“Why not? She could keep you company and help with the hatchling when it arrives. After all, it may be awake during the day when I am not.” Cléa seemed to have just realized this, and the corners of her mouth pulled down.
“Human babies wake all times of the day and night,” Hannalinde said, hoping to cheer her up with the fact. “I can’t believe Rikard would welcome another human living in his eyrie, though. He barely tolerates the keepers.”
“It’s not for his comfort,” Cléa said dryly.
Aalis nodded. “A woman who is lonely is a woman whose body will suffer for it. I’ve seen it before. The isolation becomes a weight, and the weight presses on the child. You need laughter during the day and someone to notice if you fall on those wretched ladders.”
Cléa added, “You don’t have to suffer alone. You have a mate, and he took a vow to protect you. Let him honor it.”
Your burdens, mine to share.He’d sworn it in front of the whole city in his gruff tone.
She nodded. “I will ask him tonight.”
“I can’t stand to think of you climbing all those ladders now. Let me hire a guard to fly you to the seventh tier,” Cléa begged on the way out of the rookery, after paying Old Aalis and scheduling the next visit.
Hannalinde froze. She knew she should accept the small kindness, but the thought of some strange gargoyle’s arms around her made her feel a sick kind of dread. What if it washim?
“I don’t know,” she stuttered out in a panic, wishing desperately that Rikard was here to think of a more palatable solution. He would be in his office for hours yet, though, buried in complaints and correspondence. Did she dare interrupt him with such a small problem to solve?
Of course not. She’d promised not to trouble him in his daily life. She couldn’t be cowardly about this. “A friend of yours, maybe? Someone you…trust?”
Cléa clucked her tongue. “Of course, you’re shy. How silly of me. I’ll go get Roul. He can’t be too far into his cups at this timeof night. Wait here by the lantern, and I’ll be back before you know it.”
Hannalinde nodded, hugging herself on the spare rookery balcony while Cléa took off into the night, doing her best to ignore the dark, oily presence in her mind. She pushed back against it mentally, forcing it into the recesses of her skull, and to her surprise, she could do it!
She could only hold it back a few seconds before it bled through her defenses, but still! Perhaps with some practice, she could block him out completely. Her heart sped with hope.
Cléa reappeared with Roul, who graciously, with only minor huffing and puffing, hauled her, wingbeat by wingbeat, up to the seventh tier. It was an unsettling ride, but at least she knew and trusted him.
“Thank you,” she said honestly when he deposited her on the balcony. “You are a gem, Roul.”
“Think nothing of it, my girl,” he preened. Cléa rolled her eyes and whisked him off to some social engagement, leaving Hannalinde alone in the quiet eyrie to prepare for bed.
She tidied up the evening trays for the keepers to take away, and it was then she noticed the small parcel on the table. It was wrapped in brown paper and twine and leaned up against the milk jug so she couldn’t miss it. A scrap of paper tucked into the string readfor Hannain Rikard’s precise Nadir’s hand.
Inside was a skein of embroidery silk in a shade of blue so vivid it stopped her breath. It wasn’t the typical woad-dyed blue she could find in the market. Spun from the naturally blue silk of the lazuli moth that lived in the forests to the north, this was much rarer and difficult to obtain. He must have ordered it from a fae merchant weeks ago, perhaps as long ago as the wedding.
She held the silk up to the lamp. The threads caught the glow and shimmered, each one finer than a baby’s hair. It was atreasure and must have cost him a fortune. Did he value her so much?
Chapter 13
Rikard
He’d barely cleared the landing, his legs aching from the climb and his mood soured by a two-hour dispute between a tanner and a gargoyle guard over the precise trajectory of an airborne carcass, when Hanna met him at the door with her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed from sleep. She had the skein of blue silk clutched against her chest like a billet-doux. Which, he supposed, it was.
“Where did you find it?” she asked breathlessly. “The market stalls don’t carry this quality of silk.”
After what she’d done to her wedding dress, he’d had the improbable impulse to gift her something beautiful, something she would love as much as he loved her gesture. He’d sent a keeper to a dozen shops before finding a fae merchant in the lower ring who agreed to import the lazuli silk from sources in the north. It had cost him more effort and coin than he’d expected, but judging from the look on her face, it had been worth it.
“A shop near the south gate,” he said, as though the errand had been trivial.
“Thank you. I love it,” she said, eyes shining.
“It was nothing.” He waved away the gratitude, suddenly self-conscious. Her face fell. He quickly amended, “Nothing you don’t deserve. There is no need to thank me. Tell me about your evening.”
That fixed whatever he’d broken. Chatting merrily about her appointment with Old Aalis, she served him meat and mead, taking only bread and butter for herself.
He frowned at her plate. “You should eat more.”
