This will be fun, p.11
This Will Be Fun, page 11
Shock rounded her features for a heartbeat before her eyes slid to Beatrice. She looked away immediately. No curiosity for her former friend. No interest in her welfare. Beatrice was something hideous. Something she wished she could unsee. A nightmare you prayed to wake from.
Beatrice, however, couldn’t look away. For one, her former friend wore rather un-Elowen-like clothing. If Beatrice did not know better, she would say she recognized the dramatic, figure-sculpted garment. Was Elowen . . . dressing up as a character from the shadow play they watched as children? Surely not.
Outfit notwithstanding, Elowen looked . . . hardened. Her skin was paler than Beatrice had ever seen it—paler than that time in winter when they both got the poxworm flu and had to stay inside for weeks with only each other to entertain themselves and care for. Her hair was long, standing out in fiery contrast to her pallor. There were circles under her eyes, but her cheeks were tinged with the pink only Vandra could inspire. She was beautiful, of course. But distant. Untouchable. Like one of the Ghosts alive the mystics wrote about.
When Clare saw Elowen, he released Vandra. It was sloppily done. Ten years ago, Galwell would have reprimanded him for leaving them open to attack. Clare used to be rash about things like this, though—his love for the people he held dear. He rushed forward to pull a startled Elowen into his arms.
“It’s good to see you, kid,” he said thickly.
Elowen blinked. Beatrice winced. The nickname hung heavy between the remaining three of the Four. People who would have once died for one another, who now didn’t know how much of each other even remained.
This was a nightmare.
“I’m not a kid, Grandhart,” Elowen said, warmth at last coloring her voice. She’d said it to him a hundred times on the road. As Galwell’s younger sister and the youngest of the group, Clare had enjoyed teasing her. “I wasn’t a kid ten years ago and I’m hardly closer to one now,” she continued, laughing slightly.
Clare smiled at the sound, rendering himself unfairly handsome. For more than one reason, Beatrice finally had to look away.
“Look, we’re all reunited,” he said grandly.
Beatrice’s stomach twisted, knowing what was coming.
“Not all of us,” Elowen replied.
It was as if she’d summoned the ghost of Galwell into their midst. Beatrice had watched him die thousands of times. She felt the impact of the killing blow all over again with Elowen’s words, how pain had ripped through her when Galwell fell.
Their reunion wasn’t happy. How could it be when the Four could only ever be the Three? Being together was only a reminder of whom they’d lost.
Even Clare seemed to struggle under the weight. He cleared his throat, his weird posturing returning once more to his demeanor. “We don’t have any lodging for the night,” he informed Elowen and Vandra formally. “We’ll be heading on to make camp on the road. Perhaps we could all share a drink together before we go?”
“No. I’m tired,” Elowen replied quickly.
“Elowen,” Vandra gasped, an assassin offended by her charge’s rudeness. She turned to Clare, apologetic. “We took the last two rooms. Oh, but you should take one!” She brightened as she seized on the idea. “I owe it to you after, you know, the trouble I caused you. Quite often, if I remember. Indeed, nearly incessantly.”
The real Clare peered out once more in his realization of the offer’s good fortune. “Yes, I’d say it’ll settle the score,” he replied. “Right, B?”
What game was he playing, invoking their old nicknames? She could only glare. Of course, Elowen did the same.
Oblivious, or, likelier, uninterested in their resistance, Vandra promptly handed over a heavy, rusted key.
“You two have this one,” she proposed, indicating Beatrice and Clare, “while Elowen and I can—”
“Absolutely not,” Elowen replied curtly, the rosiness in her cheeks deepening.
Vandra grinned gracefully, like the color in the other woman’s cheeks was reward enough. “Fine. Very well. You and Beatrice—”
“No.”
The word joined Beatrice’s voice with her former friend’s. The overlap was, regrettably, perfect. The unfortunate instance of their unity struck Beatrice like hearing the first notes of a melody forgotten from childhood.
Yet Beatrice’s dismay was nothing compared to what she felt when, in the next moment, her eyes locked with Elowen’s. It was no glancing gaze. What she saw in the glare of her childhood confidant, once her dearest companion in the world, was—
Utter loathing.
