Chapter 5
After insisting the molting season must be going long and urging Sorcha not to speak of it, Maeve had half-convinced herself that the feather didn’t matter.
For three nights, she went to sleep staring at that magnificent feather, laid upon the top of her chest of drawers, and for three mornings woke to the same sight.
By the fourth, she was convinced that this Mister Soren was clearly avoiding her.
There were signs of his presence at the school. Briseis commented on the third day that the tasks she’d asked him to do had been completed, although she too hadn’t seen him since that day.
Maeve smiled through her disquiet. “He’ll come back to us when he’s ready,” was what she told Briseis, and, “Sometimes feathered beings lose one here and there, it’s nothing to be concerned about,” was what she told her students.
She wasn’t sure at first she’d convinced them, especially when several pairs of eyes cut to Kiri for confirmation.
Clapping her hands, she redirected their focus to the multiplication tables they were learning. Poor Kiri—it wasn’t his fault that his brother had made a spectacle of himself.
She told herself not to care, not to mind the looks, and eventually, as they neared a week without hide nor hair of the missing manticore, the students at least seemed to forget. It was why she loved children and working with them.
Children didn’t care who you were. They didn’t care about your past or what you may have done.
Their joy was boundless, their forgiveness vast. Maeve certainly had many things to figure out still—what she would do with herself in both the near and far future, where she fit now within her own family—but at the school, even full of feathers and green faces, she felt right at home.
The children welcomed her, and that was enough for Maeve.
And so, as the eighth day dawned, Maeve skipped down the stairs, lighter for having given up her worries about all this feather nonsense.
If it meant something, surely Mister Soren would’ve said by now.
Maybe he was shy. Maybe he didn’t like her—in which case, good riddance.
She’d no time for people with poor taste.
“You’re bright and cheery today,” her mother noted as Maeve ate her breakfast quickly.
“It’s a beautiful day,” Maeve sing-songed.
“Did something good happen?” asked Blaire over her own bowl.
Maeve’s smile turned brittle, but it held. No, nothing good had happened for Maeve in quite some time. She’d just chosen not to care this morning.
“Can your company not be enough?”
Blaire’s lips thinned, her gaze falling to her breakfast.
Maeve’s smile fell with it.
Their mother patted her shoulder. “Don’t tease,” Aoife chided.
I wasn’t teasing. At least, she hadn’t meant to. Not really.
She didn’t mind Blaire’s company—her younger sister was the dreamy sort, her soul full of poetry and color and romantic ideas. Blaire could wile away a whole day staring at a flower or following a bee. It meant she was a fairly quiet type, which suited Maeve just fine.
She’s always been sensitive. Any little thing could hurt Blaire’s feelings—it was exhausting.
Maeve didn’t usually watch her tongue. What others might take for teasing, Maeve considered honesty.
She didn’t lie, even if she delivered something with batted eyelashes.
It was taking time and effort to remember that she couldn’t just say anything to Blaire.
Breakfast was finished in silence until Maeve bid her mother and sister farewell.
Outside, the stables were already abuzz. The weather was warming, the days lengthening. It would be prime horse-selling season soon, and so Sorcha was hard at work preparing those intended for sale.
Maeve rarely paid much mind to the stable schedule, although this time of year usually meant the grooms were so busy, hardly anyone paid her any mind in return.
Such a shame. She could use an appreciative glance or flirtatious smile today.
Instead of a handsome groom, her eye caught on a flash of matted gold on the floor of the work area attached to the manor.
Veering toward the openair workshop, Maeve ducked to peer under one of the tables that made up the busy area.
A forge and kiln had been built beneath the shelter of a pitched awning.
The stables had a smithy already; this workshop was used mostly by her eldest brother Connor and now her brother-in-law Orek.
And speaking of Connor, it was his blonde head she’d seen poking between a few sacks. Leaning over the table, she met Connor’s eye as he rolled over onto his back, clearly having just woken up.
Maeve didn’t know whether to laugh or frown.
The brother she’d known had been the noble sort, the spitting image of their father in uniform.
She was used to seeing him comport himself like the knight he was—back straight, boots pristine, hair shorn.
The Connor blinking back at her hadn’t bathed in some time, hair and face matted with soot, and his old tunic loose and ratty.
It was…embarrassing to see him like this.
None could quite explain the change in him, only that after a mission for Lady Aislinn had gone badly a few years back, he’d given up the duties of a knight, to their father’s dismay. Instead, he haunted his workshop, making…furniture.
Fates, what must the grooms think of him? Maeve bit back her cringe.
“I don’t know which smells worse—you or the horses.”
Connor huffed but didn’t look up. “Don’t be a brat.”
“I’m not. I’m being a concerned sister.” Leaning into the shade of the awning, she whispered, “If you don’t clean up, I’ll tell Sorcha and she’ll mother you straight into a bath.”
