Chapter 35
thirty-five
George eats dinner, twice.
Asoft knock sounded on the dining room door just as George and her former earl entered the chamber, floating in on a haze of happiness.
“Right on time.” She smiled dreamily before turning to gaze at Isahn.
Her future husband grinned back at her, and a heat kicked up in her core, again.
Squeezing her thighs tight, she willed away the sensation.
Their hours in bed made her far too sore to even consider a repeat.
.. yet. Plus, her friends were arriving for cena.
“I’ve got it.” Isahn lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the ring on her finger before they parted ways. She took a seat at the head of the table while he made for the door.
Tossing a quick mirage over Isahn, George turned him Salskanan, just in case it wasn’t a friend outside. Their first guests turned out to be Dunstan joined by Wynnie, who appeared while they were still at the entrance to the chamber.
At the table, Isahn checked in with Dunstan, asking how he felt after the horrid incident with the king. Though George and Isahn slept (and fucked) for most of the day, she had taken time to catch him up on what he’d missed while away.
Dunstan assured him he was all but recovered, his worst wounds mended, and his limp and soreness lessening each day. He made no pretenses that it had been a positive meeting with Gasparo.
With her left hand tucked discreetly beneath the table, resting on her bouncing thigh, George waited for all of her friends to arrive.
Luckily, Hildy and Burke turned up together not long later.
They entered quietly and parted ways to sit diagonally across the table from one another. Perhaps that flame fizzled, too.
“Where’s Ean?” Burke asked as he poured himself a glass of wine.
“Still working on the book. He stopped in at prandium and said he thinks he might have something by tonight,” George explained. She accepted a full glass of wine from Isahn with a quiet, “Thank you.”
“Then what are we here for? I thought there was news?” Burke whined.
Wynnie, who sat on Burke’s left, elbowed him in the gut.
“There’s food, man,” Hildy replied, from her seat on Isahn’s right.
“And friendship,” Dunstan tacked on with a pump of his brows.
“And there’s this.” George revealed her left hand, waggling her fingers in the light of the chandelier.
Isahn took her wine glass away so he could trap her right hand in his.
“Deiwos.” Dunstan, who was farthest away, placed his hands on the wood and leaned over the food to get a better look at the glittering ring.
Wynnie and Hildy hopped up from their seats and rushed over to grab hold of George’s hand.
“You kept this from me!” Hildy accused Isahn, though her words held no malice.
“Oh, it’s stunning. Where did you get this?” Wynnie gushed, her question for Isahn, although her eyes remained on the gems.
“It was my mum’s.”
George snapped her head to Isahn as he gave her fingers a squeeze, only increasing the pressure in her full-to-bursting chest. “Really?”
“Yes. It was a gift from my father for their twentieth anniversary. She didn’t have it for long, but it was her favorite while she did.”
Leaning over to plant a kiss on his soft, smiling mouth, George yanked her hand away from Hildy and Wynnie. “Sit down. Eat,” she commanded before kissing Isahn again and leaning back to enjoy her meal.
Wynnie ignored her command, asking that they first raise their glasses in honor of the happy couple. “To Isahn, who took one for the team and made it back to make our Georgie the happiest woman on Duhra.”
“To Isahn!” George’s friends cheered as they clinked their glasses.
“And, to George,” Wynn continued, “You’re the very best sort of friend, the best sort of person.
You care for everyone around you, drop anything to help others, and you do what’s right even when it hurts.
It hasn’t been easy getting to this point, for any of us, but you deserve this happiness more than any mage I know. ”
By the end of Wynnie’s words, George knew she looked a mess, her mouth scrunching and squirming of its own accord as she fought tears. Wynn had given in, and two fat drops rolled down her cheeks.
“To George!” Hildy kicked off the toast, as Wynnie gulped for air.
“To George!” The rest of her friends’ voices—including Isahn’s—rang out.
“Now, eat,” George commanded again. “No more toasts. They’re embarrassing.”
They chatted of the eventual wedding—to occur after they resolved the situation with the king—and took bets on the time they’d hear from Ean.
Just after Ruairi dutifully replaced their second course with drinks for commissatio, a series of tiny knocks sounded on the door.
Dunstan sat closest and opened it a crack, allowing Ean to buzz in in a burst of gold and excitement.
