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She hadn’t known exactly what to expect when she saw Gerrod next, but these terse commands weren’t it. For one thing, she had wanted to thank him for saving her life but he hadn’t given her the smallest opportunity.
For another, she really wanted to know what was happening.
She might even have demanded he speak with her for a moment, since he’d kissed her in the forest, but she saw that his shoulders were tight and his hands were balled into fists. He was struggling with a very difficult situation.
Most of the guests had driven back to their respective homes, but the castle entrance hall was still full of the more exalted citizens of Merhaine. He might have just battled forty Invictus, but now he had to put a different hat on, the one that would strive to reassure the worried mayors and council members of the various Merhaine cities that all would be well.
She’d been connected with Merhaine for a year now, increasingly so in the past several months because of the bakery she and her business partner, Elena, were due to open in the next few weeks.
Merhaine, one of the Nine Realms of North America. She was used to the existence of the realm world, as most humans were, at least those who were on the Internet with any consistency. The discovery of the realms some thirty years ago, before she was even born, had taken Earth by storm especially since the parallel nature meant that Realm and Earth cultures shared many things in common, from simple bonding rituals like marriage to much more complex things like language.
English was prevalent throughout the Nine Realms and the now inter-connected planes and the sharing of history and culture had even broadened realm-dialects.
Gerrod, on the other hand, was over three-hundred-years-old so that his speech patterns still hadn’t caught up to the current Flagstaff vernacular. But she had seen other mastyr vampires interviewed from all over the United States’ plane. Some of them, like Mastyr Ethan of the Bergisson Realm, spoke like most of the cops she knew, with a fair sprinkling of Earth-based profanity. How and why the revelation of a connected parallel plane had occurred at this point in Earth history was not something even the most brilliant scientists had yet to figure out.
But here Realm was and because of her bakery, she’d spoken to numerous trolls, fae, and elves about Mastyr Gerrod, about Merhaine, about all the various species that existed on this parallel plane.
Trolls were the most helpful, however, being extremely garrulous. In fact, the saying among realm was that if you kept a secret like a troll, it meant you never kept a secret, that you couldn’t keep a secret if your life depended on it.
“Ask me.”
Abigail turned to Augustus who was Gerrod’s Master of the Household. She was alone with him now, in the hall not far from the shouting that had begun in the entrance hall.
Gus, as he was known, side-stepped like a child who had to go to the bathroom, but this she’d gotten used to as well. Trolls showed enthusiasm as well as many other emotions with their feet. Given that most trolls had lovely feet, contrary to human depictions, she thought all that movement fascinating.
Gus was five-six, which meant tall for a troll. He was also quite good-looking, with long light brown hair combined stylishly away from his face. She hadn’t thought trolls could be handsome but in fact they were like any specie, running the gamut from homely to stunning. Gus ranged at the upper end, his blue eyes fringed in long lashes. The three ridges of his forehead had elegant turns.
Yes, much of Merhaine had become very familiar to her.
His eyes held such a light that despite all that had happened, Abigail smiled. “Yes,” she said, answering the question he hadn’t asked. “I want to know everything.”
He smiled, his eyes now shining like stars. Did a troll love anything better than disseminating information? She didn’t think so. Maybe not even better than her cupcakes and trolls were known for their sweet-tooths. This was one reason a troll made an excellent household governor but a very poor secretary.
He led the way to the far side of the castle, well away from the shouts now rolling from the entrance hall, to the northern wing that housed a massive kitchen, an equally long state dining room, and in the northwest, a lovely family breakfast room full of windows.
Because of the Invictus attack, the blinds were drawn. Otherwise, she knew that the forest had been illuminated with a thousand lights and was very pretty, another reminder that much of Merhaine life was lived at night.
He waved her to a chair by the hearth, in which burned a large log fire and after a few minutes, returned with tea service in white and green ivy.
Because she had come to the castle often to chat with him when she delivered her orders from her bakery, he knew how she liked her tea. He handed her the cup and saucer, prepared his own, then sat down.
The tea was redolent of cloves and cardamom. Now what was that novel she had read recently where the hero of the story, a great warrior, had smelled of cardamom. It was something like ‘Ascending’ or ‘Accelerating’, she couldn’t quite remember. She had enjoyed reading that version of vampires. But how strange that now she was caught in her own world of not just vampires, but about every childhood tale she had ever heard of.
Gus’s feet manipulated the footstool with the skill of his hundred and thirty years, until he was perfectly comfortable. All realm-folk were long-lived, which meant that Gus was still fairly young by Merhaine standards.
He met her gaze and lifted a brow.
This was her cue. She took a deep breath. “Why did the mastyr dismiss me?”
“Ah, the best question first. I like that. He told you to leave the castle because he is feeling too much for you, and you must trust me in this. I have known Mastyr Gerrod most of my life. You are the only castle supplier he ever seeks out. And the strangest thing is, he seems to know the moment you have come. Have you not noticed that he often brings an entire army to help you unload a few boxes of cupcakes?”
“I thought that was your doing?”
Gus chuckled. “And he always insists you stay for tea, have you not noticed that?”
“But he never sits down with me.”
Gus appeared to be very knowledgeable as he nodded his head slowly. “But he hovers. Once you leave, I often find him standing about the great room.” He gestured to a shorter hall behind her that led to the massive room where an annual fae ball was held.
She frowned. “He really does that?”
Gus nodded. “I don’t think the mastyr quite understands his feelings at this point.”
Gerrod felt too much for her? She wanted to know more, but the subject seemed too personal to her, as though Gus was sharing private things Gerrod wouldn’t want her to know about. Gus might have few scruples about sharing everything, but she decided to draw the line.
