“I have very acute hearing.”
“Hmmm.” Her gaze turned inwards as they walked, Wyn keeping an ear out. Hetta was right; he was taking risks, and he wasn’t sure he could blame it entirely on the season. He waited until they were passing down the long gallery to ask, “Are you all right?”
She took a beat to answer. “I didn’t know I could get a read on my relatives’ emotions like that.”
“It’s not compulsion,” he said quickly, knowing this would be her key concern. “You’re just…a bit more connected to them than you used to be.” He thought of his own connection to the Court of Ten Thousand Spires, long quiescent.
“That’s not entirely reassuring.” The long line of ancestral portraits stared down at them, strangely appropriate to the subject of conversation. “I wish I knew more about this lording business.”
“After Wintersol,” he said impulsively, prompted by the worry in her eyes. “Let’s go out on the moors, away from everyone, and practise.”
“Practise what?” she said, lips curving.
“I’ll show you my magic; you show me yours,” he said suggestively down at her. “I know you want to experiment more with your land-sense, and that would be a good place for it. My knowledge of the bond between lord and faeland is imperfect, but I may be able to offer advice.”
Her eyes sparkled. “You’re very transparent when you make peace offerings, trying to distract me with magic experiments. But yes, let’s.”
He smiled. “I wasn’t trying to be subtle.”
The offer did seem to have successfully distracted her from her anxiety. She looked thoughtful. “I wonder if my new-and-improved land-sense can mimic the effects of some of your house spells?” she mused.
Footsteps sounded nearby, and he released her reluctantly, stepping back to a respectable distance. “Company,” he muttered just as Lottie rounded the corner carrying a tray. He smiled in acknowledgement of the housemaid, who blinked at them, measuring the distance between him and Hetta with interest, before bobbing her head and carrying on her mission down the length of the long gallery. Oh dear, he thought, feeling he might have just added further fuel to the smoking embers of household gossip.
They met Marius striding down the long hallway from the kitchens—the stables and garage were at the back of the house.
“What happened?” Wyn asked, trying to wring meaning from Marius’s agitated hand motions—usually a sign of stress.
“Your sister,” Marius said, and Wyn’s stomach dropped like a stone. His gaze flicked over Wyn as if he were seeing someone else. “Or at least, I think it was. She looked like you. Aroset, the other man—fae—called her.”
“Come out of the hallway,” Hetta said grimly.
They went to Hetta’s study. All the way, Wyn berated himself. How could he have so misjudged the situation, exposing Marius to danger? Marius didn’t seem hurt, at least, but what had happened? Wyn doubted Aroset had only wished to talk to Marius; it would never occur to her to simply talk to a mortal.
Hetta’s study had once been her father’s, but it had altered considerably since she’d taken possession of it. A painting of the Sun Theatre where she’d lately worked had replaced the previous one of a racehorse, and the antlers that had taken pride of place above the large square desk had been banished to the attic. There was still a slight undertone of tobacco smoke, but it was overlain now with coffee, ink, and the subtle scent of the perfume she preferred.
Wyn spoke as soon as they entered, closing the door impatiently.
“Hetta, can you ask Stariel to check if there’s any fae magic on him?” There was no scent of storm magic on Marius that Wyn could detect, but he wanted to be sure. The faeland would be able to pick up more subtle influences, though it was a good sign that it hadn’t roared up in alarm already. Faelands were too big to pay attention to individuals, generally, but Stariel was possessive of its Valstars. As Wyn had reason to know.
Marius whirled from where he’d been about to sit down next to the window. “How do you know your sister tried to compel me?”
Wyn grimaced. “A guess. I can’t smell any magic on you, so I assume your own native defences held, but I’d rather be sure.” Aroset was the most powerful of his siblings, but he hadn’t lied to Marius about his natural resistance to compulsion.
Hetta’s eyes went distant again. “There’s… Something strange tried to touch him but hasn’t touched him.” She blinked, coming out of her daze. “If that makes any sense to you. What happened, Marius?”
