No one knew where the elves dwelled. Catan supposed that they lived in caves, for her cousin Malcolm had met several elves in one and she had met an elf in another.
And yet there was something so airy and graceful about them that she found it difficult to imagine them living underground. In her country, the descendents of the mystical people of Dana still lived in their caverns beneath the hills, but they were supposed to be a dark, twisted, ugly race.
“Where have you been, Vash?”
Vash stood as stiffly as one of the pillars supporting the walls. “May the waters wash you clean of sorrow, Nimea.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” Mouse asked.
Wulf shrugged and sighed. “I know, but I couldn’t sleep. And I remembered something I wanted to tell Wyn.”
Aengus and Cat seemed to be heading inside. Wulf scrambled for the door so he could beat them down the stairs. He sneaked across the gallery and made it back to his room undetected.
Aengus had claimed to want to go onto the roof in search of cool air, but Cat could not believe her furtive cousin had no other reason. Otherwise he would have invited Flann.
He wasted no time in revealing his other reason.
“Where is she?”
Egelric cast his eyes to the right and to the left, and at first his gaze passed right over Cat, as if he were blind himself.
For all she had promised the elf that she would pretend to forget him, Catan had paid close attention to the path on the way home that day, and that she had not forgotten. However, the forest at night was a different place entirely. She feared she had wasted much time flailing through the brush and fleeing from the moving shadows her torch created.
At last, though, she had found the spot. There were the two tall pines standing like gate-towers before it, and there was the entrance behind the veil of ivy. This time it was not the breeze that gave it away, but the glow of a fire burning within.
It was not by chance that Mouse found herself standing between the columns while she waited. There was no mistletoe hanging there now; there were no dancers behind her, but it was the same room, and she was in the same spot. It was very easy to remember.
She had gone many times to stand on the tower at her sister’s house, but at that height she felt more exposed and alone than ever. Here in the Duke’s hall—as stuffy now from the July heat as it had been then from the fire and the warmth of bodies—here, she could remember. If she closed her eyes, she could not be certain he was not before her.
Egelric did not know by what miracle his boys had not heard his arrival, unless it was by grace of their own high-pitched chattering.
They were all in the hall: Wulf flirting with Cat; Gils explaining something to Flann with his typical, mind-numbing attention to trivial detail; Lili plucking softly at the strings of her harp; and his new baby last of all, kicking her feet in a cradle pushed up against the cold fireplace.
King Sigefrith knew how to clench his jaw and smile at the same time. It was a useful skill when he could permit himself no visible manifestation of his displeasure.
At the moment, he had to keep smiling for the sake of the maids and servants he passed, who were falling all over themselves in their delight at seeing their king again. There was no doubt the servants loved him.
“You’re not any prettier in the dark. Nor any darker.”
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