by AJ Nuest
She tried to straighten, but one glance at his deadpan face and she was right back to cracking up like a goof. Of all the things she’d expected, coming home to find Caedmon dressed like a peacock, composing horrendous verse in her honor had never once crossed her mind.
Had he really said, do bless me on the head? She slapped her leg, laughter tears trailing down her cheeks. Oh-h-h, man… Whew, that was good.
By the time she’d caught her breath, his arms were crossed. One of his brows lifted in dry assessment of her not-so-subtle reaction. “It’s horse dung, isn’t it?”
She chuckled and pinched her bottom lip before another side-splitting round of hilarity had the chance to escape. “Sorry. I don’t mean to offend you, but yeah. That was pretty bad.”
“My poetic abilities are abysmal.” Stalking to the fireplace, he threw the paper into the flames.
“Oh, wait. No, don’t do that.” Up on her toes, she pressed her hand to the glass, trying to peer into the fire over his shoulder. This was the first time anyone had written her a poem. Albeit a horrendous rhyme which made no sense, but still a poem.
The gesture, in and of itself, had been sweet. It was anyone’s guess how long he’d worked on that thing. “Hurry, can you save it?”
“Thankfully, no. I would be humiliated beyond measure should that parchment fall into traitorous hands.”
Her heels hit the floor, and she shrugged. “Yeah, but I still would’ve liked to keep it.”
He strode outside her view, reappeared a few seconds later and fitted a lute under his arm.
Ruh-roh. She clamped her hand over her mouth. Someone please tell her he wasn’t about to bust out in song.
He strummed and a mellow tone sang through the air. A slight twist to one of the pegs, and he strummed again, but this time the chord had soured. And if this was going down, her goose was seriously cooked.
The man was as tone deaf as a rock.
He braced his foot on the seat of a leather chair and, with the next downward stroke of his hand, a dissonant keening poured from his throat. Lowering her chin, she rocked in place as her shoulders shook.
Sweet Jesus, give her strength. Widening her eyes, she blinked and was pitched headfirst straight down the rabbit hole of full-blown laughter. Again. Good Lord, she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but the man could not sing. And he most definitely could not play that beautiful instrument.
Based on his fumbling lyrics, this was his first attempt at a solo. Pinching her nose, she tried and failed to suck air.
Wow. Talk about trying to romance her socks off. Nailed it.
She gasped and coughed into her fist.
Halfway through his…whatever this was…she finally scissored her hands in front of the mirror and cried Uncle. “Okay, stop.” She chuckled. “You need to stop.”
Peeking at her from under the wide brim of his hat, he finally left off his uncoordinated strumming and slumped. “How distressing was it?”
Yeah, and how to answer? “Let’s just say it’s not something I’m likely to forget.”
“’Tis ridiculous beyond measure. These attempts at foppery have never suited me.” Grumbling under his breath, he placed the lute on the chair and jammed his finger inside his ruffled collar. “I should’ve never heeded those fools on the Council. The sword has always been my instrument of choice.”
Foppery? She smirked. As good a word as any, she supposed.
He shot a breath off his bottom lip and the feather leapt away from his nose. An impatient wrestle with the cape, and he tossed the sides over his shoulders.
Geez, the poor guy seemed ready to tear his close off. She narrowed her eyes. Fine by her. In case he was looking for her permission…or anything. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“As you wish.” Clicking his heels together, he bowed at the waist.
“Are you comfortable in that get-up?”
“Goddesses’ tits, no.”
His shoulders wrenched as if he realized he’d just cursed in her presence, but she snorted and waved her hand aside. “Then why are you wearing it? What’s with all the whoop-di-do, trying to get my attention?”
He finally gave up his fight with the feather and flicked his hat toward his bed like a Frisbee. “Women are emotional creatures, easily swayed by pretty words and a bit of clever verse.”
Whoa, back up a second. His caveman comment was one thing, sure, but she already got that part. The poem, the lute…his epic fail at wooing her in song…were all him trying to sweep her off her feet. But wasn’t that exactly the point?
