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I nodded. “Good.” With a relieved smile, I stood, repeating, “Good. Then my work here is complete. It’s time for me to move on.”
Wicket shifted his face sideways to reveal his confusion. “Mater?” he asked.
“Darling, how many times must I ask you to stop calling me mother? I’m your lover, remember. Amans not mater.” With a cringe, I explained, “It makes me distinctly uncomfortable whenever you call me mother, now that you’ve given me multiple orgasms.”
Flushing with embarrassment, the servant immediately bowed out his acquiesce.
“Paenitet,” he gushed in apology.
But I lifted a hand, stopping him. I’d only invited him into my bed recently. I’m sure it was difficult for him to go from thinking of me as strictly his master to his paramour as well. I just needed to be patient.
“No worries,” I assured, stroking his arm gently, then his hair. After kissing his brow, I moved past him to the trunk I had sitting next to the opening of my tent. “Just try to keep it in mind for the future, if you could.”
He nodded as he watched me kneel and lift the lid. “What did you mean by your work being complete?” he finally asked, easing curiously closer to see what treasures lay inside my chest. “Are you leaving us?”
Heaped with nothing but everlasting flagons, the interior probably looked quite ordinary to him. But I couldn’t contain the jitter in my pulse as I reached for my newest acquisition.
Once the flask I’d procured from Farrow was in my grip, I released a shuddered breath.
It might’ve been a sentimental artifact to the Bastard Betrayer turned Prince Consort, but it was priceless to me.
Smoothing my thumb over the crest inscribed on the front, a nostalgic ache tore through my lungs. Holden had created this house crest when he was only twelve. I’d taken him and his two sisters out into the forest to play that day, where he’d found some berries and began to doodle on a large rock, staining the flat surface with the purple juices to draw pictures. When he’d finished and stepped back with a proud smile, I knew that sign would forever be his insignia.
And sure enough, he’d marked his crest on every magical creation he’d ever made, including the hundreds upon hundreds of everlasting flagons he’d enchanted.
No, I hadn’t been completely honest with Farrow and Nicolette when I’d told them everlasting flagons were incredibly rare. But I’d stretched the truth about many things with those two—one being the fact that I wasn’t from the lineage of mages who’d created the mark of L’Amante, because I was the very mage who’d created it—so that minor fib probably made no difference. The flask was mine now, and this specific flagon really was one-of-a-kind.
Shifting my attention to the metal bottom, I gave it a gentle twist, and it came open breaking away from the top portion to reveal a small, hidden compartment beneath.
Inside the miniscule cubby, a tiny vial made from the silk of a butterfly's chrysalis glimmered up at me.
“Yes,” I breathed reverently. It was still there.
I let the flagon fall to the ground as I rose to my feet and lifted the vial so the potion contained within could catch the light and spark a blue-green glow around the walls of my tent.
“What is it?” Wicket asked in a hushed voice as he moved even closer to peer at the vial as well.
I glanced at him. “Fortuna ius,” I answered. “Liquid luck.”
He blinked at me. “How did you know it would be there?”
A small, sad smile drifted across my features. “Because my son put it there.”
“You have a son, my lady?” His eyes widened in surprise.
Shaking my head, I explained, “Not any longer. He died. Many years ago.”
He’d been murdered. As had his sisters.
Holden had deserved death for what he’d become, but the girls had not. That didn’t stop me from missing all three of them, though.
After their demise, I was done with being a mourning mother, so I sealed my womb, no longer wishing to lose another child, for those three hadn’t been the first. In another time and another world, I’d birthed more children. And lost them as well.
I was tired of loss.
It was time to preserve something. Make life new again. My gift was creation. Beginnings. I’d never dealt well with endings. So I was ready to mend and water this land I had made before leaving it. Fix what had been broken.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Wicket told me, hesitantly reaching out to touch my arm. He was still so unsure with me, not yet knowing whether he was allowed to initiate contact or not.
