George glanced at Ean, who dipped his chin so quickly she’d have missed it if she wasn’t looking for confirmation. The pixies fixed Dunstan enough to make his healing less painful but not rouse suspicion of the king. “Is he alone? One of you should go sit with him. He must be so scared. I feel horrid.”
“He’s got a girl there,” Burke offered.
“What?”
Ean nodded. “Helena came to act as his aide.”
George’s brows pulled together as Burke added, “I offered to relieve her, but she wanted to stay.”
Knowing Dunstan was safe and cared for certainly helped, but she still fidgeted, bouncing on the balls of her feet, picturing Dunstan up in the air, hearing the echoes of his screams. She’d have liked to go to him herself, but couldn’t risk her father finding out. Gasparo could come for any of them next.
She should get him first. Maybe while he was asleep or seated at his desk. She could mirage herself and stab him—with a real knife—just as he’d done to her mother. Her teeth gritted.
“It’s not the same as before,” Adda consoled her. “You have time, Georgie. Dunstan’s safe, he’s recovering. Isahn’s safe, he’s alive. Hildy’s with him. You needallof them—all of us. They’ll be back soon with more information. Then we can make our move.”
It’s not the same as before. Not the same as with Mamma.She was older now, wiser, and she had a team.
Slowly, George came around, smoothing over her urge to retaliate immediately with the logic that implementing a plan, with support, was still the best course of action. She hadn’t acted rashly yet, as many times as she’d wanted to. This wasn’t the time to start. “All right, we wait.”
twenty-nine
Isahn finds himself home.
“Deiwa,”Hildybreathedasthey rode up the drive to Staridge House.
It was a bit before midnight when they’d arrived in Midlake. His forested town tended toward later hours and was still a hive of activity when they rode through. The cobbled roads and homes were well-maintained by local watercoursers, windshifters, and earthshapers. Dancing flames from firebearers, also on his payroll, lit the streets and offered warmth on the cool spring night. Coming home was seeing it through fresh eyes, and Midlake was a little paradise in the woods, surrounded by pines, and awash in a welcoming golden glow.
He’d expected Hildy to focus on the elemental magic all around them. Instead, she’d gushed nonstop about the differences between his hometown and hers. She admitted he’d been right when he described the colors of Selwassan buildings as being like Duhra itself, all gray and brown stone, and wood.Lots of wood. It was the opposite of Domossan architecture in many ways, which invoked the colors of sea and sky.
“I don’t remember that,” he’d said.
“Why the fuck are the roofs made of reeds?” Hildy asked as they rode through town.
Isahn explained thatch to her. She found it odd but was suitably impressed.
She went on about the uniquely organic nature of the homes in Isahn’s town. The buildings had never struck him as significant, but he supposed the way they blended into the forest, quaint and bubbly like stubby willows with their thick roofs hiding whole stories beneath the thatch, was quite adorable when compared with the crisp, stone structures in Domos.
Staridge was another story; it was all stone and dwarfed the buildings in the village with its many stories and glass-domed sky room atop the house. The sprawling sandstone seat of the earldom was impressive. That was the point of an estate house, after all. But it was built into the slope of the ridge for which it was named, and when Hildy saw the place from theback, Isahn was certain she’d lose her mind. There were two more levels invisible from the front. The opposite side was all floor-to-ceiling windows offering stunning views of Lake Rasda during the day and the stars—also for which the home was named—at night.
It was good to be back.
“Deiwa,” Hildy said again. “It’s really beautiful here. Those stars,” she gushed.
“I’m glad it’s a cloudless night. This is the perfect time to be outside.”
“I didn’t realize the name was so literal.”
Isahn chuckled. His home had once been styled Star Ridge, eons ago. At some point, one of his ancestors decided to class the name up by dropping an R and mushing the words together.Perched to the east of Midlake, half the property was pure untouched forest. One quarter held the house and lawns, and the final stretch of his estate was Lake Rasda itself. At one time, the earldom held the full lake within its bounds, but Isahn’s great-great-grandfather, on his mother’s side, wrote an easement to grant use of the water back to the people. It was the right thing to do.
When they emerged from the forest into the vast clearing that hugged his home, Isahn awaited the familiar wash of pride, that feeling of ancestral connection, the sense of responsibility that always filled his chest, even after something as small as a trip to town. He felt it as a child, he felt it as a man. And while the sight of Staridge still evoked appreciation and nostalgia, something had changed.
He definitely didn’t feel as great as he should have, but it was still good, overall, to be home.
A small voice in the back of his mind whispered that home had changed locations at some point during the past month. That would be a problem, seeing as he was the earl.
He sighed, trying to release the odd ball of tension tumbling in his gut while they rode up the drive. A faint sense of agitation hovered around him, even as the front doors opened and light from within streamed forth.
Solaelia drifted onto the front porch, smiling placidly as she gazed upon the new arrivals. Her cornflower blue dress rippled in the night’s breeze, and her wheat-colored curls were piled high.Always so godsdamned put together.