If she bought into the legend of Rowena, Caedmon risked falling in love with her by using the “mirror”—check. And based on how green he’d gone after being named Rescinder, he hadn’t been all that pleased with the choice—check and check again.
Not that she could blame him. According to that same myth, she was an evil temptress who got her rocks off seducing kings and poisoning their sons. With a reputation like that, getting in her pants equaled big trouble. Winning her heart was a lose-lose.
Unless, of course, he was after something. Something important. Something he would willingly gamble for with his life.
Shock nailed her between the brows, and she stiffened.
Like a fabled, solid gold, two-hundred-thousand-dollar key, perhaps?
Well, son of a bitch. How could she have been so stupid?
He shrugged the jacket down his arms and she tracked his movements as he slung it over the back of the chair.
The only thing that didn’t add up was why he hadn’t just taken the key in the first place. Someone had to stash it inside the armoire. And instead of keeping it, they’d gone to the trouble of setting up a fake kingdom only so he could turn around and try seducing it away from her?
What the hell for? That made less sense than those glittery slippers he’d kicked off his feet.
So. She crossed her arms. He wanted a time of Gleaning, huh? Three suns to gather information bit by bit?
Bring it on, dude. Two could play that game.
“Go change, Caedmon. The two of us have some serious business to discuss.”
Chapter Four
“Lencten, Sumor, Wintir, Automne.” By the great path of Helios, why did she insist on repeating the same vein of inquiry? If he’d spoken them once, he must have named the seasons seventeen times this eve.
All light had faded from the sky as she’d kept him sequestered, drilling him with questions any child still wet behind the ears could fulfill. He’d expected riddles as part of the Gleaning. Mayhap a challenge to ascertain the sharpness of his wits. Not this senseless interrogation which frustrated him to no end.
Only two suns remained. He had much to accomplish. And this pursuit was fruitless beyond all measure.
“Name the days.”
He gritted his teeth. “Sunna, Mona, Tiw, Woden, Thunor, Frige and Saturn. We’ve been through this time and again, Sorceress. I’m quite certain you can name them yourself by now.”
“How do you track the hours of the day?”
He raked his hair off his brow. She should have embraced this opportunity. As Rescinder, he was obliged to respond truthfully without fail. Had the key not proven her position as a sorceress, he would have surmised she understood less about these proceedings than he. “At Daybreak, the horologist rings the grand bell once, twice at Apex, and once again at Setting.”
“What happens if you get sick?”
The woman was propelling him to the brink of madness. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I summon the medicant and Wizard Fandorn.”
“Who records history?”
“The House of Chroniclers.”
“What year is it?”
His hand dropped to his desktop with a lifeless thud. “The fifty-eighth year of his majesty’s reign, King Aldrych Wesleigh Eastaughffe Austiere, the third.”
“How many women live in the castle?”
“I neither know, nor do I care.” Although, despite ten yea
rs of wedded matrimony, Braedric assuredly held the answer. And yet, another fact to prove he should have been the one named Rescinder.
“What’s the first thing you ever stole?”
Caedmon snapped his chin up. This query was new, yet not was the lingering distrust which remained embedded in her emerald gaze. ʼTwas a jagged thorn he’d been hoping to pluck from his side the moment she’d stopped him mid-song.
Pushing away from his desk, he eased back in his chair. Like Helios breaking from behind the clouds, his confusion parted and understanding swept back the cobwebs in his mind.
This…this was where the true Gleaning commenced. Where he must set aside foolish pride and lay bare his soul whilst protecting his heart at all costs.
Shoving to his feet, he turned his back to the mirror. This sorceress was cunning, resourceful and quick. Biding her time and misleading him on purpose until she could latch onto the one memory which haunted him most. “I filched my mother’s ring.”
“How old were you?”
He closed his eyes and his mother’s lovely visage swam into focus. She was joyous and hale with youth. Her eyes alight with laughter, her cheeks awash with rosy blooms.
