Chapter 3
Three
Neal
Ifound Sorcha on the porch one night, watching the sky. She seemed to hate being indoors. I’d more than once had to send a guard out to find her after dusk when she’d gone out wandering and lost track of the time.
“Nokona said you’d want this,” I said, ducking through the house’s low doorway and sitting down beside her. I passed her the mug of hot chocolate. Nokona swore she liked it, and that she’d drink it even when she was mostly refusing food, like now.
“Thank you,” Sorcha said. “I appreciate it.”
“You’re out of funeral black,” I noted, looking over Sorcha’s purple-grey linen dress and reaching up to remove my own black armband.
“He’s in the ground,” she said. “We’ve commended his soul to heaven. All that’s left now is to look forward.”
“An admirable approach. Be patient,” I assured her. “You’ll do well. Just give it time.”
“You sound more confident than I feel.”
She looked genuinely distraught, uncertain.
“Do you know what happened at my first apprenticeship?” I asked, leaning back and letting myself relax just a bit.
I edged closer to her, noticing not for the first time her soft honey-and-lavender scent, shot through with some warm spice I couldn’t quite pin down.
Sorcha shook her head, looking up at me, green eyes bright with interest.
“My da sent me to this lesser noble’s house to train with their Steward.
I was eighteen and I’d been studying for six years at this point,” I said, “and I ruined everything. My first day there, he had me doing tedious stuff, trying to teach me that being a Steward isn’t glamorous all or even most of the time.
And I get it now. Older and wiser. But then?
I was eighteen. And careless. And I broke an entire shelf of wineglasses in one clumsy instant.
I spent the next six months inventorying nonbreakable items and didn’t speak to the family once. And look where I ended up?”
“Working the less-prestigious Court with a no-name new High Lady who hasn’t even hit her hundredth birthday?” Sorcha chuckled self-deprecatingly.
“I wouldn’t say less prestigious. I never wanted to work for Iksura. Or anyone at the Inner Court really,” I said. “And we’ll fix that ‘no-name’ issue soon enough.”
She leaned in, and my chest tightened. I clenched my fists so hard I thought my nails would draw blood. All to keep from reaching out for her. This wasn’t the time—I knew that much—but every instinct screamed otherwise.
“I don’t think I could do this without you,” Sorcha said softly, leaning closer still. “You know that right?”
And suddenly I knew if I didn’t stop this now it would escalate. I’d kiss her here in the starlight. I’d coax her up to bed and sleep with her in my arms—soft and warm and perfect. I’d hold her when the inevitable grief caught up and she finally let herself cry.
And there’d be no turning back.
I stood abruptly, pulse pounding in my ears. I couldn’t trust myself to stay.
“Did I say something wrong?” Sorcha asked, hurt and confusion flickering across her face.
“It’s time we both went to bed,” I said, adjusting my jacket, trying to ignore the heat creeping through my body and pretending I hadn’t just jumped away from her like a hare fleeing a bobcat.
“Of course,” Sorcha agreed, downcast. “I’ll be in shortly. Don’t let me keep you up.”
I woke before the sun and made for Sorcha’s office.
There were three keys—one she kept on a chain at her waist, one for the housekeeper, and one for me.
The space was a disaster. Cormac—I knew from Da—was notoriously disorganized.
Sorcha had been so busy with the transition that she hadn’t yet set it to rights.
And so I thought I could organize it for her.
Do something, anything, to make up for last night.
I spent the better part of two hours filing papers, stacking crates of documents, and—as an additional peace offering—putting a row of boxes along the edge of her desk, for her cats.
I was trying to coax one of the ranch’s orange tabbies to sit in the box when she arrived.
“What on earth did you do to my office?” she asked, irate, the moment she walked in.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” I said as the big orange tabby immediately ran for Sorcha, nuzzling against her legs as though it was tattling on me.
“How am I supposed to find anything now!” Sorcha exclaimed. “It’s all put away! You hid my own paperwork from me!”
“It’s a filing system,” I said, opening one of the boxes. “All clearly labeled.”
“But I don’t know what we even have here! So how am I supposed to look for it in a filing system?” she asked, voice going frantic now. “This’ll set me back days! And I’m already trying to play catch-up! I had a system!”
Sorcha crossed her arms and paced back and forth, glaring at the desk, then glaring at me.
Two more of the ranch’s cats slipped in through the open back window, hissing at me all the while. A rock dove cooed outside, and somehow it too sounded disapproving and judgmental.
“Your system was a tower of papers on every flat surface, and don’t get me started on the abandoned teacups,” I said.
“It was a pile of papers on most flat surfaces and at maximum five abandoned teacups at any one time.” Sorcha cracked a smile.
“And I thought if I gave the cats a place to sit they wouldn’t bother you,” I offered, glad she was softening at least a bit.
“It would be cute if they sat in there . . .” Sorcha trailed off. She glanced down at the cats, then gestured at the boxes. And suddenly all three went and settled in, purring loudly.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“You don’t know about my magic?”
My eyes widened for a fraction of a second. I’d heard about it. Everyone had heard about it. But I’d assumed it was overblown. Healing and foresight were infinitesimally rare—let alone other gifts.
“So, it’s not just all talk, then?” I asked.
Sorcha raised an eyebrow.
“Of course not,” I said hurriedly. “I can see that. Clearly . . .”
I gestured at the cats.
“It’s not like being a healer or a seer,” Sorcha said.
“I mostly just play with the cats and the birds. But I can get the snakes and scorpions to give me a wide berth. The bears listen to me. Usually. The bobcats and mountain lions will listen too, there just aren’t many of them around.
