After a bit more discussion, Roland was ready to leave and begin his search. That was his way. If there was a problem to be solved, he didn’t want to delay. He wanted to get right on it and take care of business. Now that we’d reached this decision, he was anxious to get me out of the Otherworld and into safety. Once he left, it was time for me to begin my own preparations, starting with the most important piece—Jasmine.
I found her in a nearby rose garden, curled up on a bench with some magazines she’d procured from a recent trip to the human world. After first swearing her to secrecy, I explained the plan Roland and I had concocted. Her reaction wasn’t what I’d expected.
“Take me with you,” she said immediately.
“I can’t,” I said. “That’s the whole point. I need you here. You’re the only person who can cover for me.”
“I’m the only one who can really protect you out there,” she insisted. After a moment, she made a small concession. “Well, maybe Pagiel too.”
I had to work hard to keep my face serious. It was almost cute how she was convinced that out of all the powerful gentry around here, many capable of miraculous feats, only two teenagers could adequately watch over me.
“He can’t come. No one I know can, that’s the point. I can’t even tell anyone where I’m going.”
“That’s bullshit,” she said. The profanity was an amusing contrast to her otherwise ladylike appearance, complete with a flowing ivory gown and flower-bedecked hair. “How will we know you’re okay?”
“You won’t, but if we can maintain obscurity and anonymity, you can be ninety-nine percent sure I’m fine.”
She didn’t like that. She didn’t like any of that. Seeing how fiercely she wanted to protect me, I marveled at how Dorian continually worried about her wanting to steal power from me. If that had been her intent, you’d think she would jump at the chance to become the lands’ caretaker. Instead, she made it passionately clear she only wanted to be by my side.
But finally, after hashing out the same points I’d just made with Roland and Dorian, I was able to convince her. I think the attack on Ansonia helped her accept the decision a little more easily. In growing close to Pagiel, Jasmine had gotten to know his sister as well. Jasmine was as outraged as the rest of us over the attack and didn’t want to see any repeats.
“I’ll do it,” she said at long last. “I don’t want to, but I’ll do it.”
“Thank you. That means a lot.” I had to repress the urge to hug her. No matter how close we’d gotten, our sisterly relationship hadn’t quite crossed into great shows of physical affection.
She shrugged. “Ah, well. This is nothing. You’ve got a lot worse ahead.”
“Oh?”
“Yup.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “I sure wouldn’t want to be you when you tell Dorian.”
Chapter 6
That made two of us. That realization had been building within me this entire time: I would have to tell him. No one else really needed to be informed. One well-timed crossing to the human world, and no one here would be able to find me. Jasmine could do damage control afterward, telling my staff I was gone. Both kingdoms had seneschals to handle the day-to-day affairs, and everyone was used to Jasmine and Shaya assuming control when I wasn’t around. They’d all be shocked, but they’d adapt.
But Dorian? He was an entirely different matter. No matter what had gone down in our past, there was no way I couldn’t give him a heads-up that I was about to disappear for a while.
Nonetheless, I put off delivering the news for as long as I could in the following days. He kept hanging around the Rowan Land, and I no longer bothered him about returning to his own home—which normally would’ve tipped him off that something was afoot. Instead, he reveled in our time together and was an endless source of funny recreational ideas that made target practice on pastel wooden animals seem downright mundane. And without contact from Roland, it was even easier to procrastinate with telling Dorian the news. I simply had no news to tell.
Aside from the constant attempts at entertainment, Dorian also decided he would educate himself on the technicalities of labor and delivery in the human world. Considering my own haphazard knowledge of such matters, I wasn’t sure I was the best source, but he insisted that if I was going to keep touting the need for a human doctor, he needed to understand why.
“So what exactly do they do when you have these doctor’s visits?” Dorian asked. “They seem pretty frequent.”
We were outside, taking in the nice weather, about a week after I’d last seen Roland. “Well,” I said, “they, um, check my vitals. Like blood pressure and stuff like that.”
“Blood pressure?”
“It’s kind of like your pulse. But kind of not,” I said lamely. Yeah. I really wasn’t the best person to be explaining medical lingo.
Dorian leaned back against a tree. “Well, any of our healers could do that for you.
I
could do it for you even.”
“It’s more complicated than that. And sometimes, I have ultrasounds at my appointments.”
“Ultrasounds?”
And so went the rest of our conversation, with me having to constantly stop and explain what I’d just said. Each time, Dorian had some gentry equivalent for whatever I described. Some were more far-fetched than others, like when he said he was certain gorging on cake all day would achieve the same results as a blood-sugar test. He also had a very complicated explanation about how balancing a chicken in a tree was a well-established gentry method of determining gender. I was almost certain he knew there was no real equivalent to half the things I told him about and that he was making most of this up on the spot. He was simply trying to entertain me with the outlandish. Describing a C-section, however, brought his quips to a halt.
