Chapter 241: Know my sorrow 1

LYSANDER

The bedroom was warm when I stepped inside, and the air carried the clean, sharp scent of mint.

It reached me before I had even closed the door, cutting through the lavender and faint woodsmoke. Bonnie had showered.

She sat before the mirror on the little cushioned stool, her back to me, dressed in a pale cotton nightdress. Her wet hair fell down her back as she drew a brush through it in slow, unhurried strokes. The lamp on the dresser cast a pool of soft gold across the floorboards, leaving the corners of the room in shadow.

I lingered by the door, my hand still resting on the latch. For a moment, I was conscious of my own expression, of the things it might betray. I needed a little time to arrange my face before I crossed the room.

"Who called?" she asked, without turning.

"Bradley."

Her eyes lifted to mine in the mirror. Dark and attentive, they searched my face with the quiet precision I had come to know so well.

"Is everything all right?"

"It will be." I crossed the room, stepping over the damp towel I had abandoned beside the trunk. "He went to Bellowstand tonight. It was difficult. I will tell you the rest in the morning, if you want to hear it."

"Lysander..."

"Morning," I said, softening my voice. "I promise."

She held my gaze for another moment, then allowed me the reprieve. I loved her for that, perhaps more than I could ever adequately tell her. She knew when to reach for me and, just as importantly, when to let me find my own way back.

I came up behind her and slipped the brush from her fingers. She offered no resistance, simply letting her hand fall into her lap as I began working through the ends of her hair.

I had learned long ago that brushing wet hair required patience. You started at the bottom, loosening each knot before working your way higher, or you risked pulling half of it out. A trickle of cold water ran down my wrist as I worked through a particularly stubborn tangle.

In the mirror, I caught her watching my hands. The corner of her mouth curved.

"You are good at this."

"Am I?"

"It looks as though you have had practice."

"I have." I eased the brush through another knot near her shoulder. "With my mother."

Her body went quiet beneath my hands.

I saw her eyes shift towards mine in the mirror, and a moment later, I felt the tentative touch of her mind against the edge of our bond. A gentle, searching presence, like someone reaching out in the dark, uncertain whether they would find a hand waiting for them.

She was checking on me. Wondering whether the mention of my mother had reopened something I had spent years learning to live with.

I met her gaze in the glass and let out a quiet chuckle.

"You needn’t go digging."

"I was not."

"You were a little." I lowered the brush, allowing the strands to slip through my fingers. "I think it will always hurt, in some measure. That is simply what losing someone you love does to you. But I am fine, Bonnie. I promise. It is a good memory, nothing more. She used to sit exactly where you are sitting and complain that I was pulling her hair."

"Were you?"

"Constantly."

A laugh escaped her, brief and breathy, and I watched some of the concern leave her shoulders. Satisfied, I returned to my task.

"I saw a photograph on my way to the room," she said after a while. "It was hanging on the wall in the corridor. I hadn’t noticed it before. You were in it."

"Ah." I smiled at our reflection. "That old thing. It was taken so long ago. I was a particularly childish and insufferable creature."

"You did look very smug."

"To be fair, I had every reason to be."

"You looked like someone who had just won an argument and intended to remind everyone about it at dinner for the next week."

"That is precisely what happened." I caught a snarl between my fingers and carefully worked it loose. "Sofiane had bet me I couldn’t hold my breath for three minutes in the lake. I managed two and a half, then lied about the rest. I suspect he knew perfectly well, but he let me have the victory because it was summer."

"I did not know the royal house had a Grand Duke," she said.

My hand stilled for the briefest moment.

She either did not notice or chose not to acknowledge it. Instead, she continued in that deceptively casual tone of hers. "Another uncle, apparently. He was at the end of the photograph."

A smile spread across my face before I could stop it.

"Oh," I said, the warmth in my voice quite involuntary. "Uncle Isak."

"You sound rather fond of him."

"I adore him." I resumed brushing her hair, carefully working through the strands. "He has never been particularly interested in royal affairs. The councils, the court intrigues, the endless parade of titles and hunting parties where everyone carries a weapon and nobody speaks honestly. None of it has ever appealed to him. He prefers to keep to himself, out near the human borders, where he has a rather lovely house and an enormous garden."

"Nicholas mentioned that."

"Did he?"

"He said he keeps bees."

"He does. Forty hives, last I heard. Probably more by now, if he has kept at it." I chuckled. "Every winter, he used to send us honey. It would arrive in a wooden crate with a note that invariably said, Do not let your Sofiane eat it all. My mother was never particularly fond of honey, but she could never bring herself to disappoint him by admitting as much. Sofiane, on the other hand, adored it. So the honey always went to him."

The next stroke of the brush slowed.

"They stopped coming after she passed," I added, my voice catching slightly. "I suppose Uncle Isak must have thought she was the one who enjoyed them."

Bonnie’s expression softened in the mirror, but she did not interrupt or offer the sort of sympathy that would have made me regret saying it. She simply let the silence settle between us.

"But why do you ask?" I eventually said, attempting to recover some of my earlier lightness. "About him, I mean. About any of it."

She lifted one shoulder. "I suppose I want to know more about you. Your family, too. All of it. Not just the things recorded in ledgers or passed around in whispers."

I stopped brushing.

There was something unexpectedly affecting about hearing her say that. People had always been interested in the things that came with the family name. The crown, the pack, the Elder Circle, the decisions I would make and the enemies I might acquire along the way. They wanted to know what I intended to do with my position, what I thought of the people who challenged it, and what secrets I might be keeping.

No one had ever expressed much interest in the ordinary things. The memories that had no political consequence, the people who had no influence at court, the little details that would never make it into a history book.

"Well," I said, a little more gruffly than I intended. "That is a rather interesting ambition. Although I assure you there is very little of interest about my family. You might as well direct all that curiosity towards me."

"I am trying to."

"Not very convincingly."

"It feels as though you are trying to change the subject," she observed.

She turned her head to look at me, her eyes bright with amusement and entirely too perceptive for my comfort.

I raised both hands in surrender, still holding the brush. "Guilty."

"Nicholas did tell me a few things."

"Did he, now?"

She reached for the teacup on the dresser. It was a little beyond her immediate reach, a delicate white china thing with steam curling above the rim. I watched her stretch for it, her wet hair slipping over one shoulder as her fingertips grazed the saucer. I nearly stepped forward to get it for her, but she managed to catch the handle herself and draw the cup towards her.

She took a small sip before continuing.

"I know he lives among humans. I know he has no interest in court politics. I just find it strange that in all the years I worked as a retainer in this kingdom, I never once heard anyone mention him. Not once. There was never any talk of a Grand Duke."