Chapter 27
Evelyn
With the door closed behind me, I slid down its face to sit on the floor.
Ambrose spoke outside the room. He apologized.
He offered to accompany me to my father’s accommodations.
Still I didn’t know what to do with any of it.
As much as I wanted Ambrose with me, I knew that was a dependency I needed to break.
We would solve this magical connection at some point.
I couldn’t rely on him for things like this.
I let out a breath when he finally grew tired of my lack of response and went into his room.
I needed to collect myself before our evening meal with the Vesten Point.
In all my work, both personal and professional, with plants, I’d read a lot about the Vesten Gardens.
I might not get another chance to explore.
If a few minutes before the meal were all I had, I’d take them.
It would give me something to focus on besides my current problems. If it meant I arrived at the meal separately from Ambrose, that was a fringe benefit.
The coast was clear when I peeked out the doorway. I slipped quietly down the stairs and let myself out the front door. The gardens were easy to find from there.
The natural beauty combined with the raw magic that surrounded me, and made the entire place spectacular.
I adapted to the magic with every step, but the feeling from the study—that feeling of ancient magic—still lurked.
It wasn’t imminently threatening, just obviously lingering.
I tried to ignore it as I wandered the garden paths.
It was called the Burning Garden. All the flowers that grew here were bright orange or red, so that when the garden was in full bloom in the spring, it resembled the Vesten fire.
Technically, it was winter, but this area never seemed to get snowfall.
The flowers weren’t out, but greenery still overran the space.
The most prominent feature in the garden drew my attention—an aged willow tree, so large that I could slip beneath the branches and hide from sight. So, of course, that’s what I did. That feeling of ancient magic was even stronger beneath its boughs.
I squeaked as I finished a loop of the tree and found a veil cat watching my progress. Yellow-green eyes flashed up at me. I faltered, unsure what to do. Before I could decide, the veil cat was gone, and the Vesten Point stood there.
“Sorry if I scared you.” He glanced around the tree as if to see if anyone else was with us.
“What are you doing here?” I winced, realizing I needed to work on my tone. My hand was still at my chest, hoping that my heart wouldn’t burst from my rib cage.
He laughed but still didn’t quite look at me. “This is my garden. Some might ask what you are doing here. But I won’t.” His gaze finally met mine. “I think I already know.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” The Vesten Point circled me, the same way I imagined the veil cat would. My veil cat remained silent, though. She wasn’t on high alert, and part of me took that as a sign that I didn’t need to be, either. “That you had to come here—to Compass Lake?”
I wasn’t sure if that was a statement or a question, but I bristled anyway.
If I hadn’t traveled to Compass Lake, I could have avoided that entire debacle with Ambrose last night.
Maybe I wouldn’t have run into my father.
I could have spared myself a lot of embarrassment, and a lot of needless emotional turmoil.
“Lord Arctos said we had to come. He said we’d learned all that we could from the library. ”
Carter laughed. “Of course he did. I should have known Arctos was meddling.”
“Meddling how?” I asked. The Vesten God was mischievous, but I didn’t think he meant us harm.
The Vesten Point swiped his hand through the air like a cat lazily batting away a fly. “Never mind.”
Silence surrounded us beneath the willow tree. I decided to fill it. Maybe I could make up for some of the missed conversation this afternoon. “We came up with an idea that we’d like to talk to you about at the meal.”
“I’m glad to hear it, but that’s not what interests me at the moment.” He touched the tree and shuddered. “Why did you come to this particular spot?”
“I...” Well, I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “I work a lot with plants. I’d read of the gardens and wanted to see them.”
The Vesten Point seemed to be speaking to himself more than to me, but I was startled at his words. “So Mr. Yarrow said. He went on for a while about your tests on living things before getting to his tests on inanimate objects.”
He had? I flushed, because a part of me knew, of course, he would.
Whether or not he agreed with the methods, he’d provide all available information.
Another part of me said this was different.
That Ambrose was someone I could depend on to be there for me when the load got too heavy—like it had this afternoon.
That part of me thought that maybe I could expect things from him.
The Vesten Point spoke as he leaned against the tree. “But what I want to know, Ms. Knowles, is what brought you to this particular spot in the garden.”
Ambrose had said he couldn’t feel the magic I described in the library, but I knew that was what had guided me to this place. It was a risk, but if I wanted answers, I needed to ask questions. If I didn’t ask questions, I only had myself to blame for remaining ignorant.
“There is a magic here—it’s old.” I shook my head. “No, that’s not quite right. It’s ancient. And I think it guided me here.”
“Is that right?” Carter looked every inch the veil cat he was. Moreover, with my response, he looked remarkably like a cat who had caught a particularly troublesome canary.
I nodded slowly, unsure what else to say. I didn’t have other words to describe the magic. It wasn’t flashy; it felt more like a well-worn cloak, always right where you needed it at the necessary time. It was by no means threadbare, though. Its stitches were just as tight as the day they were sewn.
Carter watched me. Then he asked the last question I expected. “Do you know how the next Vesten Point is chosen?”
“No,” I nearly spat. The reaction was visceral. The idea that a half-fae would know this precious court secret was laughable.
The tilt of Carter’s head was enough to give me pause. He studied me, not in the same way Ambrose did but in a way that told me he saw something I hadn’t yet put together. And I hated being caught off guard.
