She sighed, and he took that as acceptance, bolting upward and sweeping her into his arms. She stared over his bicep, limp, as he swanned with her across the worn rug. She wouldn’t marry him. She couldn’t even stomach being in the same house with him, but she was drained. When she was rested, the right words would arrive.
“All at once the sea was calm, the lassie came to say,” Taven sang, affecting a Southerlands brogue that was so bloody terrible, it almost broke her sour mood. “Rejoice, rejoice, the lassie cried, for the Guardians are with us this day.”
“You’ve gotten worse. Wouldn’t have thought it was possible,” she murmured, scolding herself for letting her wall down, letting him come anywhere near penetrating it. She wasn’t the same woman she’d been when he’d last seen her, but there she was, acting like it anyway.
“Whiskey, rum, and mead, and drum, the men were led astray.” He spun her out and back in. “But the sea was calm, and the sky lacked qualms, for the Guardians are with us this dayyyyy.”
“Taven.”
“This dayyyy!”
“That’s enough,” she said more firmly. “I don’t want Mother to worry.”
Taven abruptly stopped. “I’ll join you. She’s?—”
“No. I’ll see my mother alone.” Elloven turned her head sideways over one shoulder. She had to say it and get it out of the way, because after tonight, she’d draw the boundaries she should have drawn years ago. He already knew what she did to men who crossed them. “Thank you for coming for me, but now that I’m home, things will be different. I’m different.” She restrained a cringe as she offered a hand behind her, a concession to keep him from following her, which he took. “We’ll speak in the morning.”
“Ellie—”
“Good night, Taven.” She released him and broke free, holding the hand he’d held out away from her body. His reticence was only a temporary pardon. He hadn’t brought her home to appease Esmeray, and he hadn’t done it from the goodness of his heart. There was a balance due, but it wouldn’t come in the currency he expected.
“Good night, Ellie. My love,” he called after her. The gentle turn of his voice, his careful balance of tenderness and power, sent shivers tearing down her spine.
Elloven’s mother’s door was cracked. An orange light seeped through the gap. She gave the splintered wood a light nudge and entered a room grotesquely full of candles, most of them nearly melted through, and for a moment, it took her back to her long, sleepless nights at the Reliquary.
“Mama?” Her voice broke. All her careful systems of self-protection had frayed hours ago, but Elloven was once more the little girl who had watched her mother spin magic by the fire and tell the tallest tales of her lost girlhood in the Seven Sisters. The dreamy memories were almost enough to cover the pain circling their lives, even then.
A mountain of blankets shifted, crunched. Her mother’s messy blonde curls, piled and smooshed, appeared before she did. “Ellie? Is that you?”
“It’s me. I’m home.” Elloven stepped inside and locked the door behind her. Taven would be quietly eavesdropping, thinking himself too clever for her to know, but she’d be damned if she let him in.
She unlaced her boots first, then peeled away her outer layers until she was in her shift. The warm, musty room was ripe with the aromas of a life that had been mostly undisturbed for years. Despite the obscene amount of dying light, the place was dim and cloying, like the farthest point in a cave the sun still reached. The stench of liquor had her fighting a gag.
Elloven climbed in beside her mother. Esmeray watched her from the pillow with tears in her eyes. Her rouge had been spread from cheek to chin, the kohl she wore on her eyes a series of scored marks down the sides of her face, like she’d been ravaged by the forest. She opened her mouth, and another waft of spirits hit Elloven in the face. From what Taven had said, she also liked the dream leaves, and even occasionally the truffled toadstools that Elloven and Gennady had been warned against as children. But to hear Taven speak of her, Elloven had expected to find a weak, decaying creature, incapacitated. What she saw was a woman so full of woe that she’d made use of the world around her to persevere.
“My little flower,” Esmeray whispered. One shaking, gnarled hand reached up to cup her daughter’s cheek. A sad smile cut through her wrinkles, far more pronounced than they should have been for a woman of her age. But she’d lost almost everything. Her husband. Her son. Her status. And until that night, her daughter. “You’re not the same.”
Elloven laid a hand over her mother’s and cried. “None of us are.”
“There’s a terrible truth in that, love.” Esmeray turned her head into the pillow to cough. “I could study you all night, but you’re so tired. I see it in your eyes. You were never one for long days.”
Referring to her escape from a burning Whitechurch as a “long day” was overly euphemistic, even for Esmeray. “I couldn’t explain it to you if I tried.”
Esmeray’s glossy eyes scanned her, a tremor lifting her jaw. “I should have fought Lord Quinlanden harder.”
Elloven sighed. “Let’s not, not tonight?—”
“Thank the Guardians for Jesstin. Did you meet any trouble?”
“Not on the road, but there was some rabble in the village. Jesstin dealt with it.”
“I knew he would. He’s a good lad.”
“Why did you send him?”
“Taven wouldn’t have known what to do with the village trouble, would he?” She coughed again. Elloven noted pink stains on the pillow, another heartbreak for later. “We’ll invite Jesstin over for supper one night. That’s what we’ll do; give him a proper thank-you.”
If the kitchen looked anything like the sitting area, Elloven didn’t think they’d be inviting anyone over any time soon. Her mother had once been a skilled cook, though she’d rarely had occasion to when Elloven had been a girl, because they’d had two chefs in their employ back then. In her current state, Esmeray would be hard-pressed to toss together a stew.
