“Yes, where is Clementine?” the countess asked. “I’ve heard so much about her. Should she not be here with us? Both of my sons are. Aaron’s daughter is here. Where is yours?”
“I don’t know where my daughter is,” Papa said. “After our town was lost to us . . . she was angry with me and ran away. I haven’t been able to locate her.”
“You don’t have any tricks up your sleeve, do you, Ambrose?” the countess queried with a laugh. “Although perhaps I should also ask the same of you, Ms. Britelle? Since you are a seasoned stagecraft performer.”
My mother narrowed her eyes. “What are you implying, lady?”
“That you have schemed for Clementine to arrive at the mountain fortress after we have ascended and taken all the risk and danger.”
Mazarine snorted and cracked open a new chicken bone. Thankfully no one paid her any heed but me.
I told myself to inhale, exhale. To not draw any attention. But my body was wound tight and I think Nura sensed it, sitting beside me.
“Clementine has no idea who I truly am,” Papa answered. “I have withheld my past from her. And when she does discover it . . . the last thing she’ll want is to be anywhere near me.”
His words dampened the mood of camp. My father stared into the flames, as if his only daughter was truly lost. But through the fire and the dancing shadows and the starlight, I felt someone watching me.
I lifted my gaze to meet Phelan’s.
This time, he did not look away.
33
I couldn’t ascend the mountain the following morning without speaking to my father in private. The questions were devouring me. And I remembered the things I had once said to him, when my heart had been wrung by betrayal.
You are vile and deceptive and I want no part of you.
I retired to my tent and waited for the camp to fall quiet. I cloaked myself with stealth and slipped into the night, cautiously approaching my parents’ tent.
I hesitated a beat. I was anxious to enter unannounced, because I was uncertain about the status of their relationship. I had been surprised that my mother chose to accompany my father on this journey, given their past.
But perhaps love was not something easily forgotten, even when it had burned down to ashes.
I was beginning to understand why their marriage had unraveled all those years ago. My father was deathless, dreamless, cursed. A magician of the mountains. And my mother wasn’t. She was of Bardyllis; she would age and die. She could dream.
And yet she had guarded his secret.
As Phelan was guarding mine.
I slipped into their tent without stirring the canvas.
They had not gone to bed yet, to my vast relief. But they sat close to each other, a few candles burning around them, casting monstrous shadows on the tent walls. My father startled when he saw me materialize.
“Clem,” he rasped, and I held my finger to my lips, silently rebuking him.
“Anna,” my mother said. “We were just speaking of you.”
I drew a deep breath, burying the resentment and bitterness that bloomed within me. I told myself that I would handle this conversation as Anna would, as an outsider with little emotions attached, and whispered, “I don’t have long, but we need to talk, Ambrose.”
He nodded, glancing at my mother. She rose, brushing the wrinkles from her dress, and said, “I’ll keep watch.”
She departed, touching my shoulder on her way out, and I took her place on the ground, facing my father.
He cast a quick spell; I sensed his magic drifting around us like feathers. Enclosing us in the tent, so our voices couldn’t be overheard.
“What can I expect when we stand in the mountain fortress tomorrow?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I imagine my brother will greet us.” He paused, his gaze drifting to my neck. He was remembering the bruises that had been there, inspired by Emrys’s hand, and he said, “I’m deeply sorry that he hurt you on the new moon.”
“I thought he was you.”
My father smiled, but it gleamed with pain. “You would have known who he was if I had told you the truth from the beginning.”
“Yes, the truth would have been nice,” I said, my skin flushing. “You and your brother are the twin boys in Imonie’s story.” I remembered that tragic tale of hers. At the time, I hadn’t realized she was sharing a glimpse into her own past. “You and your brother . . . she raised you, didn’t she?”
“She did.”
I studied my father’s face in the candlelight—lean and handsome and yet creased with sorrow. I wondered if he had been Imonie’s quiet boy. The lover of books and knowledge. Or if he had been her wild boy. Reckless and untamed and full of challenge.
“How old are you, Papa?”
He chuckled. “Well, I was twenty-five when the curse fell. But I’ve been alive for nearly one hundred and twenty-seven years now.”
“Can I see your true face?”
He hesitated but nodded. I watched as his glamour melted away, and I saw him as he was, frozen in time as a young man. And even though I was prepared for the sight, it was still strange to behold.
“It’s one of Mama’s spells, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he answered, and the glamour returned. “Without it, I was unable to stay in one place too long, for fear of people becoming suspicious of my agelessness.”
“Why did you choose to become warden of Hereswith?” I asked. “Did you want to be as close to your brother as you could? Even as the curse kept you apart?”
He was quiet for a moment, but his brow furrowed. “Yes and no. I do miss my brother. Some days, it is nearly unbearable. But I was also given an order to protect Mazarine.”
“The duke’s order?”
“Indeed.”
“He’s wearing one of Mazarine’s guises.”
“He is. As you know well yourself.”
“And he must have killed the real duke quietly,” I surmised. “And then had Mazarine enchant him, so he could replace Lord Deryn without anyone knowing there had been a swap.”
My father was silent, but I saw how my spoken revelation softened his eyes.
“How did you get dragged into this, Papa?”
“The duke found me by chance years ago, even though I had tried to melt into Endellion society. My marriage to your mother was on the rocks by then, so when he offered me Hereswith with a few terms attached, I took it.”
We both heard a sound beyond the tent. A nightingale’s call.
I knew it must be a warning from my mother, and yet there was still so much more I wanted to ask my father.
“The countess thinks we are scheming,” I rushed to say. “She’s concerned about me arriving. Why?”
“Because for the era of the curse to fully come to an end, a new duke or duchess must claim the mountains and reinstate a court,” Papa said. “The Countess of Amarys no doubt thinks I am going to try and position you as sovereign. I believe she has similar plans when it comes to one of her two sons.”
I held his stare, wondering what my father saw within me. If he saw light or darkness. If he saw truth or deceit. If he would make a case for me to rule or if he thought me too reckless, too ambitious.