“Can you make animals out of fire like Lyrena?” Maisri asked, throwing a hand out in the direction of the fire that burned steadily at the center of their small camp.
Percival did not look up from the leather strip he was carefully wrapping around the hilt of a new dagger. “No.”
Maisri bounced on her toes and flung her arm in the opposite direction. “What about that tree. Right there. Can you make it—do something?”
Percival sighed. “No.”
She shoved her hand under his nose, between his face and his task, a tiny snowdrop flower tripling in size within her palm in the space of a breath.
“Flowers?”
Percival’s throat bobbed. “No.”
Maisri flung the snowdrop over her shoulder, landing it squarely in the flames of the campfire with impressive aim, considering the weight of the sigh and the intensity of her whining. “Whatcanyou do?” she demanded.
Percival lifted a hand to his temple, the blade abandoned at his side. “We—”
“I thought you were part witch!” the child cried. She threw herself down onto the log that Osheen had dragged up for makeshift seating, not caring or not noticing that the force of her seat had thrown Percival’s tools to the ground. “Witches can doterriblethings! Dangerous things! That’s why the Ancestors locked them away after the Great War—”
“Maisri.” Osheen’s voice brought her up short. Cyara suppressed a smile at the roughness of it. He sounded like he might have been ordering around a soldier rather than a daisy fae child. “I thought you were managing the laundry.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, her head rotating to where her guardian had appeared at the edge of the clearing.
“Then why is Diana down there at the creek, and you are up here warming that log with your bottom?”
Maisri shot to her feet as if the aforementioned bottom burned.
Osheen was halfway to the fireside. Just enough time for Maisri to arch her dark brows in Percival’s direction. “Later. Think of something.Anything.” Then she scampered down the hill, leaving a trail of tiny snowdrops sprouting up through the permafrost in her wake.
Percival stared after her, his hand scrubbing away the mop of tangled black hair that had fallen forward over his brow.
“I traveled with you for weeks. I thought she’d have given up by now,” he said, not directing his words at either Cyara or Osheen specifically.
“Children are more tenacious than adults,” Cyara said, rising from her seat on the other side of the fire. She’d finished grinding the spices for their evening meal.
“And twice as irritating,” Osheen added, dropping a heavily feathered bird beside the fire.
Cyara lifted a brow in his direction. She’d have given anything for a court of mischievous children rather than conniving elementals. “That is a matter of opinion.”
Osheen shrugged. “Well, now you know mine.”
“And mine,” Percival said faintly. “I’m going to collect firewood.” And then over his shoulder— “Don’t tell her where I’ve gone.”
“No promises,” Osheen said under his breath as he dropped down to the ground along with the bird. He hadn’t bothered with a field dressing; that told Cyara he hadn’t had to go far from camp in order to catch it. Good to know that the surrounding land was plentiful. And birds were always the easiest to catch.
“At least he’s more helpful this time,” Cyara observed as Percival disappeared beyond the tree line.
There was a marked difference between the sullen man from their first journey through the human realm and the one accompanying them now. He was still plenty prickly; but without Veyka to needle him constantly, he was at least polite. Veyka had not taken them far—just through a rift of her own making, from the edge of Eilean Gayl’s lake to its less auspicious counterpart in the human realm.
They would make the remainder of the journey the slow way—on foot.
For now, at least.Cyara buried that thought deep before even a trace of it could show upon her face.
“And she’s only cried once.” Osheen nodded to where Diana kneeled at the edge of the creek, wringing out fabric. He turned back to his task—preparing the bird to be cooked—without looking at Cyara. “Why are they here at all?”
She was not surprised by the question, nor that it had taken him multiple days of travel to ask it. Like her, Osheen watched first and asked later. He was observant, but not as used to theday-to-day subterfuge that life in the elemental court demanded. That would be one of her few advantages when the time came.
“Percival studied the Sacred Trinity during his time at Avalon. He is our best hope of finding the grail. And where he goes, Diana goes,” Cyara said. With a flick of her wrist, already aching, she banked the flames down to the coals required for cooking.
