There must have been hundreds of them. Sera felt tears well in her eyes. She had only ever known Boris, but now she found herself staring at a whole forest full of Arboreals.
“So many,” Leo murmured, and his voice sent a sudden prickle up her spine. “This must have been where my father stole Boris from. Errol too.”
“Ambrosine was livid when she found out,” Bellamy said. “She blamed Hektor, for not protecting them better. She always blames Hektor when something goes wrong.”
There was a flash of movement on the water and Sera saw a ship, painted in the shifting colors of the sea, sailing past them. Then she saw another just beyond it, and another.
“She calls them clandestines,” Bellamy explained. “Ships that blend in with the ocean. Makes them harder to detect until they’re right on top of you. They’ve been sinking any ship that dares to come north. That’s why the waters have been so empty.”
The memory sharing seemed to have stripped Bellamy of her fear, no longer scared to talk to them but eager. Sera felt a flutter in her chest and a clenching in her stomach, the scene of Hektor proposing to Bellamy still fresh in her mind, the embrace and the kisses that awoke a discovery in Sera herself, one that was swimming bright inside her.
She glanced at Leo, but he was staring at the Arboreals with razor-sharp focus, almost as if he was determined not to look at her. She bit her lip and tried to push the feelings down.
“We’re here!” Ambrosine declared as she strode up to them. “Bellamy, go put on something decent. And get Mckenna to run a comb through your hair. Honestly,” she said, rolling her eyes as Bellamy scurried away.
Sera had to grit her teeth to keep quiet.
“How marvelous are my treasures?” Ambrosine said, sweeping her arms out. “My family’s most prized possessions.”
Mertags and Arboreals were thoughtful, intelligent creatures, Sera thought, not possessions.
“They’re remarkable,” Leo said.
“My mertags will destroy any ship that comes within a mile of Culinnon’s shore,” Ambrosine bragged. “Unless it carries a familiar face or flies my banners. They’re devilishly smart, you know. Very easy to train.”
The galleon sailed around to a large inlet where an enormous mansion was perched at the crest of a hill, a long dock stretching out into the water like a silver tooth. The mansion was made mostly of glass and it sprawled across the grounds, disappearing into the forests surrounding it.
A man was standing on the dock, and as the galleon pulled up, Sera recognized him from Bellamy’s memory—Hektor.
The gangplank was lowered and Ambrosine led the descent onto land. Sera was glad to have her feet on solid ground again. The air was cold and crisp, scented with heather and dogwood. The path up to the mansion was lit with lanterns, like golden will-o-the-wisps marking a trail to the door.
“Mother,” Hektor said, bowing to her formally. He eyed Leo first, then Sera, but whatever thoughts he had about them remained hidden in his dark blue eyes.
“Hektor,” Ambrosine replied. “May I introduce your nephew, Leo McLellan. And his friend Sera Lighthaven.”
“Welcome to Culinnon,” Hektor said. There was no warmth in his tone and Sera felt Bellamy squirm beside her, ready to embrace her husband as she had in the memory. The thought made Sera’s fingers itch and tugged her eyes in Leo’s direction.
“I must see to a few matters,” Ambrosine said.
“We received a dove from Ithilia,” Hektor said. “I have sent out scouts to track the movements of the Renalt. She won’t be hard to find with all those warships.”
“Good,” Ambrosine said. “Mckenna, show Leo and Sera to their rooms. The western sequoia should do.” Without another word, she strode off down the dock, taking a different path than the one that led to the main entrance.
As soon as she was out of sight, Bellamy flew into Hektor’s arms.
“I missed you,” Sera heard him whisper in her ear.
“Come,” Mckenna said.
Hektor briefly pulled away from his wife. “You look just like her,” he said to Leo.
“I know,” Leo replied, his shoulders hunched.
Hektor’s mouth twisted. “So this is Mother’s salvation for the family?”
Sera didn’t know what he was talking about, but Bellamy shushed him. “Leo has been very kind to me,” she said. “Sera too. Let them be.”
Hektor turned back to her, and Sera and Leo followed Mckenna up the path to the mansion.
The foyer was huge, encased in glass with a thick growth of purple and blue hydrangeas climbing up the outside of one wall. There was a long, low firepit in the center, and the furniture was in strange shapes, armchairs that looked like eggs and couches with peaked backs. Everything was colored in browns and olive greens and watery blues. Without pausing, Mckenna marched straight across and through another door that led to a glass hall, then up a set of stairs, then down a hall that had a boulder for a wall, water flowing over its smooth gray surface in a thin sheet.
The farther they traveled, the less the layout made sense—it was as wild and unpredictable as nature, built around several towering sequoias. And there were no discernible floors except the ground one—staircases appeared as if from nowhere and sometimes when Sera looked up she saw four or five floors above her, where other times there was only one. Occasionally they would walk inside a tree, brightly lit corridors of cedar-colored wood.
Finally, they reached a sequoia with a spiral staircase winding straight up through the center of its trunk. Halfway up, Mckenna stopped.
“This is your room,” she said to Leo, opening the door to reveal a glimpse of glass walls and cozy yet modern furnishings.
“I—” Leo looked at Sera as if reluctant to let her go. Her heart stuttered and she felt off balance.
“She will only be one room above you,” Mckenna said. “You are safe on Culinnon. If you’d like, I can show you the Arboreal groves once you’ve changed.”
She directed this only at Leo and Sera felt a flash of irritation, similar to how she’d felt when she’d spent time with Rahel. She hadn’t understood it then but she did now—jealousy. She didn’t much care for the emotion. It was prickly and mean and made her feel not at all herself.
“Sure,” Leo said, and then Mckenna was leading Sera away from him, up one more spiral to her new room.
“Do let me know if there is anything you need,” the servant girl said. Then she bowed her head and descended back down the stairs.
Sera’s room was nestled in the crook of the great tree—the walls were glass that formed a little dome with branches crawling up around them. A fireplace was built into the trunk, a small fire burning in its hearth. Her bed was laid with a comforter as red-gold as a sunset and there was a table made of polished river stones with two chairs on either side of it. A pitcher of water and a basin for her to wash with sat beside an armoire, and she scrubbed her face and then wiped it off with a soft, scented towel.
At last, Sera sank onto the edge of her bed and allowed the feelings she had so ardently refused to acknowledge to swell up around her. When she’d felt the shudderings and shiverings of desire that fluttered inside Bellamy during the memory share, she’d recognized them in herself, in a way she had not expected but now could not unsee or unfeel.