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“I don’t think I can be anything else.” She waved her hand between them, her wrist flowing elegantly. “Whatever this is, it’s torn down the wall. You can ask me anything and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
He saw the fear in her eyes almost a kind of dread and it surprised him. He drew close. The violet of her eyes seemed to have a strange glitter to them and for a moment they turned brown, like Aralynn’s. Was it his imagination, or did her features seem to shift as well, her brows more arched, her lips fuller, her expression more challenging.
Sweet Goddess, there was so much more to Rosamunde than he’d ever suspected.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “Would you like some homemade bread, maybe some soup? And I have beer or sweet German wine, if that’s what you, as Rosamunde, prefers.”
“Thank you. That’s kind.”
She looked at him with such surprise, that he had to laugh. “I never meant to be a monster, Rosamunde.”
“I never thought you were. But I did know you were angry with me, all the time.”
“I didn’t understand you,” he said. “And truthfully I’m still not sure I do.”
“Maybe time will take care of that.”
When his stomach rumbled, he put a hand to his abdomen. Thinking about food had reminded him he hadn’t eaten since he’d risen for the night.
She smiled. “Hungry, huh?”
“I sure am. But I want to thank you for donating again. I’ve never felt better in my entire life and I owe you that.”
“You’re welcome and Stone, I wouldn’t have gone to the Wild Boar at all except that with the surplus I’d created I knew I wouldn’t have survived the night.”
He drew close. “I was being, as Davido put it, pigheaded again. But this has all moved so fast, I haven’t had time to absorb the implications. But when I saw Rez ready to use his fangs—” A powerful shudder went through him. “Yeah, we’d best stick close for the next few nights.”
Rosamunde got a funny look on her face, an expression he couldn’t read and her cheeks colored up.
He frowned. “Would that bother you, to be so close to me? Maybe you’d rather be back at your castle?”
“What? Holed up again like a criminal?”
He cocked his head, confused. “Is that what it’s been like for you?” He was pretty sure he’d had the wrong take on everything all this time.
“It often felt that way, like I was imprisoned. But I hate complaining. It sounds so ungrateful and I’ve felt blessed to do my part.” She turned toward the kitchen. “So what kind of soup have you got?”
His lake house was a simple home, made up of a lot of wood inside and out. He had slate on the floor, like his Sandismare home, and the windows were trimmed with black steel. The kitchen bar had been constructed of concrete.
He didn’t have a dining table, just a couple of stools not far from the stove. His retreat wasn’t a big place meant for entertaining, just a place where he could get some time away from the demands of Tannisford. He never brought women here. Like his home in the city, Rosamunde was the first.
She sat down on one of the tall stools and swiveled to look at the lake. He pulled out a container of vegetable beef soup from the fridge as well as a round loaf of French bread.
He put the latter in the oven to warm and dumped the soup in a pot. He lit up the gas flame and let the appliance do its job.
He had to keep reminding himself that Rosamunde was two different women, yet very much the same. He knew Seth’s woman, Lorelei, was able to take on different physical forms. “So Lorelei is your cousin.”
“Yes, well, a half-cousin. I tutored her for several months when she first arrived in Ferrenden Peace.” She smiled at the memory. “Then I had a vision and sent her to serve as Mastyr Seth’s bodyguard.”
“I remember. Lorelei has made Seth very happy.”
“And the other way around as well.”
He glanced at her. If what Rosamunde had said was true, that her primary job all these centuries had been to keep her aunt away from the elf-lord power, then Margetta must have tried dozens of ways to invade Ferrenden Peace.
He also knew that both Lorelei and Margetta had wraith blood. “So, are you part wraith like Lorelei?”
“No. My mother had a different father than Margetta.”
