CHAPTER 12 #3
If I didn’t know any better, I would say the man is preparing for a garden party, but there are only place settings for two.
He’s already told me he wants to know everything that happened yesterday, and I take note of the isolation the garden will offer.
I wonder if I will finally have an opportunity to ask some questions of my own without fear of being overheard.
Felias saunters across the lawn just as I arrive, his voice carrying across the yard. “Don’t you look lovely, Shivaria.” He waves a hand at the rusty haired male, dismissing him. “Thank you, Enrik, I will handle it from here.”
I’ve begun to expect his warm embrace and the light kiss he plants on my cheek but this time he lingers before pulling away. His eyes glimmer as they catch on the flowers woven into my hair.
“I see you’ve met Tig and Eon,” he says with a knowing smile.
I hadn’t had time to consider whether or not to tell Felias about the sprites, and I’m shocked to learn that he is more than simply aware of them.
“You know them?”
“All my life.” He draws a chair out from under the table, offering me a seat with an outstretched arm.
I expect my uncle to seat himself across from me, but he pulls out a chair to my left, settling in beside me. It only takes a moment to understand why. He wants to talk candidly, without risking our voices carrying into prying ears.
He holds a finger up to silence me before I can release the torrent of questions he surely sees bubbling up to the surface.
“First,” he says, “You tell me everything that transpired yesterday, then I will tell you everything you want to know about the sisters.”
“Sisters?”
His eyes gleam and I scold myself for allowing him to read me so easily.
He’s dangling a carrot, and I want it like I’ve never eaten a meal in my life.
I make quick work of my story, careful not to leave out a single detail no matter how irrelevant it may seem.
The man has known the players in my tale much longer than I have, and I would be a fool not to allow him total transparency, in case there is something I’ve missed.
“I told you to leave the general alone.” He frowns.
“I’m sorry, I think you misheard me,” I say, “It was the general that drugged me, not the other way around.”
“I must say, I’ve never known the male to be quite as unpleasant as you make him out to be. Though he’s never been a particularly jovial sort of fellow.”
I exhale a small sigh of relief. It does feel good to know that I’m not entirely responsible for the general’s consistently foul mood.
“Still, you know as well as I do that you are going to need his favor if you have any intention of meeting the king when he returns,” he says, as he sweeps a thick smear of butter across a slice of berry sweetbread.
“I am acutely aware of that fact.” I frown. “He is just so disagreeable about everything.”
“Everything?” He raises an eyebrow at me disbelievingly.
“Everything,” I say, taking a small sip of lavender lemonade.
“Well, the male must enjoy something,” he insists, “You’d do well to find out what that something is and acquire an immediate and healthy appreciation for it.”
I nod. He is right and at this rate I can’t get on the general’s good side fast enough. Awri is sweet and appears to be abundantly generous with her friends. If she likes him, he must have good qualities. Right?
“Any other questions?” I ask.
“No. The floor is yours, my dear,” he says with a wide and theatrical sweep of his hands.
“I honestly don’t know where to start… Can you understand them? The sisters.”
“Of course, and you can as well. It’s a simple matter of learning to listen.”
“I have listened,” I say.
“And do you understand them?” he asks with a coy smile, obviously aware of what my answer will be.
“No.”
“Then, learn to listen better.” He smiles over his glass as he takes a sip, holding his pinky in the air daintily.
“Which is Tig, and which is Eon?”
“Tig has green eyes, she’s a bit more outspoken and the older of the two.
She came to me the night of your arrival announcing that she was to attend you.
” His brow pinches a bit. He seems as perplexed by the sprites’ actions as I am.
“I thought it wise to wait, but it seems she’s taken matters into her own hands. ”
“Attend me? Why would she want to do that?”
He shrugs, as if it isn’t the strangest thing he’s ever heard.
“Fea rarely explain themselves to mortals, but I do not doubt she has good reason for it. Though, what good reason is to a fea often alludes me,” he chuckles to himself.
Felias takes my hand and his face grows serious.
“It’s not often their kind are bold enough to reveal themselves so fully to a stranger. To other fea or human alike. You’d do well to treat that trust like the honor it is. There is a reason the fea fled this veil, and a reason the ones that remain are still in hiding.
I mean no offense when I say that if I had it my way, you’d have left A’kori without ever knowing of the sisters’ existence. But as it is, all I can do is ask you to keep it to yourself. There is power in the friendship of a fea, and power in the secret of that friendship as well.”
Some of what he says puzzles me but the last of it I understand in a deep primal part of the Drakai I was fashioned to become. Knowledge is power, and the right secret is powerful indeed.
“You trust them?” I wonder aloud.
He’s clearly anticipated my question when the answer tumbles out of his mouth without a second thought, “With my life.”
“With my life?” I ask deadly serious, because those are the stakes, and that is exactly what I forfeit if he’s wrong about the sisters.
Awri didn’t speak as if the fea worked closely with the feyn, she’d even made the fea sound allusive, but I’m not about to make assumptions that can jeopardize my mission, or my life.
“Especially with your life,” he says.
I open my mouth to ask what he means just as my head snaps up to investigate a quick movement out of the corner of my eye. Enrik darts across the lawn at a pace far too hurried to be considered casual. He arrives out of breath, delivering a letter to Felias who pales upon reading it.
“If you’ll excuse me, Shivaria. I have some things to attend.”
The man rushes off before I can speak a word, and the hundreds of questions I still have about the fea sour on the end of my tongue.
I immediately regret that I hadn’t asked him about the Vatruke while we still had time to speak privately.
Standing, I brush an invisible crumb off my dress, resolved to make sure we have another opportunity to speak, soon.