“Let me enlighten you, then.” He folded his hands behind his back and strolled around the tree.
I briefly wondered if he had ever taught other researchers when he was Vesten historian.
The tone of his voice took on that of a practiced lecturer, one fascinated with his own subject matter.
“The Vesten Court puts a lot of weight on our animals—our shifter magic. Of course, fire is part of the shift, but it’s the animal itself that the court reveres. ”
“Why is that?” I couldn’t help but ask. He made this seem so informal, like we were discussing the weather and not secrets I’d never been privy to as a court outsider.
A brief smile curled his lip, and he shook his head, his light brown waves swaying with the motion.
“I’ll deny it if you say this in front of Arctos, but I’m pretty sure it’s because of him.
It’s clear he prefers his animals above his fae form.
Past court leaders wanted to … emulate what our god found important. ”
“Ugh, he’d be even more insufferable if he heard that,” I mumbled.
The gleam in Carter’s eye told me I hadn’t been as quiet as I’d hoped. “Indeed. Regardless, the court’s value of the animal led to how Vesten Points are chosen.”
My brow furrowed. “How so? Aren’t the animals hereditary?”
Carter’s green eyes lit up. “They mostly are, but that is also the animal’s choice. Once an animal line establishes itself in a family, it tends to continue unless things go wrong.”
I briefly thought of my father and the information I needed from him. No matter his reasoning for not being with us, he could at least answer the questions about my shift. We didn’t have to establish a relationship for him to do that for me.
Carter spoke again. The words caught my attention. “Some animals don’t follow the pattern, of course, like mine.”
I thought that, at this moment, my veil cat would be uncomfortable.
Carter’s eyes flashed the yellow-green that was clearly his veil cat’s.
His animal observed this conversation with him.
The animal always knows. Ambrose’s words flashed through my mind.
First, I wondered what he would make of this situation.
Second, I wondered how literally to take his comment about our Vesten animals.
Carter’s veil cat couldn’t know what I was, could he?
“What do you mean?” I asked shakily. My hand balled into a fist at my side. He couldn’t know. That wasn’t possible, but my own veil cat was mysteriously silent. She curled up, unbothered by this entire conversation.
“I mean that my father, Gabriel, he’s not a veil cat shifter.” He studied me carefully, watching for something in my face.
It was clear he wanted me to ask the obvious question. If nothing else, the researcher in me needed to know what he was getting at, even if we were treading on dangerous ground with my own secret. “Why is that?”
“The continent required a veil cat,” he said simply. “The continent still requires a veil cat.”
I shook my head, repeating his words. “The continent still requires a veil cat.” It felt like he was withholding information, somehow. Before I could ask, he continued.
“When a new Vesten Point is required, the current one receives a message about what animal the court needs. You could imagine our past leader’s surprise when he was told his successor needed to be a creature most thought mythical.”
I coughed forcefully. He did not just say that.
“Everything alright, Evelyn?” He paced back around the tree while he tracked my reaction.
“Did you think that?” I asked. “That your shift was mythical?”
His lip curled into a mischievous smile. “An animal said to shepherd souls to the afterlife? Of course I thought it was mythical. That didn’t stop me from turning into one, though.”
It was … reassuring to know someone else had the same experience I had. But no matter our similarities, I wouldn’t tell him my secrets. Especially given this conversation, I needed to know more about the veil cat lineage from my father.
He held my gaze. “The continent needed a veil cat, and I was that veil cat. The Vesten Point calling is one of the reasons the animal might not follow lineage.”
The intensity was too much. I blurted out another question. “Why did the continent ‘need’ a veil cat? What does this have to do with the ancient magic here?”
He smiled, albeit a little sadly. There might even have been disappointment there and gone before I cataloged it.
“The Compass Points have been through a lot in the past months. Much was happening on the continent and outside of our realm that required the courts to come together. I won’t go into the details now, but suffice it to say that ancient magic was important, and a veil cat was essential to rid the continent of the mist plague. ”
“Did you really travel between realms?” I asked with no caution whatsoever. That was what he had to be implying. This was the sisters’ experience in the journal Gabriel had given us days ago. When they’d shifted into veil cats, they’d gone to another realm—beyond the veil.
“I do.”
“That’s the magic I feel, isn’t it?” I paused but ultimately threw caution to the wind.
The sense of ancient magic was too strong.
Only a realm known to hold the spirits of the departed could feel this way.
I took careful steps toward the tree’s trunk.
It was as if the magic emanated from here. I still didn’t understand it.
“It is.” He tilted his head. “You seem aware of its origin as well.”
Before I could ask another question, he glanced over my shoulder. I didn’t know what he saw through the willow tree’s drooping branches, but something halted our conversation. “The others are here. We should meet them for our meal.”
That was fine with me. I couldn’t handle any more of the Vesten Point’s piercing stare.
My veil cat’s lack of concern seemed to indicate it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but it definitely wasn’t comfortable.
I would need to find my father to talk sooner rather than later.
I also hadn’t missed the Vesten Point’s tense change.
I’d asked him if he had traveled between realms. He’d answered like he still did.
Something was going on here, and I wondered how closely it was related to my and Ambrose’s project.