“I can see I’d better go.”
“Thanks again, Angela.”
“Anytime.”
He waved a hand and heard her leave, the door snapping shut behind her.
How the hell was he supposed to get through the night’s patrols in this condition? And what would he do if Ry chose to challenge him?
*** *** ***
At four-thirty in the afternoon, Samantha sat in Ethan’s conservatory and dined on some of the finest food she’d ever eaten, made savory by the herbs grown in the mastyr’s kitchen garden.
Marta, the housekeeper and a lovely troll, had set up a table in the conservatory, then brought her a perfect spinach omelet and a shallow bowl full of succulent mixed berries.
She enjoyed the black tea, in particular, sweetened as it was with raw sugar and cream.
She felt really spoiled except for the fact that she was no longer in Shreveport and that her life had been turned upside down.
Staring up at the crystal apex, the music had never been prettier. She’d awakened to it throughout her sleeping hours, aware that the sounds resonated with a part of her deep inside, the part that was fae.
Just as she set her mug on the wrought iron table in front of her, she felt a strange vibration deep in her chest, not a warning exactly, more like an announcement or a revelation.
She stood up with a hand between her br**sts. Her heart still thudded around in her chest, of course. That was a given because of her proximity to Ethan.
But this felt different.
Again, this felt very fae.
She pivoted toward the arched doorway and there, cast in a glow from the sun still lighting up the crystal roof, stood the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen, and she was fae.
Vojalie.
Samantha felt the woman’s identity in her bones, as if she’d always known her.
She was tall, like Samantha, probably close to the same height, though Samantha might have been a little taller. She had fae features, a thin nose and a chin that came to a strong fae point, though not so severe as most. She wore a narrow headband to hold back her dark brown hair, which hung past her waist ending in a series of soft curls. Her dark eyes, which twinkled, matched her hair.
“You must be Samantha even though I confess you don’t look a great deal like your mother.”
“I was always told I resembled my daddy. I could see it in the mirror, as well. Now that I see you, I realize how fae she really was.” She began walking toward Vojalie as though pulled by an ancient connection. She almost thought ‘family’, which she supposed came from their shared heritage as fae.
Vojalie, standing beneath a large ficus tree, held out both her hands and smiled. “I’m so glad to meet Andrea’s daughter.”
When Samantha reached the powerful fae, she didn’t hesitate, not even for a second, to put her hands in Vojalie’s.
She gasped as a sensation like a balloon flying into the air took hold of her. She felt light, buoyant, free, a strange, euphoric experience. “I feel like I’m coming home after a long absence, but how is that possible?”
Vojalie’s warm brown eyes filled with tears. “I missed your mother so much. I took her death hard. We barely spoke after she moved to Shreveport so that I never even knew about you. She wanted a different life, you see, and nothing more to do with me or Bergisson or any of the Nine Realms. I had to respect her wishes so I hope you’ll understand that.”
“Well, of course.” Samantha withdrew her hands from Vojalie’s soft grasp. “But you must have been really good friends at one time. I mean you speak like you were sisters or something.” Vojalie didn’t look older than Samantha, but the world of the Nine Realms was a long-lived world, something she had to keep remembering.
A slight frown appeared between Vojalie’s strong, arched brows as though she was trying to figure something out.
Finally, she said, “We were both those things, friends and fae-sisters, if you will. I was grief-stricken when she left our world. But she had a terrible time when her fae husband, Patrick, died. He’d been a rock in her life and that year following his death, nearly forty-one-years ago now, sent her spiraling into a dark place. I know that’s when she started thinking about leaving Bergisson.”
Samantha stared at Vojalie as she processed this new revelation, one of so many. At some point, when she was ready to read Andrea’s journals, the five red leather tomes would undoubtedly be able to fill in a lot of the missing blanks. She’d even packed the journals in her suitcase, but didn’t feel the time was right to dig in.
Now Vojalie was here, a different source of information.
“So, my mother had another husband. I never knew, but she never told me much about her life, and now I can see why since she’d had to lie about most of it. She said she’d come from New Mexico but had lived in Louisiana for the past thirty years before she died.”
“I see.” Vojalie seemed very distressed, her brow puckered, her expression grim. “When I spoke with Ethan earlier, I guess I forgot to ask how much you knew. All that he told me was that last night was the first you’d learned about being part-fae. I suppose I should have guessed that Andrea would have kept silent about her former life.”
Marta appeared in the doorway with a fresh pot of tea and a second mug. Samantha turned and led Vojalie back to the small wrought iron table.
The lovely troll housekeeper arranged things quickly, setting out the teapot and the second mug. She brought forward an additional chair as well.
Samantha gestured for Vojalie to sit down, then resumed her seat.
Vojalie sipped her tea, the frown showing again. “So you know nothing about the realm-world.”
“Only what I learned from school-ground gossip growing up, then later through university and the Internet, and last night, of course, I met Ethan at the prave.”
“Do you often go to praves?”
Samantha held her mug cradled in her hands. “Never. I wanted nothing to do with your realm-world. Or I suppose I should say ‘our’ realm-world now, but it still feels so wrong.” She glanced around the conservatory. The soft music of the crystals eased her and she almost asked Vojalie if she could hear them as well, but decided against it. “I just wanted a quiet life in my grandmother’s home, making my jewelry, studying for my masters.”
“And is that your dream then? Living in your grandmother’s house, making jewelry, exploring your education?”
“Yes and no. I’m content with my life in Shreveport, but I guess you could say my real dream was to have a cottage by a lake, surrounded by weeping willows and more lawn than I could manage by myself. And the cottage would be made of river-rock, you know tumbled boulders.”