That earned her a scowl. Maeve nodded triumphantly.
Connor grumbled and heaved himself up. As Maeve waited, she spotted a few of the grooms admiring the view of her leaned over the table. Perking up, Maeve curled her lips in a sultry grin. Ah yes, this could still be fun.
A disgusted sound filled the workshop. “Can you do anything other than flirt?”
“Of course, brother,” she quipped without looking at him, “I’m quite accomplished. I’ve the qualification documents to prove it.”
Connor grunted dismissively. “Papers.”
Turning her smile on him, she corrected, “Important, expensive papers.”
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Full of questions this morning. And yes, I do, but I thought it’d be nice to bid good morning to my darling older brother.” Fluttering her hand in a teasing wave, Maeve said, “Well, I’m off! Ta!”
Another snort followed her, but so did the admiring glances of more than a few grooms.
See? There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
“Maeve, might I have a word?”
Maeve looked up from where she’d been straightening out the desks. Usually the children were good about replacing them at the end of the day, but the weather had been so nice, all of them bouncing in their seats, she hadn’t had the heart to keep them there a moment longer.
Briseis stood just inside the threshold of Maeve’s classroom, the second of two. Briseis kept the larger of the rooms, where she taught the younger children. Maeve’s main duties were to oversee the older children—four in total, including Kiri.
Over the dragoness’s shoulder, Maeve spied a few vaguely familiar green faces. The pair of orc men blushed when they saw her looking at them.
“Of course. What can I do for you?”
Parents come to complain? Maeve stiffened her smile.
Waving the orcs—and to her surprise, a few harpies and even a manticore, although not Mister Soren—into the room, Briseis said, “There’s been a request for the school to hold evening classes for those who’d like to learn to read and write Eirean.
I said I’d arrange it, but that was before I was elected, and my mayoral duties are in the evenings. So, I was wondering…?”
Maeve peeked at the group behind Briseis again. Ah, so not parents. New pupils.
The new manticore boldly met her gaze, his slitted pupils dilating. A cocky grin kicked up one side of his split lip.
“I’d be happy to,” she found herself saying.
“Oh, thank you so much!” Briseis sighed in relief. “We can’t offer you a larger stipend, but—”
Maeve waved away her concerns. “No need. I’m happy to help, and it will keep me busy. Give me a week to draw up some lessons.”
Cheers rang out, and Maeve was quickly subsumed into the group. Her hand disappeared into many other much larger ones as it was pumped, shaken, and kissed. She learned quite a few names, and it didn’t pass her notice that many of the prospective students were men.
No doubt single men.
How interesting.
There were two harpies as well, Maritza and Andreen, the former of whom looked at Maeve as hungrily as the orc men.
The last to greet her was the manticore.
“And this is Diar, one of Kiri’s brothers.”
Fluttering his massive wings, Diar grinned, showing off his many sharp teeth. “Why would my brother ever run from you?” he purred, whiskers tickling the back of her hand as he bent to kiss it.
Why indeed? “I haven’t the faintest idea. Please assure him I don’t bite.”
Diar’s lips curled into a sultry smile, and he opened his fanged mouth—no doubt with a quip about how he wouldn’t mind biting—when Briseis swooped in to herd them all out of the school so she could lock up.
This distraction and out were both reliefs.
Maeve was used to flirts—in fact, in the past, that’s who she’d sought out attention from.
She understood the game and knew how to win.
Diar’s cocksure grin and arrogant air were nothing new; she could handle them.
And yet, the sight of it filled her with…
coolness. She didn’t care for it this time around.
Maeve had always been careful when choosing her liaisons.
Sure, she’d flirt with anyone for a bit of fun, but when it came to allowing someone in close, to touch her, there she was more selective.
Feelings mustn’t ever be in danger—even if many men said they were game for such an arrangement, they were often lying to themselves.
She’d been good at spotting the signs of a potential partner, as well as when it was time to extricate herself.
The one time she hadn’t, the one time she’d allowed herself feelings and foolishly thought them returned, it’d spelled disaster at Queen Angharad. She was still living with the consequences.
It took a little time and effort, but Maeve finally escaped the group. She had more than a few offers to escort her home, but she assured them she was perfectly safe in the middle of the afternoon.
Diar, however, seemed determined to make mischief. Raising one of his big paws in farewell, he called, “I’ll be sure to tell Soren all about your class.”
Maeve kept her expression neutral, waving to the group before heading down the path for home, skirts swishing around her legs.
What did it matter really if Soren knew? They hadn’t even properly met, and he seemed determined to keep it that way.
Even if the fallen feather meant something, surely his absence meant more.
It wasn’t worth thinking about. She could have her fun elsewhere. And before any of that, she had work to do—a lesson plan and finding out if Sorcha had written that letter to Lady Aislinn.