Chapter 22
twenty-two
George hosts dinner.
Though George was still pinning up her dress when their guests arrived for prandium the next day, Isahn was ready and jumped in to act as host. She found him seated on one of the armchairs with elbows braced on his spread knees, deep in conversation with Hildy and Burke, who shared the sofa on her left.
He was so handsome with that little dimple coming and going in time with his speech.
It was a wonder such a small physical detail could bring on such a swell of emotion. She really loved him.
As she looped the room, George noted Burke’s arm slung possessively over Hildy’s shoulder.
She’d be asking Hil for an update on their love triangle at the first opportunity.
Dunstan didn’t seem put out by their closeness the night before, nor did he appear to be part of it.
Perhaps he’d decided to move on, permanently this time.
After returning the smile Isahn tossed her way, she eyed Wynnie tucked up on a pouf near the windows, her back to the room. George started toward her when the door swung open and Dunstan waltzed in from the dining room.
“Any reason why no one’s eating yet? There’s a huge spread in there.” Hooking a thumb over his shoulder, he nearly decapitated Ean, who’d buzzed up behind him.
“We were waiting for you,” George jabbed back, not bothering to mention she’d only just finished getting dressed herself.
“Any update?”
“Aye.” Eanraig beamed at Burke as he flitted above Dunstan’s head. “Sit down, and I’ll fill ye in.”
As a group, they moved out to the dining room.
“You know,” Dunstan began, pulling out the head chair for George, “I saw Gianis and Marinos out in the hall on my way up here. Do they usually do rounds together?”
She took the proffered seat. “They’ve been known to roam as a pair. Usually when they’re on a joint project. I wouldn’t worry. You all came through different entrances at staggered times.”
With a frown and a grumble, Dunstan took a seat on George’s left-hand side, fingers wrapping around the hilt of his dagger as he stared at the door. Clearly, the possibility of Gianis and Marinos being nearby had him on edge.
Isahn joined George, sitting at her right hand, and Wynnie took the chair on his other side. Although waiting for Ean’s assessment was tense, a cozy confidence burned within George, fueled by Isahn’s love and that which she returned in spades.
“Wine?” Ean asked, hovering over the center of the table, a golden-winged floating centerpiece. George accepted, and with elf magic’s signature tinkle, their glasses were filled.
“Eat. We have much to discuss,” she commanded with a forced smile, reaching for her drink with one hand and a bit of falafel dipped in baba ghanoush with the other.
Isahn gazed at her out of the corner of his eyes, his finger pointing, hovering in question at the array of food.
“Try this, and this, and this.” George directed him to a selection of her favorite foods—things he hadn’t had a chance to try—namely her favorite dips.
He filled his plate with her suggestions.
“We’re protected,” Hildy announced, her sound barrier in place at the doorways. “Just in case.”
“All right then, Ean?” George gave a nod.
All eyes snapped to the boy.
“It opens with the writer saying they’re in Lake Rasda at a manor that looks upon the stars.
A tapestry lies there with the words, ‘Peregrinia Regnia, nektoi memonai toutas, animod usad potentiad, ex nei kreiat, orbom serkom, pakai ab irad okidenti. Solos–’ Which I think means, ‘The foreign queen used the power of the mind to weave for all the citizens. And from nothing, created a protection for the few citizens at risk from the west. Only the—’ That’s where it ends. ”
“Didn’t your father say it was the queen of foreigners?” Isahn asked between bites.
“Precisely why I needed to see the letter myself.”
“If it was ‘queen of foreigners,’” Ean explained, “it would say Peregrinis Regnia. One letter’s all it takes.”
Burke eyed George. “You sure you didn’t copy it down wrong?”
She glared daggers at him down the length of the table. “I’m not an idiot. I copied it verbatim, and it was clearly an ‘a.’”
His hands went up in surrender, accidentally smacking the underside of the table and rattling the dishware.
“You think animod usad potentiad means power of the mind, then?” Wynnie inquired, ignoring the ruckus as she studied the original note. “Could it not be soul? Don’t ask me how I remember that.”
“It could be soul,” Ean conceded, considering the line. “The foreign queen used the power of her soul to weave for all the citizens, and from nothing, she created a protection for the few citizens at risk from the west...”
George sat with the translation for a few minutes as she mulled it over in her mind. They all seemed to be doing the same thing, thinking and eating. The dining room descended into silence.
