Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Margaret
Isleep until afternoon and it isn’t sleep, it’s a collapse.
The first thing I do after I awake is reach for my tablet to check on Vidar.
Nothing.
Four messages. All delivered. None read. I scroll back through them, which is a mistake, because they get less casual as they go.
Are you okay?
Where’d you go?
Vidar, just tell me you slept.
And one at midday I would pay a substantial amount of currency to unsend.
I’m not angry. That’s the thing. I keep waiting to get angry and it isn’t coming, because I sat at that kitchen table and watched him realize in real time he’d been pointed at the wrong conclusion for so many years.
Mainly I’m worried about him being alone while he’s got to be upset with all of these changes. Why won’t he let me in? Let me help?
Ugh.
He probably hasn’t slept in over a diurnal.
Then I sit up properly and see the chair.
There’s an outfit on it.
Which means Avery came into this room while I was asleep and laid it out and left, and I did not wake up. That tells me something about the state I was in that I’d rather not examine.
It’s white. A tube top and a skort, both white, and a pair of white flip flops set neatly on the floor beneath.
I hold the top up. It’s beautiful. It’s also, and I say this with love, an absolutely insane choice of garment for this planet.
I have spent eleven diurnals on Tarvos and nine of them have involved a jungle.
This will not survive one afternoon without a food stain.
“Avery,” I say out loud to an empty room.
I put it on anyway. Because it’s clearly a gift, and because everything else I own is either filthy or borrowed. And there’s something nice about a friend sneaking into your room to leave you something pretty after the worst night of your life.
I use the cleansing unit and this time program it to blow out my short hair fluffy and silky straight, which I know Vidar likes best. And I even take a moment to apply slightly more makeup than usual. All of this helps me to feel more awake and ready to take on my day.
I slide into the flip flops.
And I go downstairs.
“Good morning! You look nice.”
Avery is in the kitchen and she is much too happy. She hands me a cup of human-style coffee, exactly the way I like. I love her so much. What would I do without Avery and her family?
I take a sip of coffee. “It’s afternoon,” I point out.
“Is it?”
She’s dressed. Not house-dressed, but properly dressed, in something teal with actual jewelry, and her hair is done.
“Why are you dressed like that? Are you going somewhere?”
“I’m always dressed like this.”
“Avery.”
Mitry comes tearing around the corner wearing a nice dress with a ribbon in her hair. “Aunt Margaret, I have a ribbon.”
“You certainly do.”
“Mama said I have to not get it dirty until—”
“Mitry,” Avery cuts in.
Mitry claps both claws over her own mouth.
“Until what?”
“Nothing.” Avery smiles.
Hannibal comes in from the vehicle bay wearing a formal sash across his red chest and nice black pants and his most ornate silver belt buckle. He is enormous and looks like a male who would very much prefer to be wearing his uniform.
“Hannibal.”
“Margaret.”
“Why are you wearing a sash?”
“I have been instructed not to answer.”
“Instructed by whom?”
“I have also been instructed not to answer that.”
He crosses to the dispenser with the dignity of a male who has been given orders and intends to follow them exactly. Avery quietly hands him Sela, who is also dressed in a charming outfit and a bow in a band around her head.
And Dagr is at the table eating. His hair is wet from the cleansing unit and there is no chalk left on his face anywhere. He is eating an enormous quantity of something with his elbows on the table.
Mitry says something I don’t catch.
And Dagr laughs.
It’s the first time I’ve heard it since the gourd yard. I have to turn around and look at a cabinet for a second.
Skylo is under the table with all three heads on Dagr’s feet. He came home from the med lab this morning, there’s a shaved patch above his shoulder the size of a dinner plate with a seal over it, and he’s moving stiff. But he greets me with three puffs of smoke from all three heads.
“Has anybody heard from Vidar?” I ask.
Everyone in the kitchen answers at once.
“Nope,” says Avery. “Haven’t seen him since before the alignment.”
“He is well though,” Hannibal responds.
“No idea where Coalstone is,” says Dagr, to his plate.
I look at all three of them. “What the heck is going on with all of you?”
“Get in the car,” Avery orders.
On the drive over to parts unknown, my best friend hands me a small black box.
I raise an eyebrow. “What’s this?”
“Do not open it. Put it in your pocket.”
