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After the sparse quarters that even the royal elves had, her sumptuous suite of rooms was almost a shock. Plush rugs covered the floor. Wood paneling and plaster hid the stone walls with landscape paintings over the soft rose-colored paint. A settee and several padded chairs filled the sitting room while a door next to the fireplace led to the bedroom.
A small bookshelf along one wall held her favorite books and mementos. A set of bookends Averett had given her. A scrap book with items she’d collected on trips throughout Escarland. A porcelain doll that was one of the few gifts her father had given her before he’d been killed.
This room remained just how she’d left it that day when she’d joined Averett on his diplomatic mission to the elves of Tarenhiel. A book sat on one of the marble-topped tables, a velvet ribbon sticking out of the pages. A blanket crumpled on her favorite chair where she’d pushed it off without bothering to fold it or put it away. The servants must have cleaned in here since the surfaces lacked dust, but they hadn’t touched anything else.
Farrendel’s face remained impassive while he glanced around. Essie would’ve given anything to know what he was thinking. Probably thinking Winstead Palace was so huge and overdone. Elves, for all their love of fine things, weren’t ostentatious. Even their royalty lived simply.
With another fortifying breath, Essie opened the door to her bedroom. Pink velvet drapes bracketed the windows while a floral-patterned blanket covered the bed beneath a gauzy, pink canopy while soft green rugs carpeted the floor. A few trunks and shelves to the left side of the room held her knickknacks and personal items. To the right, a door led into the water closet.
Did the room look as childish to Farrendel as it now did to her? This was the room of a girl who, though she had grown up, still clung to her childhood. Everything was flowers and pink and sentimental items she wasn’t ready to part with, even though she hadn’t missed most of it in the three months she’d been gone.
Essie let go of Farrendel’s hand to let him wander. When she’d arrived in Estyra, she had curiously searched through every cupboard in their main sitting room.
Well, honestly, she had been nosy. She would’ve been snooping through the room by now, but Farrendel waited by the door, as if asking for her permission.
Essie sat cross-legged on the bed and waved at the room. “Go ahead and look around if you want. Sorry it is so pink. Though, do you elves have the same cultural connotations for the color pink as we humans do? Maybe a pink and floral bedroom isn’t as stereotypically girly to you as it would be to my brothers. Then again, you didn’t think anything of my red hair, for which I am absolutely grateful, so maybe you don’t care about pink either.”
Farrendel glanced at her long enough to raise an eyebrow at her chattering before he started wandering around the room.
Essie leaned her elbows on her knees and tried to look relaxed as Farrendel prowled around her room. He didn’t touch anything, and he stayed on the rugs as if the stone floor at the edges would bite him. What did he think as he took in the room where she’d grown up? What could he tell about her from it?
She bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from asking questions. It would be better to let him process in silence and come up with his own questions, if he had any.
But it was so difficult holding back the flood of words. They burned inside her chest, ached inside her throat. It didn’t help with Farrendel investigating her room like a puppy sniffing around a new place.
After stalking the edges of the room, Farrendel circled the bed, staring at it for a long time as if trying to puzzle something out. The stare was enough to send a blush to Essie’s face.
Halting, he gestured at the bed. “How do human young ones not fall out?”
What? That’s what had him staring at the bed so long? Essie blinked, then snorted with her effort not to laugh. “You walk across tiny branches hundreds of feet in the air without so much as a handrail to stop someone from falling, and yet you’re worried about falling out of bed?”
Farrendel climbed onto the end of the bed and sat cross-legged facing her, eyeing the edges of the bed as if they were going to reach out to drag him off. Something in his posture remained on edge, as if prepared to whip out his swords at any moment. “It is flat. And large. And in the middle of the room.”
The elves slept in beds that were almost nest-like, curved and grown into the living walls of their treehouses. This bed would look odd to him. Then again, this whole room and palace probably looked strange.
“We get used to it, I guess, though rails are put on beds for young children to keep them from falling off.” Essie traced the floral pattern of the bedspread with a finger. “Sorry this is all so strange for you.”
Farrendel’s white-blond hair trailed over his shoulders, all too temptingly silky. “You apologize a lot. You do not have to. Do not apologize for your family or home.”
She nearly saidI’m sorryyet again but clamped her teeth over the words before they snuck out. “I guess I just want...” For someone who usually had too many words bubbling inside her, they failed her now. What did she want? “I know Winstead Palace probably won’t feel like home to you the way Estyra does for me. But I’d like you to feel a part of my family and, at least, not hate it here. But I don’t know if that’s possible. I can tell you’re still on edge, and I don’t know if it is my family or because this place is so different than what you’re used to or something else. I just...”
Farrendel rested his hand on hers for a moment, but he withdrew his hand and looked away. “I will try.”
He looked like he was going to say more, but as Essie waited, Farrendel didn’t continue. At least he’d said he’d try. Farrendel would put in a genuine effort. Hopefully Essie’s family would put in the same effort. She reached out and squeezed his hands. “Thank you.”
His mouth tipped into something almost like a smile. “I like your family. Their protective love for you is admirable.”
Trust Farrendel to see their grilling him as something praiseworthy and honorable.
She laughed, and for a moment, sitting there cross legged on the bed facing him, it almost felt right to have him there with her in her old bedroom, fitting in to her old life.
Maybe, just maybe, this visit wouldn’t turn into a disaster after all.
Essie glanced aroundthe table in the formal dining room. Averett held court at the head of the table, with Jalissa, as the honored guest, sitting to his right. Paige was on his left with Essie and then Farrendel next to her. Edmund and Julien had the places next to Jalissa with Mother at the end of the table. Essie wasn’t sure how he’d managed it, but somehow Edmund had claimed the seat next to Jalissa that probably should have been Julien’s by right of age.
But her brothers didn’t stand on ceremony, especially between Julien and Edmund. Averett was somewhat different. He didn’t have the luxury to shed the crown and just be one of the siblings as often as the rest of them.
Still, Edmund probably wasn’t going to get far with Jalissa. Her elf sister-in-law could surprise her, but Essie wasn’t sure Jalissa would even notice Edmund. Then again, it was hard to tell if Edmund was truly serious or not.