“I don’t really know what to say about that,” he told me honestly. “It seems very extreme. And dangerous.”
“Maybe here it would be,” I said, thinking of the gentry aversion to metal. A scalpel might as well be a sword. “Among humans, it’s a pretty safe and standard thing. Saves a lot of lives—though I’d rather avoid it if I can. I don’t want a scar.”
Dorian considered. “Actually, that’s the only part I
can
understand. Why not wear a scar of motherhood? Better than a tattoo or some other mark of honor. Let the world know what you’ve achieved.”
I stretched out on my side in the grass. “I’d rather just let the kids speak for themselves.”
He smiled and let the subject go. “There’ve been no more attacks on Eugenie lookalikes, by the way. It seems Maiwenn has more restraint than we thought.”
“That’s good,” I said. The guilt over Ansonia still haunted me. “Beyond good. So you don’t need to raze her kingdom just yet?”
“Not quite yet, no. Though I nearly would for what she’s put you through.” I think he meant it. After all, he’d once run a guy through to defend my honor.
“Well, I’m still doing okay. That’s what counts.”
Dorian shook his head. “There are lots of ways to be ‘okay.’ We haven’t made a science of stress like you humans have, but even I know all this worry can’t be good for you. It’s not just your body I want safe. I also want you to be—”
Whatever he wanted was lost as a guard came and announced that Roland was here. The lazy, funny atmosphere with Dorian vanished. A mix of emotions warred within me as I realized what this meant. My days of procrastination were over. Part of me was happy to finally get things rolling. It would ensure the greater good for everyone. The rest of me—the cowardly part—dreaded the consequences that would soon unfold. Dorian wore a kind, sincere look, and I could barely meet his eyes as I mumbled an apology and hurried off to talk to Roland.
“You found a place,” I said, once Roland and I were alone.
“I did.” He glanced around nervously. I’d taken him to my bedroom, not wanting to risk even my discreet bodyguards overhearing something. Still, Roland regarded the room as suspect, as though perhaps there were magical ears within the walls. “Though I’d rather not tell you where until the last minute.”
“That’s fair,” I said, despite the curiosity that burned within me.
“I can tell you that it’s a town that has a shaman on hand—and old friend of mine that I trust implicitly. She doesn’t know your exact story, of course, but she understands there’s some danger. She’s more than willing to defend you if necessary.” He smiled wryly. “And hopefully she’ll remove any temptation you have to do shamanic housecleaning. You see something going on, you just tell her.”
The next most complicated part was figuring out how to get me to this secret location. The Otherworld lined up with the human world in a very rough way. It wasn’t an exact match, but gates had a geographic similarity. For example, there was a favorite crossing spot of mine in the Thorn Land that led back to Tucson. One kingdom over, in Dorian’s land, there was a gate that opened in New Mexico. Another nearby one went to Texas. That’s how it was in this region of the Otherworld; most crossings led to the American Southwest. That was why I’d had to travel to the Honeysuckle Land to reach the Ohio gate. Roland didn’t elaborate, but from what I could gather, his safe house was not in the Southwest, meaning I’d have to travel far in either this world or the human one.
We worked out a reasonably convoluted plan, and then he left again in that way of his, off to make sure everything was in place back on the other side. The plan was for me to leave tomorrow, which was frighteningly close. But in this situation ... well, the sooner things were implemented, the better.
That evening, not long after Roland had departed, I received a message from one of my servants that Dorian wished to see me in his chambers. I almost laughed at that. It was so typical of him to send
me
a summons in my own castle, as though he were the ruler here, not me. On the other hand, I wondered with dread what this could be about. Despite all our precautions, had he somehow found out about my plan with Roland? Had Jasmine cracked? Had there been magical ears in the walls after all?
Entering Dorian’s rooms, I found nothing so sinister. Like most of the larger guest suites in the castle, his consisted of a separate bedroom and sitting chamber. The latter had been arranged with an elaborate table for two, complete with a gold silk tablecloth and candelabra featuring a weird, branching style that seemed to defy all laws of physics. Under normal circumstances, a setup like this would’ve instantly made alarms go off in my head as I tried to figure out what ploy Dorian had going on. My anxiety over tomorrow’s adventure, however, superseded my normal wariness.
He was already seated and gestured me to the chair opposite him. He eyed me as I sat. “I’d so been hoping you’d wear something a bit more formal. Velvet and lace, perhaps. With a plunging neckline, naturally.”
