Chapter 14
Talvie
The moment I close my room’s door between me and the world, I yank my necklace over my head.
“Lumi, help. What am I doing?”
The little moon rises until she shines above my head, leaving an empty pendant behind. I drop the chain on the bed, where it glints in her soft moonlight.
“From what Lumi hears, you are helping Lark while helping yourself.”
Ouch. I only just realized how self-focused I’ve been, so the kick in the teeth is a bit much.
Have I done anything for someone else without it also serving me? Even back at the palace, when I tried hard to please Taynia, that was for me too. I wanted to get back the relationship we once had. I wanted to feel loved again.
“But living with him,” I say slowly. “With seven orphans. That wasn’t part of the plan.”
“Lumi doubts running from your family or going into hiding was your plan either, yet here we find ourselves.”
“Too many truth bombs, Lumi.” With a groan, I drop onto my narrow bed, burying my face in my hands. “How did this happen?”
“Well, Queen Taynia ordered—”
“Not that,” I grumble. “All of this. This…mess.”
“You are uncomfortable,” Lumi observes, glowing faintly with what feels like smug superiority.
I toss my hands in the air. “Of course I’m uncomfortable!”
“It’s good.”
I glare at her, but she only bobs in the air. Her serenity mocks me.
“How is this good?” I ask, but even as I say it, memories creep in—the kids’ laughter, the warmth of the kitchen, the way Lark reached out and brushed flour from my cheek. My stomach twists at the thought, warmth curling in my chest.
“Change is good,” Lumi informs me. “You were stuck in the palace, never seeing beyond the walls constructed around you. Now, you have room to grow.”
If this is what growth feels like—this sting in my chest, the confusing pull between who I was and what I see now—then I’d rather pass.
“You make it sound easy, but this feels impossible.”
“Not easy, nor impossible. You are already doing it,” Lumi says simply. “Growth is often hard. Often painful. Sometimes things must break and stretch in new ways to find new reach.”
“Great,” I sigh. “I can’t wait to add painful on top of awkward and guilty in the list of what I’m feeling.”
Before Lumi can reply, a sharp rap sounds at my door.
Her glow dims in an instant, and the pendant near my hand shifts with the weight of the returning moonstone.
Do remember to breathe, Valkie.
I slip the chain over my head and shove my anxieties down with it.
Biting cold nips at my cheeks as I step out into the night air from the inn’s back door, the heat of the kitchen still clinging to my skin. The heavy wooden door swings shut behind me, cutting off the last murmurs of conversation from the staff winding down after closing.
I heave the trash bag higher and head for the bins along the edge of the courtyard. Soap smell lingers on my hands, much more pleasant than the smells emanating from the bag. Lifting it over the lip of the bin makes my arms ache after hours of dishwashing. At least I didn’t break anything tonight.
The sky above the Frozen Forest is clear and cold, the stars like ice chips scattered across purple velvet. I pull my coat tight around me and start back, only to jump at the figure pulling free from a shadow.
Lark stands in the dim light spilling from the inn’s lantern, a small bundle cradled in his arms. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” His four-winds hat sits low over his forehead, as always, but something small and bristly shifts atop it.
Hugo clings to the brim, his little eyes bright and alert, enjoying his nocturnal adventures.
There’s movement at ground level, too. A snow fox darts into the darkness pooled between two cottages.
The air is thick with the scent of pine and fresh snow as the bushy white tail disappears into the forest. The rare sighting has me in awe, even as more shadows slip away between the trees. I've never seen animals come so close.
I stop in my tracks. “Lark? What are you doing out here?”
“Eevi wouldn’t settle. I didn’t want to wake the house.”
“Wayg, wayg.” Eevi giggles.
I glance down at the babbling girl in Lark’s arms. Her round face is barely visible beneath the layers of blankets, but her wide, wakeful eyes gleam in the lantern light.
“She’s usually asleep by now, isn’t she?”