I sigh and do as ordered.
We come around the drive and the dragon house comes up on our left.
Red and gold, three stories, jaws open at the roof peak, wings fanned out with their metal spikes catching the morning light.
The lake glitters in front of the house.
And I gasp with delight when I see that the entire front lawn has been transformed.
There are rows of chairs. Someone has erected a small stage at the lake end so that whoever stands on it has that whole view at their back.
There are decorations in flame colors along the drive.
There’s a long buffet being set up under an awning.
And there are hundreds of beings on the lawn.
“Avery,” I cry out, “What’s happening? What is this party for?”
“Get out of the car.”
I eagerly hop out and mingle with the crowd.
Riley Touchstone has a tablet she’s checking, obviously.
Bergelmir and Chloe are here because this is their house.
Aegir Touchstone has two offspring hanging off him.
Skoll and Ariana. Idun and Jada with a toddler on a hip.
Sherkis, Justical, Lurcas and half the moms group.
Neighbors I met during the trick or treat.
Every child in the community is running the length of the lawn shrieking, because it’s a party and there’s a buffet and nobody is watching them closely enough.
Bestla and Grandma Narvi are seated in the front row with a clear view of everything, which I suspect they arranged personally.
Bane Ashmoor and his bound are here from Perth.
And there are a large group of intimidating Hyrrokin I have never seen in my life who I suspect are from the Royal Academy.
They’re standing in clusters near the back, most of them older, most of them dressed like they came from somewhere formal and didn’t change.
Every single one of them is looking at the same place.
I follow where they’re looking.
Vidar Coalstone stands at back of the rows of chairs.
He’s clean and in formal Hyrrokin dress. He still wears the reading glasses. He’s got a black sash across his chest that bears the Royal Academy seal. He’s got on more formal black pants and a belt with an elaborate silver belt buckle. He’s so handsome it’s almost blinding.
I race across that lawn in white flip flops. “Where have you been?”
“Margaret.”
“You walked out of that kitchen and didn’t say one word to me. Not one word. I have sent you four messages. You didn’t read a single one.”
“I did, I just couldn’t answer because I wanted to surprise you with this.”
I’m barely listening, too busy getting out a flood of anguish. “You were covered in Skylo’s blood. You hadn’t slept in a diurnal and a half and got in a vehicle and drove off. I have been lying up there going out of my mind.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
Music starts.
I turn my head and Riley Touchstone is standing beside a sound unit with her hand still on it and the most enormous grin I have ever seen on a human being. I notice that all the assembled have taken seats.
And then Vidar picks me up.
“Oh my,” I gasp. No one has ever picked me up and held me in his arms since I was an adult. I always assumed I weighed too much. And yet Vidar carries me as if I were light as air.
He carries me up the lawn between the rows of chairs while two hundred beings applaud and whistle. I can hear Mitry shrieking somewhere behind me. Vidar sets me down on a stage with the whole glittering lake at my back.
The music stops.
The crowd sits.
It goes very, very quiet.
And Vidar Coalstone gets down on one knee in front of me.
“Oh,” I say out loud. Like an idiot.
“Margaret Reyes.” His voice carries. He has clearly practiced this. “Before I ask you anything I must tell you what I have done today.”
Somebody in the third row says shhh to somebody else.
“At the second hour this morning I called an emergency meeting of the full council of the Royal Hyrrokin Academy.”
I put a hand over my mouth.
“I gave them a formal presentation, thereby properly filling the sighting. I formally withdrew the central conclusion of three published monographs and years of work, on the record, in front of every Fellow of the Academy. As of this morning, the Skyggjar holds emergency protected status through Sir Bane Ashmoor’s office.
” His eyes don’t leave mine. “Any being who hunts it goes to prison. The listing on the outer-sector exchanges is now a criminal solicitation. It cannot be fulfilled.”
There is a noise from the crowd. Somebody starts clapping and somebody else shushes them.
“And the Academy will issue a public statement before the close of business today, with the Queen’s seal of approval.
It will describe what that animal actually is.
” His voice changes. “It is not a predator of offspring. It has never taken a child and it is instead a guardian species and I will spend the rest of my career saying so.”
Heat forms behind my eyes. “That’s what you were doing while you were gone?”