Marius collapsed into the chair. “Nothing,” he said. “When you come down to it. Nothing happened.” He told them about Aroset’s attempted compulsion before she’d been interrupted by someone he hadn’t seen—someone Wyn suspected was his brother Rakken, given what Marius had overheard. “When I got the kineticar running, they were gone. I didn’t see where they went.”
“What about the people at the bank?” Hetta asked.
Marius frowned. “Well, no one would come out and actually say ‘it was fairies that did it’, but I’m pretty sure they were thinking it.” He nodded in Wyn’s direction. “There was definitely a lot of hostility towards you, particularly.”
“You did well,” Wyn said, the cold terror of might-have-beens drawing icy tendrils around his heart. He sent a silent thanks to the mortal gods, for it didn’t seem right to give any part of Faerie credit for this. “I’m sorry for my error in judgement, and even more sorry for my sister’s behaviour.”
There was something curiously penetrating about Marius’s grey stare. “It wasn’t your fault.” He gave a short, ironic laugh. “You said you thought it would be safe. Truthfulness doesn’t always mean right, does it?”
“No.”
“Well, you were right anyway. I’m safe. It’s fine.”
Wyn was pretty sure that it wasn’t fine, that Marius was still badly rattled, but he just as clearly didn’t wish to talk about it anymore. So Wyn leaned back against the door and drawled,
“Also, in the interests of accuracy, I would like to point out that your comment that I look like my sister is not particularly correct. Aroset and I have a similar hair colour, that is all.”
“Obviously a highly salient fact,” Hetta said, shooting him an exasperated look.
But Marius laughed, the nervous energy in him settling a fraction, and Wyn took this as a cue to continue in this vein. “Besides, her wings are full-red, and mine are—” A month ago he would have said ‘white’, but he thought of his blood feathers coming in and what Lamorkin had said and knew that that could not be entirely true anymore. Perhaps they already resembled the red-and-white patterning of his father’s.
“White and blue,” Hetta said absently. “Yes, we know. I think you’re straying from the main substance of the issue, though. And if we’ve digressed to discussing your relatives’ hair colours, we’d all better get back to work.”
Wyn froze. “What did you say?”
Hetta raised her eyebrows. “That we all have work to be getting on with. Or at least—I certainly do. Now that the car’s back, it’ll be a lot easier to get round to all the cottages.”
“No,” Wyn said. He had to force the words out, his throat was so tight. “Before that. What did you say about my wings?”
Marius, who had fallen into abstraction, now looked up sharply.
“She said they were white and blue. Not red like your sister’s.”
“How…?” He trailed off. Had he misinterpreted Lamorkin’s words? Feverishly, he shrugged out of his coat and flung it atop the desk. The knot in his bowtie resisted for a second before coming loose. He was halfway down the buttons on his waistcoat when Marius objected.
“I say—what are you doing!? You can’t just—”
Wyn ignored him and tossed the waistcoat on top of his coat, nimbly unpicking buttons, impatient to be free of his shirt, to know for sure.
He glanced up as he finally rid himself of that last layer of fabric to find both siblings’ attention f
irmly fixed on him. Hetta’s mouth was trembling with the desire to laugh, her eyes tracing down his bare chest, and Marius was both glaring and blushing furiously.
Wyn gave them a sheepish smile and changed, self-conscious for reasons that had nothing to do with his state of dress, but he had to know. A second later he was trying to crane his neck to see between his shoulder blades, but it was impossible to twist his wings in such a fashion, and he merely performed an inelegant pirouette making the attempt.
Hetta laughed. “Are you trying to see your own feathers? I promise you, they’re blue just along your spine. And, well, in fairness ‘silver’ seems a better descriptor than ‘white’ everywhere else.”
“You can’t just go undressing in front of people!” Marius said, as Wyn grasped hold of his uninjured wing and tried to bend it round to see better. “Especially women,” he said with a sharp glance at Hetta.
“I don’t have any objections.” Hetta grinned.
“That’s very much not the point! I’d like to register my extreme disapproval, though I can see neither of you cares!”