Before the wicked pall had stolen her beauty. Before the lung sickness had claimed her life. “I’d seen ten full cycles of the seasons by then.”
“Why did you steal it?”
Why, indeed? To speak of that day caused a hard knot to bunch between his shoulder blades. Yet, in the deep gloaming which followed, he’d vowed never again to speak untrue. To do as much would come at too high a cost. “To retain a portion of her memory, I suspect.”
Thick silence emanated through the veil.
“Oh.” The sorceress’ whisper was as soft as the down in his pillow. “I see.”
He faced the vision in the glass, her golden tresses bound in a tight band at the nape of her neck. The gentle sweep of her shoulder nestled like a white dove beneath the collar of her dressing gown.
Everything in his world had irrevocably changed with the stilling of his mother’s heart, and though he was loathe to recant the tale, he could not let sorrowful memories detour the path fixed before him.
Regardless of his oath or the great risk he took in earning the sorceress’ disdain she, above all, deserved his honesty. Due the dire circumstances surrounding her appearance, he could offer no less.
“We went out to the fields to gather wildflowers. My mother liked those best, you see. She said they held their scent longer than the ones in the market. When the rain began, she rushed us back to the estate, but her concern was for my wellbeing, and she remained in her dampened garb much too long.”
Within the glass, the sorceress’ bewitching green eyes followed his footsteps toward his wardrobe. Depressing the secret release along the top scrollwork, he pushed back the rosette and reached inside. “My mother took ill, and though my father bade the medicant be at her beck and call, she never fully regained her strength. For months, she suffered. Sometimes abed several days on end. Coughing up blood or thrashing through a bout of fever.”
As the red jewel sparkled in his palm, he paused. He’d not spoken of this moment to anyone. Not even during the inquest.
How strange that, in the telling, a small part of his heartbreak eased.
Hooking his mother’s ruby ring on his index finger, he stepped back from the armoire and held the sparkling gem in the candlelight. The surrounding diamonds danced a rainbow of fairy fire along his hand.
“The day she died, I slipped this ring from her finger, ran to my room and buried it under my mattress. And when asked, I lied and said she sold it and hid the money for safekeeping, so I would be well-tended after her death.”
He met the sorceress’ gaze and disbelief shot like a thick arrow through his chest.
Tears glistened in her eyes. Miraculous.
Somehow, this exquisite creature understood his pain.
To learn she could display such compassion caused a great tide of admiration to sweep over him. “I’ve witnessed several kinds of death, Your Radiance, but the most wicked assuredly begins with innocence. Like a drop of rain rippling in a stream. Perchance the victim would build a dam if they were privy to the impending flood.”
A tear spilled over her lashes and trickled a clear path down to her chin. Caedmon suppressed the urge to reach out and clear the shimmering dew from her cheek. If such a thing were permitted, her tears would no doubt turn to stardust on his fingers.
He dropped his arm to his side. “After my mother’s burial, my father held an inquest to search out the man who had purchased the ring. Of all the jewelry he bequeathed her, this ring was the one true symbol of their love. When no one stepped forth and the scouts returned empty-handed, he abandoned his quest and clasped me to his breast, instead. I came to reside at the castle, under Braedric’s shadow, my days filled with his persistent need to remind me I am naught but the bastard son of a gypsy whore.”
Anger hardened the sorceress’ gaze, and she clenched her jaw. “I knew that guy was an asshole. His briefs probably got all wedged in a crack because you’re the king’s son, as well.”
Though he was unsure of the briefness to which she referred, he could not help but smile that she would so vehemently jump to his defense.
Her cheeks pinked, and she quickly glanced away. As if she’d misspoken. Or perchance finally understood and regretted the nature of her choice.
Disappointment bore down on him, and yet he wasn’t surprised. She was fully within her right to deem him invalid. In discovering his true heritage, she would break from the Gleaning and disappear. “Nevertheless, my blood is impure. A consequence which haunts me now more than ever.”
