Chapter 268: Tell Us About The Stables

Draeven’s shoulders were shaking. He had set down his goblet and was pressing two fingers against his mouth, and his eyes, over the top of them, were bright with a laughter she had never seen. It was the kind that lived in the body and rarely climbed out. She stared at him, and he caught her eye and gave up, and a low rough sound escaped him that was, unmistakably, a laugh.

It was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard.

“I withdraw,” Draeven managed. “I withdraw all objection. Kaelen, you are an excellent steed.”

“I accept the honor.” Kaelen replied smiling.

“Don’t,” said Thorne.

Kaelen sat back, deeply satisfied. He reached for the decanter, and Thorne moved it six inches out of range without looking.

“Tell us,” Thorne said, turning to her. His eyes were dark and amused and fixed on her face. “About the stables. Before. I’ve heard Garrick’s side from Rhen. I’d hear yours.”

She hesitated.

It was a plain question, and he asked it plainly, and she felt, to her faint surprise, no urge to hide. She set down her fork.

“It was awful,” she said.

“Awful?”

“The first day, anyway.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I was a house maid. I’d never lifted anything larger than a washtub. Calla sent me down with a note, and I walked into that yard with my skirts in my hands, and Garrick looked at me for a very long time. And then he handed me a pitchfork.”

“A pitchfork,” said Kaelen.

“It was taller than I was.”

“Surely not.”

“It was. I stood there holding it like a flagpole. And he said….” She dropped her voice into a grumble, heavy and gravelled. “Mucking out’s not complicated, girl. It goes from the stall to the cart. If it goes anywhere else, you’re doing it wrong.”

Kaelen choked on his wine.

“I did it wrong,” Morgana said. “For about a week. I put a barrow-load in the water trough once. He didn’t say a word. He just looked at me, and then at the trough, and then at me. And then he went and found a second pitchfork, and the two of us fished it out together for an hour.”

She was smiling. She hadn’t noticed.

“Then there was Shadowmere,” she said. “Everyone told me not to go near him. They said he’d bitten the farrier twice, kicked a hole through a stall wall, and knocked a boy flat with his head. I went down to the far stable on the third night with an apple. I wasn’t brave. I thought if I was going to die, I’d rather it be before I’d scrubbed the next hundred pails.”

“And?” said Draeven softly.

“He ate the apple.” She laughed. “Very politely. And then he put his head over the door and breathed on my hair. Just breathed. And I stood there with my heart going like a hammer, and I thought, oh. This one’s mine.”

The room had gone quiet.

She looked up. All three of them were watching her.

They weren’t laughing now. Kaelen’s head was tilted, his mouth parted a little, as though he had forgotten he had one. Thorne had gone very still, his eyes soft in a way she had never seen. And Draeven sat with his chin on his hand, not looking at the food or the wine or the fire. He was looking at her as though she were the one thing in the room worth the light.

Her cheeks went warm.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing,” said Kaelen, rather hoarsely. “Go on.”

“That’s all there is.”

“It is not.” Thorne’s voice was quiet. “It is the most you’ve told us about yourself since you came.”

She opened her mouth, then she closed it again.

“I suppose it is,” she said.

“We’re glad of it,” said Draeven.

It was so simply said that she could not meet his eyes. She picked up her goblet and drank, and the wine was warm and sweet and strong, and she felt it all the way down.

Draeven could not stop watching her.

He had tried. He had cut his pheasant into small precise pieces and eaten four of them, and talked of the harvest to Thorne, and rebuked Kaelen for stealing plums. But her laughter kept pulling his eyes back across the table like a hook in a trout’s mouth. She laughed with her head thrown back and her hand over her mouth, as though she were afraid of being heard. The candlelight turned her skin to honey and caught in the dark of her hair, and the wine had put a flush on her cheeks. She looked, he thought, like something that had been kept in the dark for years and was only now learning the light.

INFERNUS lay quiet in his chest.

Not asleep. Warm. Like a banked fire, glowing, content, listening to the sound of her voice. He had not felt the dragon so still since before the curse. It was as though a hand had been laid on its great brow, and the beast, for the first time in two centuries, had closed its eyes.

Mine, the dragon murmured, drowsy and low.

Not yet, Draeven answered.

Soon.

If she wishes it.

A long silence. Then, grudging: If she wishes it.

He lifted his goblet and found he’d emptied it.

It was then that he saw the candles.

There were five of them on the branch at the table’s center, tall and white. Their flames had been burning straight and steady all evening. Now, all five of them were leaning.

Slowly. Slightly. Bending toward Morgana as though a draft had sprung up in the sealed room and drawn them in her direction. They did not flicker. They leaned, steady and bright, the way grass leans toward water.

His hand stilled on the stem of his goblet.

At her elbow, a glass of water sat half full. As he watched, a thin white frost crept across its surface and over the rim, delicate as lace. It spread down the sides in feathery ribs. Then, just as quietly, the frost thinned, and the water began to steam.

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