“I do care what you think, actually,” Wyn said, giving up the attempt. His injured wing ached, but there was no impairment of movement when he flexed it in and out. He ran a hand through his hair and was slightly disconcerted when it met horn. It unsettled him, the strangeness of his own body. “Are you sure they’re blue, Hetta?”
Her amusement dimmed as she absorbed his expression. “Yes. You truly didn’t know? Hang on—I think I have a mirror here somewhere.” She went around her desk and opened a drawer with a click. “Here.” She emerged with a small mirror-compact and instead of handing it over, walked behind him and held it up. “Can you see?” she said, angling it.
“Yes.” He stared at the tiny reflection. He wasn’t sure exactly which bit of him was being captured except that it was right next to the warm brown of his skin, but the colour was clear enough. “That’s not red, not by any stretch of imagination.” There was a distinct line of tiny blue coverts, the deep saturated colour of lapis lazuli.
“Is it important?” Marius asked.
“I don’t know.” The little piece of heaviness he’d been carrying at the thought of sporting his father’s colours transformed into, well, a little piece of confusion instead. Was that an improvement? What did it mean?
22
Snow Moon
For six years, Wintersol had been a bittersweet night for Hetta. At no other time had she felt so alone, her family and heritage quite so far away. As counterpoint, at no other time had she been so forcibly reminded that she was free of her father’s narrow-minded rule. Now Lord Henry was dead, and Hetta stood in her father’s shoes here at Stariel, his ghost lurking in every sight and sound.
The main festivities would be tomorrow, beginning with the all-important Kindlemorn at sunrise. It wasn’t required, exactly, but it was something of a tradition for the younger members of the house to see the longest night through on Wintersol Eve. Those who considered themselves too old, too young, or simply too tired went to bed as usual and woke early instead.
Hetta wasn’t a teenager anymore, but she had been last time she’d been at Stariel House. How the world has shifted since then. She was tempted to push all her concerns aside and lose herself in the merry-making of her relatives. A dozen of them had already marked out the ballroom and cajoled cousin Ivy into getting out her fiddle so that they could dance all the old country dances. Hetta suspected the phonograph would be making an appearance later in the night, after the aunts had retired—Aunt Maude in particular disapproved of ‘modern music’. The spice of mulled wine permeated the air.
“The world won’t end if you regress to your rebellious youth for one night,” Wyn murmured from behind her as she stood vacillating on the threshold to the ballroom, thinking of all the other things she ought to be doing ahead of indulging her craving for nostalgia.
“Does that apply to you too then?” she said without turning.
“How do you know the world does not depend upon my maintaining a sober and dignified mien at all times?” he countered. His breath tickled in her ear.
“Because it would already have ended more times than I can count.”
“Hetta!” Her younger brother Gregory had noticed her standing there. “Are you going to stay up with us?”
“It’s tradition,” she intoned, though it was peculiar to be asked this by Gregory, who’d been too young and thus made to go to bed early last time she’d been home for Wintersol.
“I want to stay up too!” little Laurel said firmly to her brother, and Hetta realised the age difference between Gregory and Laurel was nearly the same as that between Hetta and Gregory. This was the same scene as six years ago, more or less.
“You can stay up till you fall asleep,” Gregory told Laurel.
“I won’t fall asleep!”
Hetta had another flashback, to bundles of smaller relatives curled into cushions and blankets in Carnelion Hall, lit only by the flickering embers of the great hearth fire. She turned to see Wyn’s expression, but he’d vanished.
“Come dance with us!” Laurel said, tugging at her hand.
“All right,” she said, letting herself be pulled into the ballroom.
Hours later, Hetta sat in Carnelion Hall watching the embers flicker. In the next room she could hear the low murmur of voices—Gregory and Alexandra, she identified from the pitch. Laurel was asleep, curled into an armchair, having refused to be put to bed by her mother two hours prior. Most of her older relatives had sought their beds, including Marius.
