5
Alarie
Other than Jena and Luke, I did not see many people over the next few days while Jay was away. I had not expected to see Jay on a regular basis. After all, he was Contra to the King and undoubtedly had more important things to do than train his lowest House member. But I’d liked the idea of him being around for my lessons. I continued with my lessons, working through the stack of books and papers I found in the library with a note from Jay instructing me on how to proceed each day in his absence.
Lady Alarie, the note read in Jay’s slanted masculine scrawl. I still wasn’t used to being addressed as a lady of the High Court. I’ll be gone for the remainder of the week. Focus your studies on House Tragon today and then move to House Heroux. Yours very truly, Jay.
Yours. I’ve always considered “yours very truly” to be an overly familiar sign-off and never understood its usage in professional correspondence. But it was not an altogether uncommon, if dated, practice. Shrugging the thought off, I began to skim the text before me. Lila Mouchard is from a town on the northern border between Valencia and Alancia… she married into House Tragon… the Mouchard estate is located in northern Valencia… I wondered what Lord Vitruvian was doing at that moment and when I would get to see him again.
* * * *
“Morning, Al,” Luke said, making himself at home and taking a big bite of the toast from my plate.
I looked up from my book. It was the third morning Luke had come to spend with me while Jay was away.
“Morning, Luke,” I greeted, rolling my eyes and going to grab more food.
If Luke was going to join me for breakfast, all the food on my plate would not be enough for him, much less for both of us.
“What do you have going today?” Luke asked, the grin on his face already telling me that he had something in mind.
“Still working through the reading materials Jay left me. Why?” I replied, interested.
“All right, we can get some work done. But then we’re going off campus for lunch,” he offered.
“Just lunch, huh?” I said.
But I acquiesced, looking forward to getting out of the manor. After finishing up our breakfast, we made our way toward the library.
“Let’s work on the veranda,” I suggested.
Luke took a moment to consider my proposal, no doubt thinking about how hot it was outside in the summer in Vlaise.
“Come on, Luke! It’s too nice to sit inside all day,” I pleaded.
He gave in, and we headed toward the veranda that looked over the garden. It was hot. And humid. I missed the breeze from back home. In Vlaise it was just hot, with no breeze and no escape.
“Alarie, I’m sweating my fucking face off. Can’t we go inside?” Luke complained after just ten minutes of sitting outside.
“Well, maybe if you were seasonably dressed like me, you wouldn’t be so hot,” I teased, pointing out the contrast of my casual white skirt and tank to the full suit he wore. “I think it feels amazing out here,” I retorted, turning my face toward the sun and basking in its warmth.
Luke stared at me, eyebrows raised, unconvinced. With the back of my hand, I nonchalantly patted at the light sheen of sweat forming on my neck and chest, pretending like I was unfazed by the warm weather.
Giving in, Luke said, “Beats the hell out of being cold.”
He rolled his sleeves up and unbuttoned the first several buttons of his shirt, accepting his fate and getting comfortable. He spent his time next to me reviewing correspondence and taking notes. When he finished with that, he took a book out of his bag and began reading.
“All right, enough of that,” Luke declared after a couple of hours. “Lunch!” he said, lithely popping up to his feet.
“Ok, let’s go!” I said, enthusiastically shutting the book before me.
“We can head down to Bar Louie. You like beer and pretzels, right?” he asked.
“Is that a serious question?” I asked.
We made our way out of town, away from the High Court. The High Court was all tall spires and ancient alabaster buildings interspersed with ivy-clad walls and gardens that went on for miles. But outside of its perimeter, just a quick walk away, there was a town of a vastly different character. Town probably wasn’t the most accurate word to describe Vlaise. Harborview, where I grew up, was a town. We had a few places to go back home, but the town of Harborview mainly centered around the beach. Vlaise, on the other hand, was a city. Shops, restaurants, and bars lined the city’s streets, almost overlapping one another. Occasionally, a thin vertical townhome was squeezed in between two businesses. People with their hands full of groceries or, in some instances, tankards of lager, filled the streets.
“So, what am I supposed to do when I’m not studying?” I asked, turning to Luke.
I’d heard that a liaison’s first year at the High Court could be grueling. Some liaisons were treated little better than house servants. Others were assigned menial research tasks or else shipped off entirely from the High Court and placed in the court of some remote House.
“For now, just have fun. And keep your eyes and ears open,” Luke replied.
I couldn’t believe it. I went from going to school and studying all day and working all night to “just have fun?”
“Really?” I asked, raising my eyebrows in disbelief. “That’s it?”
“Knowledge and connections, Al. That’s the currency here at the High Court,” Luke explained. “Not silver. Not gold. Anyone can be rich.”