“Naturally,” I said. I was in jeans and a T-shirt that was one size larger than what I used to wear, no thanks to my expanding waist. “Maybe next time you should let me know this is a formal occasion.” A servant swept in through the door I’d just entered, no doubt having waited until my arrival. He set down a platter of quichelike tarts and then scurried off. “What
is
the occasion anyway?”
Dorian sighed dramatically. “A sad one, I’m afraid. Tomorrow. . . I’m leaving.”
“You are?” For a moment, hope surged in me as I toyed with the idea of sneaking off when he wasn’t even around. I wouldn’t have to tell him my plans at all.
“Indeed.” He swirled around a glass of red wine. For once, he hadn’t harassed me about drinking any. “I’ve enjoyed my time here in your delightful company, but it’s time I look to my own kingdom. I also intend to increase security near my borders to discourage that bitch from taking liberties with my people again. Just in case.” “That bitch,” of course, was Maiwenn.
I picked up one of the quiches. It was heavy with cheese, just the way I loved them. “You just said earlier that you thought she had restraint and wouldn’t attack again.”
“I do,” he said. “I think her people truly did act in error with Ansonia. Even if they didn’t, maybe she decided using a scare tactic that attacks innocents is too savage. But it doesn’t matter whether they’ve stopped or not. There was still an incursion on my land, and I have to show I won’t allow it again. Maybe I won’t raze her lands, but I’ll certainly protect mine.”
The mention of “innocents” made me think of Kiyo. He hadn’t hesitated to come after the innocents that were his own children, but I could see him being responsible for preventing further mix-ups from Maiwenn’s people. I was certain he would put a halt to a scare tactic that would endanger those not involved in our dispute. I didn’t want to think well of him, not after everything that had happened, but I knew his style.
Course after course of succulent finger foods came, and we were eating olives stuffed with herbs when Dorian said, “I have another surprise for you.” As though on cue, two servants entered. Between them, they were carrying ... a crib.
I jumped up before they even had a chance to leave. I stared at the crib in wonder. “What is this?”
“What do you think?” asked Dorian, looking very pleased. “Your little warriors need a place to sleep, don’t they?”
I supposed they did, but I honestly hadn’t given it much thought. Nursery décor and baby registries had been kind of the last things on my mind. I ran my hand along the smooth surface of one of the rails. The entire thing had been carved out of golden oak and polished to brilliance. Elaborate designs of animals and plants had been worked into the wood with painstaking care. Knowing what I did about the gentry, I didn’t doubt that most of this had been made by hand.
“This is ... exquisite,” I said at last.
“There’s another one coming, but it’s still in progress. I wanted to show you this one before I left and see if you approved.”
“I ... yes. How could I not?” I was still in awe at the gift and felt a lump forming in my throat. Whether my emotion was from the thought of a tiny sleeping form inside that crib or simply because of Dorian’s kindness, I really couldn’t say.
“Excellent,” he said, pouring more wine. “I suppose we’ll have to have a number of them made, eh? No doubt you’ll be hauling those poor children around to both your kingdoms—and to mine, of course. I can hardly spoil them if they don’t visit.”
I nodded and muttered something in the affirmative. We finished that course, but I was still too overwhelmed to say much that was comprehensible. The last serving of the night was dessert, and I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw it. It was an elaborate chocolate cake, artfully decorated in the kind of fanciful icing designs the gentry loved. Hazelnuts and chocolate shavings added to the aesthetics, along with ...
“Are those ... are those pieces of Milky Way?” Even before the words were out of my mouth, I knew I was right. Chopped up and worked in with the rest of the confectionary wonder were bits of my favorite candy bar. “How on earth did you get those?” Even the gentry had magical limits.
“Young Pagiel acquired some on a recent jaunt to the human world. I remembered how you’d been wanting some.” Some warning in my brain said I should be alarmed that Pagiel had made an unauthorized crossing
and
had managed to “acquire” human goods. I wasn’t optimistic about his cash resources. “Serving them as-is seemed so primitive, so I had the cook find a more elegant method of preparing them.”
“I can’t believe you did this.” I watched as Dorian sliced the cake, thinking it was a shame to mar such beauty. “Why ... why did you? What do you want?”
Dorian set a piece of cake on my plate and gave me a look that seemed legitimately perplexed. “Nothing. Well, except to make things pleasant between us again. As I was starting to tell you earlier, I want more than your safety. I want you to be happy. I feel justified in most of my actions—
most.
There are some affairs I haven’t treated you well in, and I want to rectify that. This cake is by no means the answer, but if we could manage any sort of trust again ...” He glanced away briefly, displaying a vulnerability I hardly ever saw in him. “Well. That would make me happier than you can imagine.”