“You’d think,” Lark mutters, bouncing her gently.
Eevi lets out a squeal, which Hugo answers from above. They make such a sweet tableau it’s impossible not to smile back.
I clear my throat. “Since you’re here, I could use your help with something.”
Lark raises an eyebrow.
“Daria came by earlier. Another member of her cleaning staff left Ylvara for warmer lands, so now she needs me on cleaning duty tomorrow instead of dishes.”
“Ah.” Lark’s mouth twitches. “And you’re afraid you’ll break the mops? Tear the sheets? Flood the washing chambers?”
“Har, har. No, although now I’m a little worried about those things. I just…don’t want to mess it up. Especially not when Daria is keeping our secret.”
His teasing fades, and he nods. “What do you need to know?”
“Everything! I’ve never cleaned a room before. Er, I mean, someone else’s room. A guest room. You know what I mean.”
Lark exhales, adjusting his stance. “It’s not complicated. You’ll go in after the guests leave, clear out any dishes, empty the trash, swap the towels and sheets. You can set out the vacumage to do the floors while you clean the wash chamber.”
“The wash chamber?”
“Ye-p.” He chuckles. “Those need cleaning pretty often. Ask me how I know.” He sticks his tongue out at the adoring face smiling up at him.
Too angelic to ever sully a washing chamber, I’m sure.
“Don’t worry though, I doubt you’ll have to scrub anything.
Places like this use Pixie Polish. Just spray it over the counters and tub, a bit in the commode, and let the pixie dust make it sparkle. ”
That makes me feel marginally better. “And remaking the beds?”
“One sheet on the bottom, some TidyTuck to tighten the corners, then another sheet and the blanket on top. You’ll get the hang of it.”
“You sound very confident for someone who has been covering my messes and literally fixing what I break.”
Every time he smiles at me, I’m drawn in by the warmth in his eyes, entranced by the gleam of amusement in them.
“I have faith,” he tells me. I’m about to retort when he adds, “Oh, and you might have to do laundry.”
“Laundry?” I’ve seen the machines we have at the palace. They look complicated. Breakable.
He smirks. “We don’t want a repeat of the soap incident, do we?”
I groan. “No, we do not.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m here,” he says. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
“Don’t you want to get back to the cottage?”
He adjusts Eevi, who lets out a small sigh, her tiny fist curling into his coat. “The others are sleeping. Mika and Kat are there if anything happens. And who knows? Maybe the laundry smell and dryer hums will lull this one to sleep.”
We both glance down. Dark eyes stare back, unwavering.
Above Lark’s head, a few flitting shadows swoop low, bats on their nightly hunts, while at the edge of the forest, the black silhouette of a buck retreats. This whole place feels magical tonight. Or maybe that’s Lark.
“All right. Lead the way.”
Lark finishes changing Eevi like it was nothing, like he didn’t just efficiently take charge of a squirmy, fussy child and meet all her needs in no time.
I take the once-again-happy girl from his arms so he can tidy up, marveling at her adorable smile and dark curls now that she’s free from the bundle of blankets.
“I don’t know how you did that. As soon as she started fussing, you knew what to do.”
Lark chuckles. “It’s not like I always knew what I was doing.
But one tends to pick up some skills when living in an orphanage.
Never a shortage of babies, though I only learned to change a nappy after Aili came.
Frederik— He’s the man who ran the place.
Raised me from when I was a baby myself.
Anyway, Aili arrived after I came of age, and Frederick decided that if I was sticking around, then I should learn how to do all the things needed to run the place.
I think he expected I would take it over for him one day.
” His voice goes quiet. “I wanted that too. Now they’re both gone. ”
A shadow crosses his face as if he disappointed the man who raised him by not being able to keep the orphanage open after he died.
“He sounds like a good man.”
“He was. I got lucky, ending up at that orphanage. I’m aware they’re not all as well-run as ours was. Which is why I hated to lose it like that.”
