AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My body felt wonderfully heavy. I rolled over and rested my head against Draven’s shoulder, one arm stretched languidly over his chest.
“What are you thinking of?” I asked, looking at his profile in the dark. “Missing Medra? I can send for someone to fetch her if you want.”
I caught the edge of his smile. “No. It’s good to have a night just you and me. There will...” He cleared his throat. “I know there will be many of those ahead.”
In other words, he had to get used to it now.
“I know you’ll miss her,” I said softly. “It’s all right to acknowledge it. She’ll miss you, too. It’s terribly unfair. To her and to you.”
He nodded. “Do you know... she reminds me of Rychel.”
“Does she? How?”
“Even for such a small thing, she’s precocious. So quick to learn and grow. She’s only six-weeks-old, but she can already bring the bottle to her mouth. Did you know that? That’s something only six-month-old infants can usually do, Morgan. The nurse told me.”
“I didn’t realize that,” I said, realizing I knew even less about babies than I’d thought. “How... incredible.” I tried my best to sound impressed.
“Isn’t it? And she recognizes faces already. I think she has for weeks now. She’s so intelligent. She knows you and me, and her wet nurses, of course. Today was the most remarkable thing. I placed her on the floor on her stomach, and when I turned around to fetch her toy and then looked back at her, she was sitting up by herself.”
I was startled. That did seem more advanced than usual for one so young. “Truly? She sat up? What did her nurse say?”
“I don’t think she believed me when I told her, actually,” Draven said. “Medra had already toppled over again by then, of course. Her nurse seemed to think it was an impossibility.”
“She’s part fae though,” I said slowly. “That must be why she’s so precocious, as you say. Mustn’t it?”
I wondered if I had been anything like Medra. Had my mother cooed over my every new achievement and discovery just like Draven was doing?
“I don’t think so.” Draven sounded doubtful. “Even for a fae, this is... something else.”
“Arthur was only mortal. What something else could there be?”
Draven shrugged. “Who can say. But she’ll do great things, that one. My little Medra.” He gave a sad laugh. “If she’s anything like Rychel, we’d better hope she doesn’t blow up half the castle.”
I propped myself up on my elbow, a little alarmed. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
I started to imagine a flammable infant. What if Medra had powers like my own... only could access them much, much sooner?
He chuckled. “My little sister, in her pursuit of understanding wind patterns, once built a self-propelled sailboat. She convinced one of the stable boys to help her, and they set sail on one of the artificial ponds in the gardens. The ‘self-propulsion’ turned out to be a bag of explosive powder that she’d invented. I’ve never seen two people swim faster back to shore in my life.”
He rubbed his chin. “Another time, she tried to help our father with a fireworks celebration in Noctasia. Oh, without telling him, of course. He would never have asked any of his children for help. This was before she realized it was going to be utterly impossible to ever earn his love or his favor.”
“Poor Rychel,” I murmured. What a waste of a father they’d had. Not that mine had been any better.
“She mixed in the wrong ingredients to whatever she’d been planning. The entire fireworks display wound up being a rainbow of chaos. Women’s dresses on fire, panicked screaming. That sort of thing.” He laughed. “My father was humiliated. Which would have been wonderful, as far as I was concerned. Except he found out who did it, of course. I had to hide Rychel for a week until he’d forgotten about it. Moved on to the next person to be furious at.”
“Of course, not all of her inventions went wrong,” he continued. “She once promised me she could make bubbles larger than I was. And you know, she really could. She poured her formula into one of the grand fountains in the palace.” He snorted. “The next thing I knew, bubbles the size of horses and sheep were floating around the halls, and the fountain had turned into a frothy mess.”
“That sounds charming.” I leaned back against the pillows. “Like something out of a children’s tale.”
Then I remembered. There had been few children in the Court of Umbral Flames to enjoy such spectacles. Only the very rare half-fae, half-mortal ones like Rychel. And like Beks.
“She doesn’t have magic, you know.” There was a weariness to Draven’s voice. “Not like you or me. Or if she does, she has no idea how to access it. She’s incredibly smart, but she can’t... She can’t protect herself.”
“Even with magic, we can’t always protect ourselves,” I reminded him softly. “But I know what you mean. You must be very frightened for her.” I hesitated, then added, “We’ll be on the road soon. I saw Sunstrike’s wing today. It’s almost healed.”
I wasn’t sure if this would comfort him or not, but it seemed to be enough. He lay back and stroked my hair. Soon we had drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 7 - MORGAN