Something deep and primal was moving in the night. If she closed her eyes, caught on the edge of sleep, she could almost comprehend it. She lay back against the cushions, feeling strangely here-and-not-here. Stariel was—she reached for the word—dozing off. The sensation was akin to an eiderdown being laid upon the land.
The act of analysing the sensation distanced her from it. She shook off the drowsiness and sat up. It was very late—or very early, depending on how one judged such things—and the house felt hushed, despite the few people she could still sense moving about. Driven by instinct, she rose and went to the great glass windows to look out.
The sky was clear, and the full moon hung suspended in a wash of stars, throwing cold light on the landscape below. Snow was falling lightly and had already blanketed the ground. The combination of snowfall, clear skies, and full moon was at once beautiful and entirely eerie. Snow Moon, she thought. The change of seasons. This was the first snowfall of winter, and to Stariel it marked the first of the dark days ahead.
Although the land was slipping deeper into slumber, Hetta felt wide awake. She hugged her dressing gown around her and quietly slipped out of the hall, summoning a small magelight as she did so. It bobbed along beside her, just enough to make out the edges of things. She could’ve summoned a brighter light, but it seemed out of keeping with the season’s shift.
She followed that tug of something through the house to the tallest tower. She had to briefly cross the courtyard outside to do so, and cold radiated up through her slippers. The air was bone-chilling and absolutely still, with snow falling soundlessly from the cloudless sky. The hairs on the back of her neck rose.
She opened the door to deep shadow. The only illumination came through the narrow slits of the windows, throwing pale moonlight onto the narrow, winding stairs. Hetta felt her way along the wall, trusting her land-sense to tell her the depth of the stairs. Her fingertips ached with the cold.
When she emerged on top of the tower, she found herself no longer alone. If her land-sense hadn’t warned her, and she didn’t know the architecture of Stariel so well, there might’ve been a moment where she thought he was simply a particularly lifelike statue, perched as he was on the parapet. He was poised as if he’d been about to take flight but had changed his mind at the last second. Bare to the waist, he stood with wings half-furled, white-gold hair loose and fluttering about his pointed ears and dark horns. The
snowflakes made tiny hissing noises as they hit his skin, but he didn’t appear to register them.
She knew he’d heard her come up, though he didn’t move. He was staring over the landscape—holding vigil, was the phrase that came to mind. Could he fly with his injured wing? He was awfully close to the edge. His recent injuries showed as angry red scars, jagged but still astonishingly well healed given the timeframe.
She burrowed her hands deeper into the pockets of her dressing gown and carefully picked her way towards him. The tower stones were slippery with snow, and her slippers made small muffled sounds in the night’s emptiness.
Wyn still hadn’t looked at her, staring out at the world with the intensity of a hawk watching prey. She came as close as she dared, and would’ve halted, but he raised one of his wings and Hetta took the gesture for the invitation it was. She ducked under his feathers until she stood below and beside him, her back enveloped in wings. He radiated heat, like standing next to a hot water pipe, and she had to resist the urge to snuggle against him, worried he’d lose his balance. The ground was far below.
Sometimes it was easy to forget Wyn wasn’t human. But under the white light of the moon with the snow falling silently and strangely around him, he couldn’t be mistaken for anything merely mortal. There was a wildness in him that she rarely saw so close to the surface. The faint itching sensation at the back of her mind suddenly made sense: it wasn’t just Wyn.
Stariel was a faeland, which meant that underlying the everyday world of humanity was another reality, populated by creatures of legend. In Stariel, the two realities—human and Faerie—lay close together, but—and Hetta realised this only now—still distinct, and usually with the human side face-up, as it were. Tonight, the fae side of Stariel was in ascendance.
She reached out, carefully, not wanting to be dragged under by the deep and ponderous thoughts of the land. Her hunch was correct: the wyldfae that she was always aware of, on some level, were unusually present tonight. They acknowledged her awareness with brief flickers of obeisance as she brushed over them. There were a few inside the house now as well as the wider estate. Most of Stariel’s native fae were small things—lowfae, a handful of lesser fae, and the dim smudges of the half-fae kittens.
The Prince of Secrets Page 20