Her heart cracked in places she did not know vulnerability could be found. She chewed down on the waver in her lip.
Clare, of course, noticed.
He deftly passed her the key. “Why don’t I catch up with the kid,” he said, “while you watch the assassin?” He was no longer playing the nobleman. He was doing something far worse—he was showing her real kindness. Sir Sensitive, knight of Mythria over here, she wanted to mock him. Except she couldn’t, not entirely, not when gratitude overwhelmed her.
She could only nod, silent.
The plan mollified Elowen. “Follow me, Grandhart,” she summoned him gruffly. Unhesitating, intuiting the slightest pause would destabilize the fragile peace, he followed.
Without another word, they were gone, drawn into the dark of the inn. Beatrice watched, evaluating the two people who broke her heart. She did not know which one had done it worse.
“Well, roomie?” Vandra prompted her. “Shall we?”
Upstairs at the inn was not unlike downstairs. Noise of every manner rang from the rooms, whether the doors were closed or open. Prayers to the Ghosts in devotion and exclamations of ecstasy in the midst of nocturnal carousing. Music, from craftspeople practicing their lyrics and parents singing to cheer their children. Well, it was not as if Beatrice planned on sleeping.
Vandra led them to the very end of the hall. The room she unlocked for them was narrow—“cozy,” one might say. All considered, an assassin was the roommate Beatrice preferred to the alternatives. Nevertheless, she was not naive. When last she saw Vandra Ravenfall, she’d been disclosing the Four’s plans to the irritating Bartholomew.
“I want to see how you got Elowen to come with you,” Beatrice demanded.
Vandra hesitated. “Using your magic, I would guess?”
“I hardly trust you,” Beatrice returned. “If Elowen is here against her will . . .”
While the note of warning inspired nothing in Vandra, her roommate’s concern for Elowen did. Vandra cocked her head in curiosity, then presented her hand.
“Gladly,” she said.
Her palm in Vandra’s, Beatrice reached out, her head magic unraveling the world. The raucous inn vanished under the gossamer veil of the past. Finally, she saw—Elowen’s home, high in the forest over Featherbint. Everything was desperately present. She felt pulled, like the memory of her friend drew her into the vision the way no solitary recollection or visitation for strangers could.
She watched the past days play out. How Elowen was coaxed down from her home. How she encountered Vandra. The former assassin’s story was clean—and yet disturbed her like no deceit ever would.
For the magic revealed how Elowen had lived.
In her darkest moments, Beatrice would imagine the circumstances in which their quest—her failure—had left her former friend. Elowen’s sorrow. Her solitude.
She no longer needed to imagine them. Vandra’s recollection of her espionage on Elowen revealed every painful detail. The heartbreaking quiet of Elowen’s secluded home. Elowen, who used to have “sleep outside” parties with her where they would confide every detail of their lives while wrapped in coverlets inside Elowen’s family’s stables sharing sugary delicacies—who now went nearly every day without speaking one word out loud. The nervousness in the way she moved. The fear hiding in her eyes, driven there when fate robbed her of what she held dearest in her heart.
No. Not fate.
Elowen had lived isolated in her grief, for years. Because of Beatrice.
9
Clare
Chivalry, Clare Grandhart found, was a real pain.
He did not experience the sentiment figuratively. Very real pain presently pervaded his shoulders, neck, and spine from the joyous position of sleeping on the wooden floor of the inn where they decamped for the night.
It was embarrassing, honestly. The swordsman and scoundrel, aching like the old men who posted up in his neighborhood pubs. In his youth, he could sleep for hours on the stone floors of the dungeon cells in which he not infrequently found himself. His duskjay-feather pillows and sleeping-spelled drapes in his Farmount home had wrought this misery on him.
Nonetheless, chivalry was chivalry, and it was in keeping with the gentlemanliness Clare would practice on their journey. When he and Elowen had reached their room, it dictated ceding her the narrow bed wedged into their quarters.
