The Queen's Price

FORTY-SEVEN

Kieran pulled out his chair and sat with the rest of his family while Eileen dished out the stew and Ryder passed around the warm biscuits and butter.

“It’s my quilting night,” Eileen said. “Anya will heat up some stew for Saetien after you bring her back from Butler’s, but you might as well have your supper with us.”

“Aye,” Kieran replied. He buttered a biscuit, then stared at it.

“Trouble?” Kildare asked.

Kieran sighed. “Brenda wasn’t always easy to live with when she was in that stage of growing up, but you knew who you were dealing with. Saetien?”

“She came here impatient for answers, thinking the answers would be simple to obtain just because she wanted them,” Eileen said. “She didn’t expect to have answers doled out by someone she couldn’t impress with anything but intelligence and good manners.”

“Butler dealt with unruly witches as a service to Queens and courts for a lot of years,” Kieran said.

Kildare drank some ale, then wagged a finger at his sons. “When I was around your age, there was a filly here who was the most fractious witch I’d ever met. Excellent bloodlines, and her dam was patient and sweet tempered, but the filly took against us almost from the moment she was born. My father tried to work with her, teach her. The sister of mine who also worked with the horses tried to connect with her. I tried. All we got were kicks and squeals and carrying on. Oh, she was smart and she paid attention when we started showing the foals basic Craft and teaching them the rest of what they needed to learn to live around humans, but she just banged around the pastures, and short of tossing her out, which would have been unforgivable in the eyes of all the kindred horses, we spent a couple of years clashing with her while we tried to figure out how to work with her.

“Then one day Lord Donal, a friend of mine, came to visit. His family had a few kindred horses, and they were open to sharing their land with a few more. Well, the filly heard his voice, and something inside her just settled. She trotted up to him, and that was that. Everything we had tried to teach her, everything she had refused to do? Donal showed her a bit of Craft or indicated by some praise or a cool look what he expected, and didn’t she do it? It was like he was dealing with a different horse. And in a way, that was true. Something in him brought out the best in her. She went with him and was with him the rest of her life.” Kildare shook his head and went back to eating his stew.

Kieran thought about the story while they had supper. He thought about it while he read a few letters and requests.

Even now, here in Maghre, people turned a blind eye to the fact that Daemon Sadi was the High Lord of Hell. Here he was the Warlord Prince who helped run the Sceltie school in memory of the Queen who had been his wife and the love of his life.

Here in Maghre, Saetien was a girl staying with Kieran’s family while she followed a heart quest. Here she could put aside the heavy burden of being the High Lord’s daughter.

Was that the reason they were seeing a fractious girl blooming into a caring young woman? Or was Saetien like the filly in Kildare’s story, finally hearing a voice that could reach the core of who she was?

Saetien felt relieved that Kieran didn’t need to fill the silence with useless words. Not that talk about people and the village and books and all sorts of things was useless, but her head was so full of thoughts that she just didn’t have room for more. Not tonight.

She appreciated the punch-in-the-gut sensation of seeing Witch for the first time. She could easily imagine Wilhelmina Benedict, who had come to Kaeleer expecting to find the sister she remembered, facing the living myth because Alexandra had prodded her to demand to see her sister’s true Self.

How much anger had she felt because she’d turned away from her human family and sided with something that was so clearly not fully human? How much guilt did Wilhelmina carry because the monster she couldn’t accept had still loved her enough to try to protect her one last time?

“Are there . . . ?” she began, then stopped, uncertain what to ask.

“Are there . . . ?” Kieran repeated. Kindly, not mocking.

“Are there any histories about Scelt during the time of the war or the years just after?”

A thoughtful silence before Kieran said, “Scholars wrote about those years, although they were looking at it from the outside, so to speak, because some things were not shared. If you’re looking for the personal in Maghre, the family has journals left by Lady Morghann and Lord Khardeen. Khardeen wasn’t much for putting down his thoughts, so most of what we know about our family history during that time comes from Morghann. Even with preservation spells, the journals have become fragile and can’t leave the house. But you’re welcome to read them.”

“Thank you.”

Saetien ate her supper alone. By the time she’d finished, Kieran had located the journals and left them on the library table for her. She turned up the lamp on the table, then hesitated to open the first journal.

Did she want to know? So far in the telling, Wilhelmina Benedict wasn’t the heroine of the story, but she wasn’t the villain either. She was just a woman struggling to make a new life in a place where she didn’t fit in.

But Lady Morghann had been Jaenelle Angelline’s good friend. What would she say about Wilhelmina? And what would Morghann say about the Queen whom Saetien had seen as some kind of rival when she wasn’t trying to ignore Jaenelle’s existence?

Saetien hesitated a moment longer, then opened the cover of the first journal.