“Thank you for coming,” Margaret said. Her voice was clipped, but not cold.
“I think it’s time we talked,” Estelle replied, sliding into the seat across from her. “Really talked.”
A server appeared, and Estelle ordered tea. When the woman left, silence stretched between them.
“Where is she?” Margaret asked at last.
“Safe,” Estelle said. “With someone I trust.”
Margaret’s jaw tightened. “You always make it sound as if I’m a danger to her.”
“Not a danger exactly,” Estelle replied quietly. “But the way you’ve behaved...”
“Because you took her,” Margaret snapped, though she kept her voice low. “You took all I had left of Julian.”
The pain in her voice was raw enough to catch Estelle off guard.
“I know how much you loved him,” Estelle said carefully. “And I know how much you love Adara.”
Margaret looked up sharply, as if that acknowledgment was the last thing she had expected.
“But there are things about Adara, about Maris too, that you never knew. Things I’ve been terrified to tell you.”
“Like what?” Margaret asked. Suspicion sharpened her voice, but there was something else there, too. Unease, perhaps.
The server returned with Estelle’s tea. Estelle waited until she had moved away.
“Maris wasn’t...” She paused. “She wasn’t like most people.”
Margaret’s mouth flattened. “If you’re about to tell me she was too good for my Julian...”
“No.” Estelle cut in. “That’s not it. They loved each other. Completely.” She drew in a breath. “And there was a reason for that. One that you might find hard to understand.”
“Try me,” Margaret said curtly.
“Okay,” Estelle said, keeping her voice low. “Maris and Julian were mates.”
“Mates?” Margaret screwed up her face. “Is that meant to mean something to me?”
“There’s more...” Now that she was here in front of Margaret, the idea seemed crazy.
And yet Estelle knew deep in her bones this was the right thing. That this was what Fiona meant when she said,You know what you have to do,when she’d visited Estelle’s cottage the second time.
But knowing it was the right thing and actually doing it, actually saying the words, was harder than she’d ever imagined.
But they have to be said,her dragon told her.
“Maris was different.”
“So you said.” Margaret’s tone grew impatient.
Just say it,her dragon told her.
“Maris was a dragon shifter.” The words tumbled out of Estelle’s mouth so fast that for a moment she wondered if she’d only thought them rather than said them.
But then she saw Margaret’s expression, and she knew she’d said them out loud.
Yes, she heard them,her dragon said.