The escape from the company of Beatrice, however, had been welcome. Very welcome. He’d faced nightwalkers and gnarlivores and precipices of eroding rocks—yet he did not know if he would have survived the night sleeping next to her. Huddled for warmth under the dark starlit sky, wrapped in the sweet shroud of her smell, her soft—
He definitely would not have survived.
Instead, the evening he passed with Elowen had been pleasant enough. She had not protested when he consigned himself to the floorboards. She had protested, in her way, when he peppered and prodded her with questions. How did she find the cursed forest? Was she excited for the wedding? How was her journey? Elowen had replied sullenly, ending conversation after conversation with monosyllabic replies or sometimes just grunts.
It had been just like old times!
Clare was unashamed of how deeply it overjoyed him to find himself once more spending a unilaterally chatty evening with the flame-haired girl he’d once considered as close as a sister. It was, he’d confided in himself while he rolled and repositioned on the worn oak of his sleeping situation, a reunion for which he had not let himself yearn. The famous life he’d found in Farmount had helped him forget how fiercely he missed Elowen. How much he missed them.
When his former companions had absconded into the forest and into nobility, respectively, he had, in part, embraced the public role of “hero” in response to their retreat from it.
Or, Elowen’s retreat. In the days following Galwell’s funeral, when the pain of what Beatrice had done was still fresh, he could not have cared less about what discomforted Beatrice.
Elowen, however—he knew grief had forced her into isolation. Mythria needed a hope they could hold on to, and Clare had stepped onto the stage so she did not have to. His flaunted life had not earned him only purpose in his days, coin in his coffers, and a gaudy knighthood. In occupying the role of hero in part for Elowen, he felt a connection with his old friend, even when, deep down, he knew none existed.
Now, it had earned him a creaky pain in his left hip.
He rose with the morning sun, wincing. The hubbub in the inn hallway, the cacophony of parenting, entertainment, prayer, and sex—in, he hoped, separate rooms—had subsided, leaving only the upbeat shuffle of morning journeyers on their way.
While Elowen slept, and ignoring the stabbing hip pain, Clare quietly went downstairs. The tavern, now the morning meal hall, was rich with the smells of sweetspiced sausage, corncakes, and four varieties of eggs. Clare helped himself, liking the look of the dawnlark eggs, and headed to one of the open seats.
And waited.
She arrived looking refreshed, her wooden plate heaped with pink-salted eggs. She sat, her eyes lit with eagerness for the day.
“The innkeeper gave me your message,” Vandra said.
Clare said nothing in reply. He was inopportunely in the midst of a mouthful of eggs.
Vandra smiled. “Early breakfast with Clare Grandhart,” she went on. “I imagine people would pay a fortune for the pleasure.”
“They do,” he remarked, swallowing. “I sometimes auction off my meals to raise money for charitable causes.”
Vandra looked indulgently interested, like his explanation was the setup she was entertaining in expectation of the punchline. She flagged down the drinkmaid and, once she’d ordered a dark brew with cream, returned him her focus. “What charities does a former outlaw support?”
“I have an eagle sanctuary, if you have farthings you’d like to devote to our wonderful creatures.”
Her smile widened. “I suppose I can’t make fun,” she conceded. “Like you, I’ve given up my life of crime for the straight and narrow!”
Clare reminded himself to remind her to fund his precious eagles. Despite her insinuations regarding his past, his charitable endeavors were entirely in earnest. “How do you like it?” he asked instead, with no meager curiosity. While the intent of his morning meeting with Vandra was not chitchat, her cheerful ease interested him. He’d wrestled with his life’s direction recently—how had Vandra found comfort in hers?
Well, she doesn’t have the pressure of upholding the desired image for sponsorships for ale or horseball apparel, he comforted himself pettily.
Of course, she only shrugged. “You know me, Grandhart. I always make my own fun,” she replied dazzlingly. “It matters not whether I’m assassinating an evil cultist or escorting a grumpy hermit across the land. I’m going to find the laughs!”
Now it was Clare who laughed. It was the finest eloquence he’d ever heard in a description of Elowen.