It was Isahn who spoke first, “I’ve mentioned this, but in Selwas we have azhelekezhi, chaosweavers. Is it possible that this foreign queen, who wove from ‘nothing,’ was doing chaos magic?”
“Oh my gods, that’s it. Am I crazy?” George looked around the table.
“Possibly?” Burke offered with a lift of his brows.
Ignoring his snark, she continued, “Could the foreign queen be our queen? The one who saved the fae and hid Hepikoru? Maybe she also wove a tapestry that tells the secrets of how she protected the city?”
“Maybe there is no tapestry. Ean’s translation sounds like it’s about the veil itself,” Wynnie offered a fair point.
“But the king told my uncle the tapestry is the final piece of prophecy.”
“So you think there is a tapestry with the words from the note on it?” Wynnie checked.
“Yes,” George and Isahn answered simultaneously before he continued voicing his thoughts, asking, “What would the point of a prophecy be? I’m not familiar with any.”
“The point is to share knowledge,” Eanraig chimed in, his voice cracking with excitement.
“I ken many. Some are very old and probably mean nothing. The elves and pixies love to talk and embellish.” He shrugged unapologetically from his seat on a lidded pitcher of water.
“The old ones who were fated to the fates shared these stories with my ancestors. Some have come to pass, some will happen in the future, and some might be happening now. There’s the one about the Isle of Creation, the two moons, the lost flame, the one about the six, the one about the gold and silver twins.
” He ticked off stories in his tiny fingers.
“There’s the Guild Queen, the one about the frozen well, Barton’s story—but I dinnae ken if that’s a prophecy—the—”
“All right. That’s enough.” George held up her hand.
“What’s the gilded one? Sounds most relevant.” Burke asked through a bite of stuffed grape leaf.
“Not gilded like covered in metal. Guild, like a group of like-minded individuals. Ye ken?” Ean checked.
“Oh. Well, tell us that one.” Burke tilted back in his chair, lifting his glass of wine in the air.
Eanraig put on his best storyteller’s voice and began, “This is a tale passed down from a pixie who was fated to fate. The lassie lived her time on Duhra long before the countries had their names. It’s hard to say if what she saw has come to pass or is yet to be.
” He cleared his throat and came back with a deeper timbre.
“The Queen from Eventual Beneath climbs up to the ground of Heym, called forth by life. There, she gathers all of her wee ’uns who were drowning in the harvest. She protects them ’neath her skirts.
But those skirts grow thin and strewn with holes from hungry moths, so the queen forms a guild of the finest mischief makers.
Together they dig a fathomless well, and she dives in, splashin’ out a powerful wave of bright water so thick and magical it coats the land, protecting all of her wee bairns forevermore.
She is no longer who they believed her to be.
She is reborn as somethin’ new and strange, but revered rather than misunderstood.
And while they trade one sort of queen for another, the wee ’uns ramble on. ”
Isahn glanced askance at George, who shrugged.
Hildy pushed out her lips.
It was Burke who spoke as his chair’s front legs met the floor, “That doesn’t help much.”
Everyone chuckled, Ean included.
“Maybe it does, actually,” Isahn thought aloud. “You said this story is very old, before the countries were formed?”
The elf nodded, shaggy black curls swinging.
“Couldn’t ‘Eventual Beneath’ be Selwas? The last country to form? And ‘Heym’ sure sounds a lot like ‘Home’. Doesn’t Domos mean ‘home’?”
George produced a thoughtful sound from the back of her throat. This is what her father had figured out. They were one step closer to snubbing his plans before they could unfold.
“Is it possible?” Hildy glanced at Ean. “If the ancient queen came from Selwas, her wee ’uns”—she put on an accent in a poor approximation of Ean’s elven brogue—“drowning in the harvest could be the fae, under attack by Gramenia, the land of grass, wheat, what have you.”
“Sounds about right, no embellishments there. Then she leapt into a well and veiled Hepikoru to protect the fae. That makes so much sense.” Wynnie punctuated her sarcastic remarks with a roll of her eyes.
“Chaosweavers don’t use wells of power,” Isahn challenged. “And the story says they dug a fathomless well. It still fits—metaphorically.”
“And it was from a vision,” Ean reiterated, “they’re often metaphorical.”
Wynnie huffed.
“If it was told before she lived in Duhra, it would’ve been a true prophecy,” Dunstan noted.
“We already know what she did. Kind of. So, it doesn’t really help us much, at all.” Hildy sighed as she leaned back.