“No lying to anyone,” he said, pointing at her with his own spoon.
Celeste watched him take a bite. Anyone included her, she supposed, which would be a nice change. There always seemed to be someone telling her some falsehood, though they often insisted she just hadn’t understood or misremembered. Celeste did understand though, and she remembered quite well.
Reeve, however, didn’t seem like he would insist her interpretation of a situation was wrong even though he also seemed quite firmly planted in his own beliefs. It was funny to think she was meant to trust a man who wanted to kill her, and a holy knight besides. Her gaze slid down to the rising sun on his chest, and she frowned. “Is being habitually honest one of Valcord’s rules?”
Reeve’s brows drew together. “We have a code, and we are to be virtuous.” He took another thoughtful bite. “My brothers and I each define that a bit differently.”
“You said you have a brother from Clarriseau, didn’t you?”
“Gable.” He glanced down at the table and swallowed. “He is a good man, but he definitely defines virtuousness uniquely.”
“How is that possible? You belong to the same order, and you were taught by the same people, weren’t you?”
“Yes, but if it had been Gable you trapped, he would have probably slain you once released despite making an oath. I imagine he would say something like, swearing by Valcord only counts if you really mean it. I don’t agree with that at all, but I also wouldn’t make an oath I didn’t intend to keep.”
Celeste’s next swallow burned her throat. “Well, I’m glad out of all his knights, Valcord picked you to come here then.”
Reeve’s next bite halted halfway to his mouth, those amber eyes of his finding hers in earnest. “You are?”
The door to the tavern swung open with a flourish, which wasn’t something doors normally did, but the entrant had a peculiar sway over the wood. Wearing the same long, violet coat as the evening she’d met him, the handsome, older man with the goatee strode into the Dew Drop Inn. Gaspard’s grin widened when he eyed the two, sparkling teeth on display, and he pulled a chair away from another table and gracefully deposited himself at theirs.
“Hello there,” he said to Reeve with all the charm he’d laid before Celeste’s feet a few nights before. “Have you had a longer think about my question?”
“Oh, yes!” Reeve nodded, placing his spoon back down. “Unless you remember going to the temple yourself and doing it, I don’t think it’s possible.”
Gaspard clasped him on the shoulder, and a spark of a laugh came out of him. “Well, thank the gods—yours especially—for that. This one gave me quite the scare,” he said, turning to Celeste as he gave Reeve a shake, and then he stood and called for the children, declaring that it was “arithmetic day” and they couldn’t hide from it no matter how unbearable it was to all of them.
Celeste wondered at the oddness of the interaction, but spied Kori across the tavern. She’d come in at some point, or had perhaps always been there, leaning against the end of the bar. When they made eye contact, the woman pointed at Reeve with one of her daggers and then mimicked dragging it across her throat, brows raised with inquiry. Celeste shook her head and quickly looked away.
“What is the plan?” asked Reeve, unaware how imminent his assassination had almost been.
“Hmm? Oh, well…” Celeste watched Gaspard herd up the three children and lead them outside. There were a few other tables with seated patrons, villagers Celeste had not met and who did not seem terribly interested in making anyone’s acquaintance. “I think what we should do now is listen.”
“Listen? To?”
She gestured with her elbows at the rest of the tavern.
Reeve leaned in, finally lowering his voice for once to a whisper. “To the people? You meaneavesdrop?”
She chuckled at his utterly scandalized look. “I mean inadvertently overhear.”
Reeve said nothing then, eating in silence with a grimace that she regretted inspiring especially since the mundane gossip being traded was largely useless. A few noted that Geezer and Baylen had fixed the North Road lamps, and a younger man mentioned the smithy blowing up, but his drunkenness only made the others half believe the story. There was no talk of anything else odd happening at all unless a set of triplets being born to one of the goats at the dairy was noteworthy.
As boredom won out, Celeste thought to strike up a conversation with the knight—anything to wipe that disapproving look off his face—but things were awkward enough sharing a meal in front of other people. It was more than a little mortifying when she caught Halfrida and Kori whispering to one another at the bar, smirking and pointing at their table. Celeste was unsure what was worse: whatever Halfrida thought the two were up to, or Kori telling her a version of the truth that included Reeve being bound up in Celeste’s bed chamber.
But Reeve solved all of that for her. “I know I am not meant to be asking questions, but may I askyousomething?”
Celeste froze with her spoon in her mouth, and then she nodded.
He blew out a long breath as if he had thought on the importance of what would come out next for an interminable time. He placed down his spoon and splayed his hands flat on the table. “How old are you?”
She nearly answered, but the number caught in her throat. “Why?”
“I am curious as to if you are an ancient human capable of something akin to eternal youth.” Then he squinted ceiling-ward as if he did not want to admit it but forced the answer out anyway, “And also you said you were from Clarriseau, and my brother Gable, who is twenty-eight, told me stories about the island, and—”
“I am the age I look. Why did you become a holy knight?”
He stared back at her, properly interrupted. She wasnotanswering whatever would come next when he puzzled out that she had lived through the horrible things that happened in Clarriseau twenty years prior, and he seemed to accept that.