Vandra had not mischaracterized herself, either. The former assassin’s demeanor—shining like the sun outside their window—was unique in her line of work. Clare knew this from personal experience, having encountered the Deathrose Guild on memorable occasions in his rougher days. Named for the Mount Mythrian flower with ebony petals like opening lips and thorns capable of stopping the heart, Vandra’s cohort of former colleagues was . . . interesting.
“So.” Vandra shifted in her seat like she was waiting for noblewomen’s gossip of whose wife was sneaking around with the neighborhood weaponeer. “I expect you didn’t invite me to breakfast so we could bond over our criminal pasts.”
Clare finished off his dawnlark eggs. “Well, I’d hoped we might bond a little, but no.” He placed down his fork, continuing delicately. “How—was Beatrice?”
His guest’s eyes widened, her smile sharpening with accusation. “You’re still carrying your massive torch for her? I remember staking you out and watching you watch her the entire night with utter longing.” She shook her head. “Massive. Utterly fucking massive.”
He could not help flushing. “No,” he replied hotly. Chivalrous men don’t lose their cool, his conscience reminded him. Nevertheless—Vandra calling him out on the complicated emotions hiding under his and Beatrice’s betrayals of each other made him feel the way he did when pub rabblerousers contended the Farmount Falcons played inferior horseball to the Northwood Knights. He had to dispute her. “We’re in the past,” he insisted with warning. “Like you and Elowen.”
“We’re not in the past at all!” Vandra exclaimed.
The declaration distracted Clare from his indignation. “Wait, really? You’ve pined for her all these years?”
“Of course I have. Isn’t she wonderful? She’s the grumpiest human being I’ve ever met. I’d say the grumpiest being in Mythria, except I once had a cat who bit me whenever I ventured to pet her,” Vandra replied.
“Does Elowen know?” Clare inquired.
“She knows of my ill-tempered cat, yes.”
Clare pinned her with his gaze. “Not what I meant.”
Vandra grinned. Her impishness softening, she looked down. “It’s . . . complicated,” she confessed. “We weren’t there for each other for many years. It hurt how easily she left everything—left me—behind. I knew she owed me nothing, of course.” Vandra sighed, the rattling sigh of someone impatient with their own sorrow. “I wanted to leave her behind, too. It hurt nonetheless. Then . . . when I parted from the guild, I did a great deal of reflecting. Elowen was on my mind often,” Vandra replied. “I couldn’t forget her.”
Clare stared into his dark brew. He knew something of the impossibility of forgetting, no matter how much misery entwined itself within the memories.
“Couldn’t forgive her either, though, I suppose,” he finally said.
“Oh no, quite the contrary,” Vandra rejoined. “I forgave her easily.”
He glanced up, uncomprehending.
Vandra went on. “After all, I could have reached out to her as well, and I did not. I refused to resent Elowen when I knew she could resent me in return.” She regarded Clare. “In my old line of work, I learned one thing,” she said. “People are not all bad or all good. We are both. And to be happy, sometimes you must forgive.”
You must forgive.
Clare wriggled under her pointed gaze. Yes, very well, he wanted to say. I know you mean me.
He offered the only honest reply he could. “Some things cannot be forgiven.” He knew not whether he meant what he or Beatrice had done. Does it matter?
Vandra said nothing, yet her expression made no secret of how his reply left her unsatisfied. The drinkmaid returned with the steaming mug of dark brew and a small cup of cream.
Clare watched in fascination while Vandra swilled the hot, spicy drink—then promptly pounded the creamer on its own like it was a shot of liquor.
While he contemplated the combination he’d just observed, which was not, to put it mildly, customary, Vandra made no comment on her unusual morning ritual.
“Well, while we are certainly in no way discussing Beatrice currently,” she replied, “I will now answer your question. Beatrice was . . . wary,” she explained. “She delved into my memories to confirm my story. I don’t think she liked what she saw. How . . . Elowen lives. She went to bed immediately, except I’m pretty sure she didn’t sleep. She went very still for hours, unresponsive. Like she was . . . in her magic.”
