He bows and keeps his eyes on the ground. Eldas takes a half step away from me, but his palm still rests on the small of my back. He’s not afraid to touch me in front of others anymore, a fact that I think I might like. “The coach is ready whenever you are.”
“Let’s not delay,” Eldas declares.
A pang of longing constricts the muscles around my heart as I step over the threshold of the cottage. I can imagine the curlicues of the vines wriggling for me, reaching like the hands of children. The land itself begs for me with a whisper I feel more than hear. It resonates through my feet.
With one last look at the queen’s oasis in a desert of wild magic and gray castles, I step into the coach.
We’re silent for most of the way to Westwatch. The silence is a comfortable third companion, someone we met one night while sweaty, tired, and satisfied, and now know well. Eldas’s journal is back on his lap and we spend most of the journey writing and reading. I finally have a few hours uninterrupted reading time when I’m not too distracted by his presence to focus.
“Oh,” I exhale. My eyes are stuck to a page. I know whose journal this is. My heart races. Perhaps this journal was waiting in that desk, holding itself together for this moment. My searching that night was rewarded.
I’m holding the journal of the first queen.
“We’re here,” Eldas says with a note of affirmation. He misinterpreted the sound I made. I jerk my head upward, about to correct him, but am distracted as the coach rolls slowly across a wide drawbridge. Eldas points over my shoulder at a wall that stretches upward into the sky and sprints toward the horizon east and west. “That’s the elf border,” he says. “My great, great grandfather was the one to build the wall to keep out the fae fighting and other agitators from elf lands. There’s the river I told you about as the added protection.”
“The fae lose their glamour whenever they come in contact with fresh water, right?”
He nods.
Talk of the fae brings back that day in the city. I suppress a shudder and focus on the other thoughts fae mentions give me—thoughts of Harrow and glimmer. I’ve only been away a few days, but it seems like too long.
“Harrow will be here too, right?”
“Yes, and our mother as well, since it’s a family trip,” Eldas says with a note of apology.
“If she’s civil then I will be too.” I’ve long since learned that it’s impossible to make or expect everyone to like you. Of course, I would’ve preferred if Eldas’s mother, of all people, at least tolerated me. But if my suspicions are correct, her hatred lies with Alice, not me, and whatever dynamic Eldas’s father and Alice had. The best I can hope for is that in the future, if I stay—if I return—then she can learn to accept me. But, for the time being, I put Sevenna aside.
“We shall see.” Eldas doesn’t sound too hopeful.
Across the expanse of water is the arc of a city. When the city could no longer build out, it built up. I see the familiar architecture of Quinnar here in the towering buildings and gray stone. At the heart of the city is a large keep nestled within the wall. Much like at the castle of Quinnar, a many-gated tunnel snakes through the base of the keep—the only entrance and exit, I presume, to the fae lands.
We step out of the carriage and a wave of servants bows to greet us. I walk at Eldas’s side, adjusting my skirts. I wish he had helped me by suggesting I wear something slightly more formal. Wasn’t that why he packed so much for me? Perhaps my mission to get him accustomed to the clothes I usually wear was a little too successful.
Eldas’s brother, Drestin, is the odd man out of his siblings. He didn’t inherit his mother’s black hair. His is, instead, a dark shade of brown that I presume belonged to their father. It’s cut even shorter than Harrow’s and gives him the distinct air of a military man.
Drestin’s wife, Carcina, is ready to pop at any moment. The entire way to our room she ambles alongside us with one hand on her very pregnant stomach, apologetic for being unable to curtsy or bow properly. I assure her not to worry, but that only seems to fluster her