“Yes, that’s why I couldn’t answer because I was busy with all of that, and I wanted to surprise you with this.”
“I love you,” I whisper.
He takes a breath. “At the end of that session I requested formal release from the Vow of the Empty Hearth. With cause. It was granted. Entered and witnessed, in the same chamber in which I swore it, by the same council that received it. The Presiding Fellow asked me what the cause was and I stood in front of my peers and told them that I had met a human female whom I wished to take as my bound.”
“You did not. In front of the entire Academy?”
“In front of the entire Academy. And I would like to point out that I did that before I had asked you, which was possibly not the correct order of operations.”
Somebody in the crowd laughs. I think it’s Bane.
He takes my hand in his claw. “Margaret, I am lucky to have met you during your vacation and my latest investigation. You are one of the most honorable and loyal beings I have ever met. The IBB was lucky to have you and they lost a great peacekeeper when you left. And most importantly, you made a vow to me that you did not owe me and you kept it when I could not.”
Oh gods.
“And you made me listen to a child,” he says. “I did not want to. You made me do it anyway. I like the fact that you were a believer and helped me to see beyond my skepticism. We make a great team.”
I can’t say anything at all.
“I have a domicile on the Academy grounds. It is stone with a walled garden and a library. There is a room facing east that gets the morning light between the second and the fifth hour and the opposite wall would take acoustic treatment extremely well.”
I make a sound.
“You would work in it. That is what it is for. I stood in the doorway of that room yesterday and worked out whether the light was good enough for you and whether there was space for a desk and a chair you are fond of.”
I bite at my lip. This man is killing me with kindness.
“And if you do not want it,” he says, “I will come to Salo.”
The lawn goes absolutely silent.
He takes a small black box out of his pocket and opens it. It is a gorgeous ring, a with clear stone with fire in the middle.
He takes my hand. “Margaret Reyes. I love you with my heart and my fire. I want to be the male who puts out all of your flames. Will you remain here on Tarvos as my bound, until days turn into time? Will you walk with me to the courthouse and make it legal? And will you do me the honor of becoming the mother of future Coalstones?”
He thinks I might say no?
“Yes,” I say. “Yes to all of it. Yes.”
The lawn erupts.
It takes a full nanco to settle again, and Vidar has slid the ring onto my finger. I stare at it like a woman who has lost her mind. “Wait,” I say. “Wait. Everybody wait. Sit down.”
Two hundred beings sit back down.
I pull the box out of my pocket.
Vidar’s whole face changes. “What is that?”
I open the box and find a wedding band of heavy, dark, hammered metal. There is a small folded note in the box in Avery Hellstone’s handwriting that says YOU’RE WELCOME.
I look out at the crowd.
Avery is standing at the end of a row of chairs with both hands over her mouth and her whole face wrecked.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m bad at this. I want everybody to know in advance that I’m about to be bad at this.”
Somebody laughs. Bestla, I think.
“I built my whole new life by myself. I built it alone and I have been proud of that for six years.” My voice cracks and I keep going.
“I sit down across from beings nobody believed, listen to them properly and work on their cold cases. And even though I now work in what some call purely entertainment, you treated me with respect from the very beginning. I am proud to call such an honorable scientist as my friend and coworker to say that I love you in return.”
I hold up the ring. “Vidar Coalstone. Will you be my husband? Will you put up with me producing my podcast from our home? Will you walk to the courthouse with me and be my bound until days turn into time? And will you be the father of our offspring?”
“Yes,” he says immediately. “Yes. Yes.”
He stands and I slide that band onto his claw and it fits, because Avery Hellstone is a professional.
And then he takes my face in both claws, very carefully, with the silver tips well away from my skin.
And he kisses me for the first time. It is spectacular.
All those diurnals of not touching, of a hand’s width of air in a hallway, a claw braced against a wall away from my shoulder, of sitting apart in the dark with our knees not quite touching…It all melts away.
His mouth is hot. Everything about him is hot. And that forked tongue comes into my mouth and I whimper into his mouth. Finally, we break apart, our chests rising and falling.
He picks me up off the stage. My feet come entirely off the ground and he swings me in a full circle with the lake going by behind him. I’ve got both hands on his horns because they are right there and they are apparently handles.
The entire lawn is on its feet clapping and whistling.