Igniting Darkness (Courting Darkness Duology #2) - Robin LaFevers Page 0,210

hands?”

He shrugs, a most human gesture. “I cannot say. Annith wants to search back through the records and see if she can find more information on what they were.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Each of my daughters is unique, my powers manifesting in each of you in different ways. I cannot guess all the possibilities and how they might reveal themselves.” After a moment, he bends down to pick up another one of the green seedlings in his basket. With his attention still on the seedlings, I reach into my pocket, my fingers closing around the sprig of holly I still carry there. I take it out and gently plant it in the rich earth at the base of the wall. I do not know if it will take root, but feel it belongs here now.

“And you, Sybella?” Balthazaar asks. “Are you happy?”

He has never called me by my name before. I reach for the bucket and carefully pour some of the water on the holly, then sit back on my heels. I had intended to tell him of the hole he left in my life and the struggle I have had to fill it, but that no longer feels as important as it once did.

“Beast has asked for your hand,” he continues.

“What did you say?”

“That it was your decision, not mine. He is a good man. One of the best I have met in this form or my other, but it must be your choice.”

“Yes, I love him.”

He stares at me then, his gaze nearly as penetrating and all-seeing as when he was Death. “I am glad you have found love.”

We fall into a comfortable silence, happy to return to our work. It is enjoyable, this quiet companionship. Certainly not something I could have done with Death. When we have finished with all the seedlings—and watered them—he says, “Annith will want to know where you would like to get married. In the church or the—”

“Here,” I say, looking out at the endless sea, the salt-kissed grass, the ancient standing stones, and the row of seedlings we have just planted together. “I wish to marry here.”

It is the perfect place to start anew.

Author’s Note

So often, stories end with the wedding, or the promise of a wedding, but history tells us that such events are more commonly the beginning of a new chapter. So it was with Anne of Brittany. In truth, she is hard to discern through history—her story having been written by countless men with political agendas, conflicting alliances, stilted views of women, or simply an ax to grind.

To some, she was a schemer. To others, a proud symbol of Breton independence. Some saw her as a hapless pawn, while still others saw her as exerting her influence behind the scenes, as was so often the case with women of her time. From amongst all these accounts, a sense of Anne herself began to come through for me: a fully dimensional person who possessed a bit of all those attributes and motivations ascribed to her. But what I mostly saw was a young girl thrust into an impossible situation who used every resource she possessed to do the best she could for the country she was responsible for.

There is not much written about her after her marriage to Charles, other than to record various pregnancies and financial extravagances. But there were enough tantalizing bits that a picture of what life would have been like for Anne of Brittany in those first days of marriage began to take shape.

By all historical accounts, the regent, Anne of France, was a most formidable young woman as well, not especially willing to concede her power to the young queen. It was hard for me to keep in mind that she was only twenty-eight years old when the events in this book took place. In truth, she deserves to be the hero of her own story: having taken on the regency for her young brother at the tender age of twenty-two, she managed to fend off numerous revolts and attempts to usurp her power, as well as expand the holdings and power of the crown of France.

However, there was so much plotting and conspiring in those first days of Anne’s queenship that the king did indeed have the regent swear to an alliance of mutual aid and agree to desist from agitating unnecessary intrigue within the kingdom.

As for the Breton uprising, I found approximately six lines in three separate sources about an attempted revolt led by Viscount