Maybe someday I’ll make something real of it. ”
I blinked a few times, thrown off by her casual revelation. “Well, that’s incredibly convenient, I’m sure.”
She paused, stroking one of the cats.
“But for now,” Sorcha said, “you are officially helping me find the documents I was going over last night. Since you lost them.”
“Filed them,” I corrected.
“Lost.”
“Sorcha, I think you need to see this.”
We’d been sorting papers for nearing an hour and still hadn’t found the black, cloth-bound ledger Sorcha was looking for. Apparently, it contained full details of the Outer Court’s official contacts. And apparently, she needed it right now.
“What? Did you find my ledger?” Sorcha asked, looking up hopefully.
“Sorcha, this is important,” I said. “Sorcha . . .”
“Is it something about the portals?” Sorcha asked.
“No. I shook my head. “It’s a letter. From the Inner Court. For you.”
“Jeremy must have meant to give it to me and forgotten,” Sorcha said, fingers tracing over the words. “It’s in High Elvish.”
“Can you read it?” I asked.
She nodded. “You?”
I shook my head. “Stewards learn to speak it but not the alphabet.”
“So even you didn’t use the Inner Court pamphlets about becoming literate in our venerable and ancient tongue?” she asked.
I chuckled in spite of myself, then stopped abruptly as she scanned the paper and her face fell, something almost like terror blooming in her expression.
“Neal?” Her voice cracked. “Neal, she says the title’s illegitimate.”
“What title? Yours?” I asked, taking the paper from her, then realizing with deep annoyance that I couldn’t make out a word of it to confirm. Sorcha nodded.
“She says that because I’m under one hundred, the title does not transfer,” she said, “unless I submit to either a marriage of another noble Elven household, to someone over one hundred. Or to essentially a regency, with a regent—she’s calling them a High Councilor—of her choosing.”
“I don’t think that’s legal,” I replied immediately. I’d studied Elven Court law for decades, at Da’s insistence, and I’d never heard of such a regulation. Sorcha shrugged.
“But do you know for sure?” she asked. “Because I’m not about to write back saying she’s suggesting something illegitimate without confirmation. I’m fairly sure an unfounded appeal would be the worst possible course of action.”
“I’m not certain. But Ansel may know, and if not he’ll certainly have a way to find out. He’s due here in two days, but if he’s riding hard it may be sooner.”
Sorcha nodded.
“Maybe we can send a messenger out to meet him,” I offered.
“Neal,” Sorcha said, “Jeremy won’t even be back in St. Petersburg at the Inner Court yet. We’ll give the papers to Ansel when he arrives.”
She placed the message in her top drawer and slammed it closed.
“And you thought my chaotic approach to filing didn’t have any positive externalities.” She chuckled, turning back to the box of papers in her lap.
Another hour passed in companionable silence, and an additional thread of discomfort at Iksura’s letter crept its way into my thoughts. What if Iksura was right? What if the law was truly on her side? And what if Sorcha conceded and married a nobleman?
I shook my head to clear it. Why did I care?
A small voice at the back of my mind reminded me that Sorcha was pretty and charming, that she was quick and funny, that she smelled like sunlight on lavender fields, and that my heart did a strange, uncanny palpitation every time we so much as brushed hands.
No. I was not falling in love with her. The Court had lost enough already. It couldn’t afford to lose her. I wouldn’t let my dedication to her well-being be clouded by something so trivial as romantic affection.
I swallowed hard, banished the sentimentality, and said, “Sorcha, we need to begin planning for the wedding.”
After last night? After I’d pulled away rather than kiss her? It felt like rubbing salt in the wound. She looked up from a red, leather-bound journal she’d been studying for nearly twenty minutes.
“We sign some documents. Have the priest say a blessing. What is there to plan?”
“Sorcha.” I took a deep breath. “You’re a public figure. You can’t have a back-alley, no-fuss wedding. People will talk.”
“And what exactly will they say?” Sorcha asked.
“Well . . .” I paused. “Most will suspect you’re pregnant. Others will say I forced you into it. You never know what the rumor mill will turn up.”
“So we put on a charade for the public? Hide behind the spectacle and hope it gives the right impression?” Her voice was icy cold and laced with a degree of cynicism I didn’t want to believe she could have picked up in only twenty-seven years on this earth. “Perhaps we should have a parade.”
“Sorcha, please—” I began, but she cut me off.
“Invite the staff to the ceremony and a few of the locals—the nosy ones. I’ll have Nokona find me a dress. My father would have wanted it to be blue. We’ll host a reception in the plaza. Big party. Lots of beer. Minimal focus on the two of us.”
“Of course.”
“Don’t want people noticing how utterly uninterested in me you are.”
I froze immediately, shocked.
“I n-never said . . .” I stammered. “I n-never thought . . . Lady Sorcha, you’re anything but uninteresting.”
“Is that why you jumped up like something had burned you rather than kissing me last night?” Sorcha asked, voice hard.
I forced down the urge to pull her into my arms and kiss her then and there.
Professionalism, I reminded myself. Discretion. My job was to protect her. Not get attached.
But if I stood here any longer? Inches away from her in the warmth and safety of her office? I’d abandon those principles entirely.
“I’m sorry,” I said, swallowing hard. “But I’m afraid I must check in with our new guards. A few arrived this morning and I have to make sure they’re up to caliber.”
And so I walked out the door, hands clenched into fists, cursing myself with every step. One of the cats hissed and swatted at me as I walked by.
I entirely deserved it.
Before I shut the door, I watched as Sorcha picked up another of the cats from its box and buried her face in its belly.
“At least you still like me,” she muttered.