That was easy for Luke to say. The Silver Court was second in wealth only to the Crown itself.
“But very few people actually know what’s going on at the High Court,” he said. “So, yeah, make some connections, build some relationships, listen, and report back.”
The structures in Vlaise were not as big or tall or as spread apart as those at the High Court. But there were still nice places to be found in Vlaise. Bar Louie was not one of them.
The bar was a small building wedged between two larger establishments. A simple wooden sign reading “Bar Louie” hung outside its austere door. It appeared that there were living quarters above the bar, perhaps where the proprietor resided. Inside of the bar, I was pleased to find that it was clean. Simple but clean. Dart boards covered the wall to the immediate right of the door; a polished wood bar sat in the far back, and a couple of pool tables were off to the left. It looked like there was a patio off the back that led to a larger, outside area.
“Look who it is!” Luke barked the minute we walked through the door. “Rhett, you ugly bastard, what are you doing at a bar in the middle of the day?”
I laughed. I’d only known Luke for a few days, but when I was around him, I laughed more than I’d ever laughed and about nothing in particular.
Rhett was far from ugly, I thought, taking in the tall high fae. He had smooth, golden hair, robins’ eggs for eyes, and hands the size of saucer plates. If anything, he was almost too handsome. He was dressed as immaculately as Luke usually was, except he wore a blood-red tailored suit where Luke wore blue.
“Is everyone at the High Court just ridiculously good looking, then?” I asked bewildered, voicing the thought I’d had thought several times since coming to the High Court.
Rhett bellowed, clearly pleased that he had invoked such a response upon meeting me for the first time.
“Yeah, yeah. Rhett’s dreamy.” Luke sighed. “Anyway, lunch beers all around!” he declared.
I rolled my eyes. I knew from the moment Luke proposed lunch that we weren’t getting any work done after.
“I’ll grab them,” I volunteered, making my way to the bar before Luke could object.
I came back to the middle of a story that Rhett was relaying to Luke with enthusiasm.
“And then she just slapped me!” Rhett exclaimed happily.
“Who slapped you?” I asked, setting down the three heavy mugs of lager.
I was intrigued more by Rhett’s glee than the fact that he had been slapped.
“James. Lady James Morrigan,” he said, probably remembering I was still new to Court. “And then she said I could be a real bastard sometimes. Can you believe it?” he asked, thrilled.
Luke gave his best friend a look that said he could easily believe it.
“And you’re happy about this because…” I asked.
“He likes the rejection as much as he likes the, well, ya know,” Luke said, lifting his eyebrows suggestively.
“What he’s not telling you, Al, is that in my past life, I was even more irresistible than I am now,” Rhett said, wagging his eyebrows at me playfully. “I know, I know,” he said sarcastically, like it was hard to believe.
It was. Rhett already seemed perfect. It was difficult to imagine how his good looks and easy banter could be even more consuming than they already were.
“The truth is that women became infatuated with me. It was exhausting,” Rhett explained. “I could never, you know, just date. But now, now that my curse has been lifted, and my magic has faded somewhat, the ladies just think I’m really, really good looking,” Rhett finished with an irresistible grin on his handsome face and a twinkle in his eye that left no doubt in my mind that he was telling the truth.
I rolled my eyes again. They were going to get stuck like that if I kept spending time with these guys.
“Oh, is that all? Really, really good looking?” I asked.
Rhett nodded his head emphatically.
“What’s your endgame, then? You just want to be a charming bastard?” I asked.
“Well, bastard was James’s word, not mine. But yeah, I think that’s what I was able to convince her of before it was all said and done,” Rhett replied, giving me his best self-satisfied grin.
Luke raised his eyebrows at me with an amused expression on his handsome face as if to say, “You asked.”
I’d never heard anyone be so open about their own magic lessening, much less be happy about it. In most company, it was considered irreverent to even intimate that someone’s powers had faded.
The three of us spent the afternoon at Bar Louie, shooting darts and drinking beer. Luke walked me back to the manor in the last few minutes of sunlight remaining in the day.
“See! You thought I was going to keep you out all night. But here you are, home by sundown, because I’m a gentleman and scholar!” Luke bragged.
“Ok, scholar,” I said jokingly. “You only have me home by sundown because the sun stays up until almost nine o’clock on these long summer days.”
“A technicality, m’lady,” he exclaimed.
“And as far as a gentleman—”
Luke leaned in, giving me a discreet kiss on the cheek, stopping any further teasing from me. He flashed me once more with his signature smile and left me in the foyer overflowing with the warm feel of the summer evening and his lips on my skin.