“Well, a simplified version might be something like Skadi’s on her seventh.”
Before I can craft a quip about Skadi seeming more canine than feline, Sabre turns away. And I’m about to lose the only chance I’ve had in weeks to probe him.
“Wait!” I blurt. “I … Have you … Can you spare me a moment, Your Grace? I’d love to talk to you about my grandmother.”
He swivels back, his eyes squeezed shut as he pulls a deep breath through flared nostrils. Like this is precisely why he’s been avoiding me.
“I don’t doubt the subject is quite painful for you, but my searching has borne no fruit. And if I cannot find your piece of the Bannrhorn, well …” There are so many consequences I could name. I don’t know Sabre well enough to discern which one will move him, so I go with the most broad. “Your kingdom will remain fractured.”
It’s hard to tell if Sabre even cares about that. If he desires the crown at all. Or why, outside of my heritage, he’s decided after seven years to participate in the Season.
Resignation softens his features, and his shoulders dip. He gestures toward a stone bench just off the path, consumed by a cloud of overgrown black elderberry bushes.
I sweep aside a branch of dark, spidery leaves, stirring a rich, sweet scent like honey and cooked berries, then take a seat. Sabre sits down at the other end. As far away from me as possible.
I might be insulted, were I at all invested in his courtship.
Silence reigns for several charged moments, broken only by the winds whistling across the moors and over the stone wall surrounding the property. Skadi releases a few long-suffering, canine sighs from her position at her master’s feet. Insulted that we do not seem occupied and yet no one is playing with her.
“What was she like?” I ask, diving in headfirst. “While she was here?”
“She was … ” Sabre starts, then stops. Struggling to find words. “Well, she was radiant. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen at the time.” His eyes flick toward the glowing window. “But it wasn’t just her appearance that made her beautiful. It was her craving for life. Her curiosity. She wanted to know everything about me, about Tír na Dubh. And she had a way of looking upon the world without judgment. Accepting all its graceless sinners as they were, not as they should be.”
I pinch the skin between my thumb and forefinger to forestall tears. It’s as if he’s plucked the description of my grandmother from my own head.
“Well,” Sabre sniffs, “you can imagine how attractive someone like that was to a man who’d never thought very highly of himself to begin with. And who’d recently been thrust into a bid for the monarchy.”
“What did she do while she was here?”
Sabre raises a brow, and my face flames.
“I mean, besides the … well, surely, you know what I …” I recover myself. “Were there places she visited frequently? Anywhere that might have given her a reason to steal your fragment?”
“I have no idea why she did it. Perhaps she thought taking it would mean no other human woman would be forced into the Wild Hunt against her will? Or perhaps there was something sinister in that reading she received in Farlock’s Edge; something she was too afraid to tell me.”
“Does that seer still work there? Perhaps we can pay them a?—”
“She died. Shortly after Margaret and I had gone to visit her. It was the first place I went for answers.”
So strange to hear someone use Granny’s full name. She was Maggie to all our friends and neighbors. There’s reverence in Sabre’s pronunciation. And long-tended sorrow.
“Did she not want you to fall in love with someone else? Maybe she took the fragment out of jealousy.”
“Gods, no.” Sabre laughs, the boisterous thumps of a booming timpani. They reconfigure the harsh planes of his face into something truly breathtaking. I can start to see why Granny Maggie fell for him. She loved to study people’s laughs, tried to encourage them as often as possible. “If she saw me now, she’d tear my head off for spending all this time mourning the lossof her when I could have been …” He tilts his gaze toward the clasped hands resting in his lap. “She’d be terribly disappointed in me.”
He composes himself, sitting up straighter, and the elderberry bush leaves tickle over us like searching fingers. “She spent much of her time here drawing. I assume you’ve found the sketchbooks in her rooms?”
I nod. “I’ve reviewed less than a quarter of them. She was very prolific while she was here. Had an endless well of inspiration to draw from, it seems.” I slide my eyes toward him, suppressing an instinct to nudge his shoulder or take his hand. He looks … Well, he looks touch-starved.
“What was her life like in Breton?” he asks softly. “With Edward.” There’s no jealousy in his question. A bit of envy, perhaps. But it’s clear he never begrudged her happiness.
“I’m afraid I do not know.” I pick at the stiff leaves. “He passed before I was born.“ I’m embarrassed to tell Sabre everything my grandmother sacrificed to raise me. Her position within society, her grandiose estate, a life that would have been far more comfortable—certainly more convenient—than the wild one we lived in the southlands.
“Was she happy?”
“She was.” That Idoknow to be true. “But she was always a little restless. That curiosity you mentioned? It stayed with her throughout the years; she was always searching for something. I used to think it was novelty—a new village to visit, new players coming to town, a new painting to work on. She dragged me all over the southlands, anywhere she could afford to chase her muse. But now I think … perhaps a part of her remained in the Otherworld. And it wasn’t novelty she was searching for, but rather something she didn’t even remember she’d lost.”
Sabre rattles out a breath, angling away from me.