“I’m sure you did your best,” I tell him. “What happened?”
“It was already in rough shape. After funding got cut off three years ago, Frederik kept us going on fumes and hope, mostly. He died a year ago, and without him, I couldn’t handle the fundraising and the operation.
Eevi here was the last new charge we took in, dropped on our doorstep a fortnight before we had a fire.
Since the water brigade got defunded too, they’re under-manned and couldn’t respond quickly enough.
The damage to the back wall was too much, and there were no resources to get it fixed. ”
“What do you mean funding got cut off?”
He casts me a strange look, taking Eevi and setting her on a pile of freshly dried blankets. When he turns to me, he looks thoughtful. “Are you aware of the royal policies here, and the extra decrees since the king’s death?”
“What? Yes, no, yeah. Of course.” I wasn’t expecting that gut punch.
“Then you also know that Queen Taynia has cut off all civil programs for Wilder Fae.”
“She WHAT?” I clap a hand over my mouth. “Sorry, no, I wasn’t aware.”
I knew the Wilder Fae stayed separate from us, but I didn’t realize the divide had grown so deep, or that we would just stop programs that were supporting them because…
because why? No wonder there’s so much animosity.
No wonder that little boy stared so hauntingly at the royal carriage as we passed him.
Lark is still giving me the same sympathetic look.
I don’t deserve sympathy, though. I was so caught up in feeling discarded and hard-done-by, and missing my father, I never even thought about what the rest of the Hinterlands were going through.
The endless winter was difficult for me because it was cold and gloomy, and it reflected my own feelings of oppression, but out here there were orphans losing their home and being left to starve. How did I miss that?
“A lot of folk have suffered in the permafrost. Some Point Fae, but many more of us,” Lark says kindly.
Us.
I’m only pretending to be one of them. Yet I feel a kinship I never expected to find out here. I was scared. Lost. Alone. It was Wilder Fae who took me in.
Somehow, I feel more wretched now than when Beron tossed me from my gilded carriage.
I clear my throat, needing to change the topic. “So you looked after Aili when she was a baby, too?”
“I did. And if you think she’s cranky now, you should have seen her when she didn’t have words to express all the things that made her unhappy.”
“She does seem a little—” I’m unsure how to phrase it delicately.
Lark chuckles. “There’s a reason we call her Grumpy. She is part gremlin, after all.”
My eyes fly wide. “Wait, really?”
He laughs. “No, not really. That’s just what we used to say. She’s just another Wilder Fae whose parents couldn’t look after her.”
There’s a note of bitterness in his voice that makes me ask, “Is that what happened to you?”
He’s silent for a moment, then says, “No one would have kept me.”
Reaching for him, I tip his chin up so he has to look at me.
“What do you mean, Lark? Anybody would have been lucky to have you as a child. You’re—” I realize I’ve invaded his space, close enough to feel his breath tickle my cheek.
It suddenly feels too intimate to say what was on the tip of my tongue.
That he’s amazing. That I’ve never met anyone as impressive as him, not among all the royals or rich courtesans.
“They would have been lucky,” I repeat lamely, returning my hands to my sides.
Hugo gives a grunt from Lark’s hat, almost like he’s saying I told you so.
Lark rolls his eyes up toward the spiky little meddler. Turning serious, he searches my eyes. I don’t know what he’s seeking, but apparently, whatever he finds there is enough.
“I haven’t been completely honest with you,” he says at last. “There’s a reason my mother didn’t want me. A reason no one ever would have adopted me.”
“Lark, you don’t have to—”
Squeak. Hugo agrees. Or disagrees? Who knows?
“Let me finish.” Lark goes on. “If you want to end our agreement after this, I understand. No hard feelings. I just ask that you keep my secret when you walk away.”
“Lark, why would I walk away? You have no idea how much you’ve done for me, or how much I appreciate it.”
“Well, you might change your mind,” he says, exhaling sharply. “I’m going to take off my hat now.”