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The object of our interest seemed to grow paranoid under Indigo’s, Farrow’s, and my attention. He had packed his bread back into the cart with a rush and was shuffling his merchandise away toward another street.
Forgetting about me and Farrow and the fact he’d been so against me wandering out in public, Indigo completely abandoned his post as my personal bodyguard and darted after the old man.
“Sir?” he called respectfully, dodging and rushing around people to catch up. “Sir, wait!”
“Uh, did we just lose the leader of our army?” Farrow asked conversationally.
I shrugged. “Possibly. I have a feeling he won’t return to us until he gets his mate secured, anyway.” Turning to him, I lifted a single eyebrow
. “So what were you going to tell him but stopped yourself from saying at the last moment?”
His eyes glittered with mischief. “What makes you think it was anything of consequence?”
“Because I know you better than anyone.” I nudged him playfully in the gut to get him to talk. “Now, spill it.”
Chuckling, he caught my hand and brought it to his mouth for a kiss. “My clever, perceptive wife,” he murmured lovingly. “I was merely going to ease his mind, but then I decided I was having too much fun watching his distress that I had to fall silent again.”
I crinkled my brow. “Fall silent about what exactly?”
“In the brothel where I grew up,” he explained, “some of the women who could obtain magic potions would glamour themselves to look better than they actually did, because it’d get them more clients and more money. The only problem with glamour magic is that it’s very susceptible to the elements. Soil, water, fire, wind. Too much of any of those, and it wipes the glamour right off. And that man of Indigo’s had hands that kept changing as the wind hit them. I’d say it’s a good chance he was wearing a glamour and disguising his true appearance.”
My lips parted. “So he very well could’ve been a woman after all?”
And he’d neglected to tell Indy this?
Oh, the wicked, wicked man. I shook my head, fighting off my own smile, as he snickered gleefully in return. “I have no idea what’s under that glamour, but it’s not what we saw with our eyes.”
I cocked my head, confused. “But why would any woman make herself look like...” My nose wrinkled. “Well, like he looked?”
“That is the question of the day,” Farrow agreed. “And I have a feeling our friend is about to do everything within his power to discover the answer for himself.”
Grinning, I rose up on my toes and kissed his jaw. “Well, whoever he or she is, let’s hope those two go through a lot less of a headache than we had to, to find their way to each other.”
“Indeed,” Farrow agreed.
2nd Epilogue
Mydera
Meanwhile in Dimway Forest.
“Mater?”
I glanced up from the scroll I was writing on and found Wicket hovering in the entrance of my tent.
With a snap from my fingers, the journal popped into the air and then spooled closed into a tight roll before disappearing so it could return to the only kingdom in the Outer Realms that actually contained a public library.
High Cliff had always been ahead of the others in academics. Then again, the House of Bjorn, who had reigned over it for hundreds of years, had been the first family to cast off their powers. And it hadn’t taken me long to realize the absence of magic forced one to get creative and use critical thinking to solve problems instead, turning to science, inventions, and industry.
Maybe that was why my little world here hadn’t evolved as quickly as I’d hoped it would; there was still too much supernatural interference at work, restricting its progress.
Not that I was willing to forego any of my own abilities to help in that regard, mind you. So I couldn’t rightly begrudge anyone else who chose to hold on to their gifts as well.
We’d all have to make do as we were, I supposed.
“Fama?” I asked, motioning for the squire to enter as I requested an update report on our progress with the lingering forest fire destruction. “Is it done?”
“Etiam,” he answered, telling me all the soil and nature mages had finally returned the woods to their former condition.
