowie, anime, and food. She lives with her partner and plot strategist Dade and three weird cats in an 140-year-old house in western Maryland. Sometimes she disappears from social media, but she always loves to hear from readers!
@jackiedolamore
Jaclyn Dolamore
jaclyndolamore.blogspot.com
[email protected]
Also by Jaclyn Dolamore
Magic Under Glass—Bloomsbury
Magic Under Stone—Bloomsbury
Between the Sea and Sky—Bloomsbury
Dark Metropolis—Hyperion
Glittering Shadows—Hyperion
The Sorcerer's Equal (The Telepath and the Sorcerer Book 3) Page 23