Laurell Hamilton - Never After

“Darius has found an inn for the night. It’s not very big, so there might not be three open bedrooms—but he’s reserved a private dining room,” she told us. The chill afternoon wind had whipped color into her face and she looked very pretty. I wondered how my father could prefer Mellicia to Gisele. “I think he doesn’t want to expose Dannette to any more chance travelers who might recognize her.”

Harwin glanced around. We were in farm country now, and no mistake. Stretching in every direction for limitless miles were flat, brown fields filled with the dying clutter of harvested crops. “Might there be many people here who know her?”

Gisele nodded. “His grandmother’s house is half a day’s ride away, he says.”

“I thought he couldn’t afford a private dining room,” I piped up.

Gisele looked genuinely amused. “I think he’s found a way to pay for it.”

Indeed, twenty minutes later, after we’d found the quaint little inn, turned our horses over to the grooms, and strolled inside, we found Darius in the taproom performing tricks. He turned one man’s hound into a tomcat and then changed it back. He passed his fingers over a woman’s dull gray hair and made it a vibrant gold, not neglecting to make her eyebrows match. He waved his hand over the back wall of the taproom, and it ran with vivid autumn colors, cranberry, then ochre, then frosted pumpkin. The patrons were murmuring their delight, while the proprietor stood behind his bar, nodding and smiling. It certainly looked like a performance that merited some remuneration in return.

“The servants are already settled in the kitchen, but we’re down this way,” Gisele said, leading us through a narrow hallway to a small, smoky room. The ceilings were low and the paneling was so dark as to create an air of foreboding, but the prospect of a private meal among the five of us made the room seem welcoming and warm. Dannette was pacing between the table and the far wall, a matter of about six steps, and she turned jerkily to face us as we stepped through the door.

Afraid of what Harwin might think of her, afraid of how much he had told me, afraid of how she might be judged.

I crossed the room to kiss her on the cheek. Then I took hold of both her shoulders and held her at arm’s length to inspect her. The look on her face was one of profound relief, and she couldn’t quite keep the tears from spilling over.

“You should have told me,” I said. “All this time I was thinking how you might make the perfect wife for Harwin, and now I have to abandon those excellent plans.”

She laughed a little too long at such a feeble joke, and it was clear she was still feeling shaky. She accepted Gisele’s hug with melting gratitude, but continued to watch me over the queen’s shoulder. “I don’t know that I trust your judgment in matters of the heart so much that I would let you pick someone out for me,” she said, attempting to tease in return.

“She is singularly blind to both good and bad qualities in other people,” Harwin agreed. “But now and then she allows her natural intelligence to assert itself, so I don’t quite despair of her.”

I gave him a mock scowl, though I thought his assessment was fairly accurate. “I’m hungry,” was all I said. “I hope Darius ordered food before he went off to astonish the masses with magic.”

“I believe he did,” Dannette said, wiping her eyes and attempting to restore herself to her usual state of sunny serenity. Just then the servants’ door opened, and two scrawny young housemaids stepped in, bearing platters. “And here it is.”

There was the usual jumble of scraping chairs and bumping bodies as the servants set the table and we found our seats. Gisele asked Harwin something about driving the wagon and he answered, while Dannette began pouring water into all our glasses.

And the whole time, I sat there determinedly keeping a smile on my face, while I felt as though my stomach had been opened up by a rough hand and scraped out with a jagged blade.

How could I feel so relieved at the notion that there was no chance Dannette might fall in love with Harwin?

Oddly, that mediocre dinner in the cramped room of a slightly run-down roadside inn was the most delightful evening I had spent with this group of travelers so far. I couldn’t exactly tell why. Maybe it was because Dannette was so grateful to be relieved of the burden of her secret among people who did not think it was such a shameful thing. Maybe it was because surviving a threat brings you closer to anyone with whom you’ve shared it. Maybe it was because Darius was in high spirits, or I was, or Gisele was, for the three of us laughed a great deal, while the other two smiled at us benignly.

Maybe it was because, for no real reason that I understood, I suddenly had an overwhelming sense that each person in this room was in some way a dearest friend. Even Harwin. Even Gisele.

I didn’t even mind that there were only two rooms available to the five of us. I made Gisele and Dannette share the bed while I piled pillows and blankets on the floor. A hard night’s rest, but at least there was no thrashing bedmate to contend with.

Dannette’s nightmares did wake me up once, sometime in the dead of night. It took me a moment to remember where I was and why I lay on such an uncomfortable bed. While I was working it out, I heard Gisele’s voice, soft and comforting in the dark. Everything is all right. You’re safe here. You’re with friends.

And since that was true for me as well, I instantly fell back to sleep.

A half day’s easy travel brought us to the house where Darius and Dannette had grown up, and where their grandmother still lived. It was a sturdy, well built country manor of warm gray stone, with a flower garden out front, a small orchard to the left, a few outbuildings arrayed in back, and enough rambling bulk to make me guess there were about twenty rooms inside.

We were met at the door by two footmen and an aging butler, but we had barely crowded into the hall before the lady of the house swept up to greet us. She was thin and tall and dressed in the height of fashion, with artfully styled dark blond hair and a smile that made her look like her grandchildren.

“Darius,” she said, putting her hands on either side of his face and inspecting him with great pleasure. “You look well.”

“As do you,” he replied. He kissed her cheek, put an arm around her shoulder, and turned her to face the rest of us. “I’ve brought company, as you can see—and very exalted company, at that.”

It seemed that it was only with some reluctance that she brought herself to look away from him. Though she extended her smile to us, I had the sense she wasn’t interested in anyone except Darius. “Welcome,” she said. “I am Arantha Kent. You must be the princess and the queen.”

“How did you know?” Darius exclaimed. “I had thought to astonish you!”

Arantha made very correct curtsies to me and to Gisele, but she eyed me as if I were a horse she might buy and she wasn’t sure I was up to her weight. “The news has spread throughout the kingdom about the king’s competition for his daughter’s hand,” she said a little absently. She reached out a hand to rearrange the way my hair fell across my forehead. Frowning a little, she moved it back. “When the winner was described as a blond young man with a knack for magic, I knew it must be you.”

“I hope you did not find the news overwhelming,” Gisele said kindly. “Sometimes people are awed at the idea of marrying into a royal family.”

But Arantha shook her head. Now she pursed her lips as she considered my gown, muddied and travel-stained. “I always believed Darius was destined for great things,” she said. “I could hardly have hoped for better.”