“Do you have something for us?” George straightened her spine.
“Aye, I do.” He grinned, black curls jiggling. The ancient book appeared in the center of the table with a tinkle, and Ean settled on the leather cover, plopping his bottom directly on an opal.
“Get off that. It’s a thousand years old.”
“Sorry, P Georgie.” He zipped into the air, hovering for a second before moving to his favorite carafe.
They learned that the ancient Queen of Domos, to whom the diary belonged, began her life as the eldest daughter of Lord Tarstani, the Baron of Napivol—which the title and town of Midlake were styled at the time.
Her family had settled in the south thousands of years before her lifetime, long before the lands had names, during an era when the fae still lived freely amongst mages.
Her line carried the unique powers to prove its heritage.
Although she was the oldest child, as a woman in that time, she wasn’t entitled to inherit.
The barony was set to pass to her younger brother, and she was destined to become a wife.
Just over a thousand years ago, when tensions between Gramenia and the pixies were rising, Selwas sent a delegation north to meet with the young Domossan king.
Amongst their ranks were members of the ancient, southern Tarstani lineage.
Two of them, to be precise: the Baron of Napivol, who was invited, and his daughter, the beautiful Lady Tiyar, who’d begged to come along.
“Did she really describe herself as beautiful?” Burke interrupted Ean’s story to ask.
“Ach. I added that bit.”
“Stick to the facts, Ean,” George put in.
He nodded. “Of course. The rest of it’s in there.”
Eanraig went on to explain that the young Selwassan woman was given the journal they now studied by the monarch on her first trip to Domos.
The king’s love soon followed, and she was queen within a year.
She’d written in the journal semi-regularly from the day she received it up until she erected the veil.
Then her king wrote a final lengthy entry before stashing the book safely in Selwas and living out the rest of his days in the north.
“So, it includes the secrets of the veil?” Hildy checked.
“I think so. I’ll be sorting that out soon. I spent more time on the bit at the end.”
“The king’s entry?”
“Aye,” he answered Burke before confirming the scrap of letter they copied from Gasparo’s drawer was at some point several pages longer, likely a full, if botched, copy of the king’s entry.
“Whoever copied it did a wretched job of it. Missed all the important bits. That’s why, I think, Gasparo got so hung up on the idea of a tapestry.
It was semi-metaphorical and semi-magical, ye ken?
The letter King G must’ve read was talking about the veil the whole time. ”
“Have you learned what my father’s been up to?”
“Aye.” Ean beamed. “I’m thinking I have.
The old text says, ‘All or naught, each sorcerer of the land lent strength to raise the great tapestry, for all may weave but only one must fell the great veil.’ It goes on to say they used a tapestry woven by the queen to bind together their powers and make the veil. ”
“To bind together whose powers?” Burke asked.
“Each sorcerer of the land, that’s what Ean said,” Hildy put in.
“Every single one?”
“Don’t be daft, Burke,” Wynnie scoffed. “That wouldn’t be possible.”
“Then all of which mages? The sorcerers are mages, right?”
“Maybe the chaosweavers?” Isahn suggested.
“That would make sense,” Hildy agreed.
“I dinnae ken. I need more time with it. But,” Ean continued, “it sounds like only a chaosweaver can take down the veil.”
“As we suspected, it’s the key—or my father thinks it is, at the very least.” George sighed.
“Aye. It’s all but confirmed. I’ll keep reading; however, I think we know what Gasparo was up to with Peros, and probably his other foreign spies.”
“Trying to kill every last chaosweaver,” Isahn said.
“All because he thought they might have something to do with the veil,” George grumbled.
“At least he doesn’t have this confirmation.”
“True,” George agreed with Wynnie’s assessment. “But it doesn’t mean he’s going to stop.”
“It’s only a matter of time before he starts asking questions about Peros.” Isahn squeezed her hand reassuringly, his comfort a tangible thing that steadied her fears and allowed her to think.
“And circles back on Gianis and Marinos,” Dunstan added with a shudder.
Wynnie grimaced. “Or gets new spies.”
“Princess—” Hildy brought out the formal title. Things were serious. “I think it’s time we move forward with the plan.”
George should feel far more nervous about what lay ahead, but with Isahn and her friends by her side, she was certain she was ready. “Let’s.”