She joined him outside in the violet dusk. A dazzling line of people carrying lumens, winding all the way from the village to the sept, drifted by. The esguard who’d come for them indicated they should join. He handed them each a lumen.
“Great. More ghost lights.” Jesstin lifted his out and away from him with nose-curling disgust. “Oh, and who’s this then? Aunt Mathilda?”
Elloven almost laughed at his orneriness but was feeling too sensitive to risk him turning the same annoyance on her. She could hear her mother saying, Not everyone’s bad mood is about you, but it could be said a thousand times, and she still couldn’t help personalizing any change in temperament around her.
“Maya and Farquin, blood-kin,” Ryquin said, stepping out of the line. Behind him trailed a pale-faced, towheaded individual with a gentleness that seemed incongruous next to the dark mischief Ryquin seemed spun from.
“Where’s Sesto?” Jesstin demanded.
“He’ll be along,” Ryquin said.
“Is this a friend?” Elloven asked, looking past Ryquin at the shy man hanging back.
“Daire, my consort,” Ryquin said with a flippant wave, not bothering to turn.
“Hello, Daire,” Elloven said with a light bow.
Daire smiled and offered one in return.
“We are well met.”
“Don’t bow to him, Aelloven, he’s not a noble.” Ryquin’s assertion stole the joy from Daire’s soft face.
“Where I come from, we pay respect to everyone,” she said curtly. Her cousin didn’t exactly exude familial warmth.
Jesstin sank into a bow even the king would have felt was overdone. “Daire, it is an honor of magnitude.”
Daire flushed pink.
Elloven buried a grin in her fist.
Ryquin fumed but said nothing more about it. “Aelloven, I’ve come to escort you to Palatium Mori, where my father is observing rehearsals for the opening ceremony of Cirque Calliope. He’d like you to join him.”
“I would like that as well,” she said, brightening at the thought. “Forgive us for sleeping in. We didn’t mean to waste an entire day.”
“Don’t forgive me,” Jesstin said with a roll of his shoulders. “I’m not sorry.”
Ryquin’s gaze lingered on Jesstin, though it wasn’t annoyance in his eyes but intrigue. “You’ll find daylight has little quarter in Rivenholde. It lasts but an hour, and in that hour, anyone requiring light brighter than what the lumens and torches offer makes use of it. You didn’t sleep in. You’ve risen right on time.”
“The Golden Hour, we call it,” Daire said, chiming in. His voice was as soft as his smooth, childlike face, and almost feminine. “It’s when most construction in the village is completed. Farmers, too, make good use of it.”
“I already explained it,” Ryquin snapped.
Jesstin raised a finger. “I would love, and find riveting, more information about the Golden Hour, Daire.”
His behavior reminded her of his smooth handling of Taven the night he’d escorted her home. It was heartening seeing his humor returned, but it also left her feeling strangely detached, an outsider to his antics instead of a conspirator.
It made her long for the Jesstin and Elloven of the Night Soul.
Daire looked downright anxious at Jesstin’s request, deferring to Ryquin, who closed his eyes and shook his head. The shy consort shrank into himself.
As they began their walk down the valley hill and into the village, Elloven instinctively fell back to Daire’s side, while Ryquin tried—ineffectively—to engage Jesstin in conversation.
“You’re Ryquin’s consort?” she asked when there was enough distance from the others to speak freely.
Daire blinked hard, and a teardrop ran down his cheek. He seemed frustrated by it, squinting again. “Don’t waste pity on me, please. He is good to me, in his way.”
“I’m not the best person to give advice,” she replied. “And certainly not an example to follow.”
