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They didn’t even look up as we appeared out of nowhere. After three days of alves, I supposed they were getting used to it.
‘Thanks,’ I said, releasing both our guide and a disoriented-looking Rosalind. ‘Do you happen to know where exactly I can find Agenor?’
‘Red tent over there, I expect.’ The alf grinned, giving me a mock salute. ‘Anything else, Your Ladyship?’
I glared at him. He chortled and faded, vanishing into nothingness again.
‘Good gods,’ Rosalind said weakly.
‘It’ll become normal faster than you think,’ I said, hooking my arm through hers just in case she did indeed try to make a run for it. ‘Red tent, then?’
She let out a quiet, desperate moan. ‘Em, what if he’s angry?’
‘Then he’d be an idiot,’ I said patiently, ‘which means it’s technically a possibility, but which also means that you’ll be able to talk sense into him soon enough. And if you can’t, I will. And if neither of us manages, I promise we have plenty of pretty men with wings around to distract you. Is that—’
She burst out laughing. ‘Em!’
‘Just laying out the options,’ I said dryly.
‘I don’twantany other pretty men with wings,’ she said in a melodramatic, exasperated tone. ‘I just want … well …’
‘Him,’ I said.
She let out a deep sigh, and it sounded like a surrender. ‘Yes.’
‘In that case Idefinitelyrecommend we take a look at that red tent,’ I said, ignoring the small twinge of my heart at the memory of Agenor’s quiet despair, ‘because I think avoiding him for the rest of your life is hardly a winning strategy towards that goal, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Gods help the mothers of clever children,’ she muttered, but she allowed me to pull her along between the tents without further protest.
The red tent was one of the largest in the camp, square and high enough for a tall fae male to stand in. No voices emerged from it as we came closer. I drew in a deep breath, trying not to feel the nerves itching in my own stomach now, and yelled, ‘Agenor?’
‘Oh, Em?’ His voice had that absent-minded air to it that suggested he was sitting knee-deep in administrative tasks, mind lost to a labyrinth of ink and parchment. ‘Glad you’re back. Do you have a minute? I’ll quickly finish this and—’
‘No, that’s fine,’ Rosalind wryly said next to me, in Faerie again. ‘I could come back next week, if that fits your schedule better, Lord Protector?’
Deafening silence answered us.
I had to bite my lip not to laugh out loud. ‘Agenor?’
The tent cloth was ripped aside without warning, so violently the frame nearly came down in its entirety.
My father emerged from the shadowy interior like a man possessed, eyes wide, wings unfurling behind his shoulders – gaping down at us as if we were two ghosts from his dreams, suddenly standing before him in the flesh. His baffled gaze travelled from Rosalind to me and back to Rosalind, lips parting and closing without a sound.
‘Hello, Agenor,’ she said brightly, and had she not been threatening to flee a few minutes ago, I would not have recognised the nervousness in her voice. ‘Lovely to see you again. Thought it might be time to see how you were doing on this side of the walls.’
He opened his mouth again. This time, a breathless, strangled sound escaped, too incoherent to be wrangled into words.
‘Oh, dear,’ she said, a mirthless smile tugging at the corner of her lips. ‘Worse than I thought, it sounds like.’
Agenor blinked, as if trying to clean a stubborn speck of dust from his eyes. She did not move, and he blinked again and again, as though if he just tested his sight enough, sooner or later this madness would turn out to be too good to be true and he would open his eyes to find her gone after all.
Not being an alf, Rosalind stayed where she stood.
Finally, his voice rough and unsteady, he managed a bewildered, ‘Al?’
It cut straight through my heart, the helpless, unfiltered vulnerability in that one word. From the look on his face, he might have forgotten I was standing next to my mother. Hell, he might have forgotten the camp was standing around us, too; his eyes clung to her without pause, an eager, almost desperate hunger in his gaze, as if the smallest detail of her appearance might save his life.
I decided it was about time to get the hell out of here.