She lowered her gaze and nodded. Another shimmering droplet tumbled onto her cheek, though he was hard-pressed to believe her sorrow was meant for him.
“Why do you weep, Sorceress?”
Her shoulders lifted with a deep intake of breath. “My mom. She was sick for a long time before she died, too. Her doctors tried everything to save her, but nothing they did ever helped. It was horrible, watching her waste away like that.”
Astonishment lifted his brows, and he shook his head, though he could not state for certain which surprised him most. That she would deign to impart a memory so intensely personal, how their lives shared a common misery, or that a sorceress of her divine influence could ever harbor the wounds of a mortal soul.
Prophecy had prepared him for the enigmatic temperament of a radiant white goddess, the Candra-Scinlæce whom the nine had blessed. She would be quick to anger, much like Helios, with a temperament both fiery and fierce.
Yet she had just extended him a great kindness, offering this glimpse inside her grief. “Did your mother suffer the wet lung sickness?”
“Black lung sickness. Cancer.”
“And your father? What of him?”
She drew her bottom lip between her teeth and turned as if the memory caused her profound anguish.
Caedmon’s fingers twitched at his side, and he stepped closer to the glass. “I’ve caused you pain. You needn’t answer.”
A rueful laugh spilled from her lips, and she swept her fingertips across her damp cheeks. “It’s not your fault. My dad and I never agreed about my mom’s course of treatment. He spared no expense, carting her to every specialist he could find. But, in the end, everything the doctors did only prolonged the nightmare. She was dying and my father simply couldn’t accept it. So, we argued, sometimes for days on end, saying horrible things to each other. I just didn’t want her last moments to be so desperate, you know? We should have taken her on a trip, or shopping, or even on a stupid picnic, but he refused to listen. Her illness tore us apart and, afterward, seeing each other only brought back memories neither one of us wanted to face.”
She closed her eyes. “When I got the call he’d committed suicide, the hard truth is, I wasn’t all that surprised. Without her, his life had no meaning. And, without me, he’d lost all hope.”
Caedmon fisted his hands, clenching the ring until the setting nearly bloodied his palm. His error had been monumental, harkening her back to a time when everyone she’d loved had been lost.
If he did not more carefully bide his words, she was liable to dismiss him out of hand. “Your tears are more distressing to me than if I were dangling from the gallows. Please do not weep.”
“It’s just like you said, isn’t it?” Her eyes sparkled in the candlelight, and she smiled, though no happiness lightened her gaze. “Except, instead of a drop of rain, my warning came in form of gale force hurricane and I ignored it.”
A sigh of remorse heaved her chest, but he held his tongue. How often had he yearned for someone…anyone to help shoulder a portion of his sorrow? If laying her despair at his feet brought her a measure of solace, he would bear the honor with respect.
“Truth is, I should have tried a lot harder to repair our relationship. But when he started refusing my calls, I assumed he’d moved on with his life and I should try to move on with mine.
“It wasn’t until after his death, I got the big picture. He was too busy getting rid of everything, setting up accounts in my name. And while a huge part of me was angry he’d sold all my mother’s possessions, I also understood why he did it. In his own way, my dad was trying to tell me to start over. To let go of the past and finish all those things I’d put on hold when my mom got sick.”
She met his eyes in the glass. “So, that’s what I did. A year later, I got my degree in Art History, bought the shop and, now, here I am.” A slight tip of her head and her grief-stricken gaze softened near the edges. “Thank you for listening, Caedmon. I haven’t told anyone that story in a very long time. Even if this is all just pretend, it’s nice to have a kind ear.”
He withdrew a step, a scowl tightening his brow. She believed these proceedings to be false? And him, what? A schemer with a traitorous cause? “You judge me to be a liar?”
A gentle laugh whispered from her throat. “Well, let’s face it. This whole thing is kinda far-fetched. All due respect, but magic mirrors only exist in make believe.”
