“You misseda humanwalking into our house and let him kick you in the balls?”
“Th-the knee, Father.And it wasn’t him.I think…it was a dwarf?You know how dwarves are, carrying hammers all the time and…attacking people.”
A beat of heavy silence was followed by booming laughter.“Oh, you foolish boy!You bare yourself and our house to the most base of creatures.It is one thing to line your bed with them—we all must take care our loins don’t overheat with loneliness—but it is another to be fooled by them.I should disinherit you and give your brother everything.”
The father took another step before he turned to face Miel as if he was squaring up and getting ready to look down on him.Theo didn’t like Miel either, but this guy sucked at least as much; clearly a trait he’d passed on.
“B-but…how would I know?It was Ash Mouth’s fault!I thought he had brought them.Hedidbring them, and I thought he’d run away to look for his fortune, but in order to get us to take him back, he’d brought gifts.And as you say, when the loins are heated—”
“Ugh.Not for that boy, surely?”
“Well, no.But he had a pretty Elf with him who looked very limber.”
There was another pause, and it had an entirely different quality than the first.
“Limber?”
“Yes!Very.Finely formed mouth, as well.He reminded me of that field hand who ran away with the first two families to leave the estate.”
“Hmm.Well.Where is this Elf, then?”
“I think he might have been looking for the other gift Chambord and I—mostly I—have prepared for you.”
The father sighed.“You may as well show me.”
The footsteps, one set of them still limping, moved away.Theo could hear them for another minute or so, but after that, it was just the sounds of him and Cloudtree breathing.He looked left and right, but the room outside their hiding spot was abandoned once more.
“Do we move?If they attack the others—”
“We can go upstairs.To my room.There should be some weaponry up there, I think, and at any rate, it will be a better hiding place.I was only ever allowed upstairs to clean.They won’t expect me there.”
Theo turned.“They won’t expect you where you’re forbidden to go?And you just said your room’s up there.How’s your room upstairs if you can’t go upstairs?”
Cloudtree shifted from one foot to the other.“Well, my room before my mother left.I didn’t always sleep in the kitchen.”
“You sleep in the—never mind.Okay.Let’s go upstairs, find weapons, then let’s come back to help the others.I don’t even know where they went, do you?”
“No.There is a greenhouse and a shed that connects to the main house, so mayhap there.We will look later.Be ready.”
Cloudtree took a few steps, and Theo heard him carefully turn the doorknob.When he opened the door and the light sliced into the small room, Theo saw the cabinets as well as a set of chairs, plates and piles of linen along with several cases that looked like they had valuable stuff inside them.
“Follow close behind.I will lead you.”Cloudtree let out a long breath, almost a sigh, before he straightened.“I will protect you from my stepfather and stepbrothers if it comes to that.I offered you as much when I mistook you for having been thralled.Now there is danger, and I will stand between you and it as a son of Faerie should.”
Theo adjusted his hood.“That’s really nice and all, but maybe save the speech.Let’s just go and do the thing and find Peter.Come on, I want more weapons.”
In the light coming in from the room, Theo saw Cloudtree’s Adam’s apple bob much like it had back in the entrance hall.
“As you wish.”
Theo decided that there was something lonely and sad about the building, like the smell of wet clothes improperly dried.After having lived with Peter, he knew something about a ridiculously large place that was objectively lonely, given it was only lived in by a vampire and his client and blood donor.
This house though, with four inhabitants if you counted Cloudtree, had none of the warmth Peter’s house had.Even Peter’s kitchen, one of the least used rooms in the house before Theo had moved in, was bright and sunny in comparison.
Cloudtree had led him through a set of rooms that came with odd corners and strange turns.Dust ruled everything, but there was a lot of disuse too, with moth-eaten cloth and spiders scurrying in corners.The wooden staircase clearly had seen more traffic since there was less dust there, but the paintings that hung on the walls didn’t match, had been placed over the rectangular impressions of older paintings that had been taken away.Possibly to sell them.What remained was more or less strict-looking Fae in boring, ostentatious costumes that all blended into sameness pretty quickly.
“You know, your interior decorator really sucks,” Theo whispered as he followed Cloudtree up the stairs, keeping to the sides rather than the creakier middle.The sides were creaky enough, even if they moved slowly.
“Sucks what?And what is an interior decorator?”
