Page 65 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
“I don’t want to hurt—”
“We risk freezing to death or we risk you killing me. One is less likely than the other and far, far more comfortable…”
Caerwyn considered it for a moment, as sparks finally sprung from his attempts. He waited a while, making sure the fire was starting. It would take some time before it was properly burning, and it was so, so cold…
He scooted to Aislinn’s side, pulling open her cloak and slipping under, careful not to touch her skin. A few seconds ticked by.
“Put your arms around me,” she instructed.
Caerwyn did, although the action felt very strange to him. It had been a long time since he’d held a woman this way. Ice cold though the air was, Aislinn’s warm breath brushed against his arms, making the hairs prickle. Even her hair seemed warm; like soft embers.
“We should probably talk,” he said. “If you’re up for it?”
Aislinn murmured against him. “My mouth seems to be the one part of me that’s working.”
“All right,” he continued. “What should we talk about?”
“Tell me about your mother,” Aislinn asked. “If you want to.”
Caerdidwant to. For months, he’d kept all talk of her away, but he’d thought about her often, all the time. He hated how her death seemed to have stretched into the two decades of the life they’d shared beforehand, like the disease had rotted those memories too.
But those memories—those memories were more her, more real, than the last ones.
“My mother was brave and warm,” he told her. “People liked to say she was frail, but I never saw that. She held a kingdom alone after the death of her much-beloved husband, birthed a child who never saw his father. She smiled when she was sad, until she was happy.” He paused. “She never vanquished any dragons, but I think she was the toughest person I knew.”
“Even tougher than Minerva?”
“Yes,” he said.Maybe as tough as you.
“It’s easier to be tough when you’re born that way,” Aislinn agreed. “Minerva feels like she might have been, but who knows? Sometimes toughness is armour.”
“Is it with you?”
Aislinn paused. “I’m not sure. I’ve been wearing it so long I don’t know where it begins and I don’t.”
“I can understand that.” He took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Your friend, Cass. Tell me about her.”
“I don’t know where I’d begin.”
“At the start,” he told her. “How did you meet?”
“I don’t know,” Aislinn admitted. “Children are rare in Faerie. As such, whenever there are royal children, it’s tradition for any other children in the capital—no matter their station—to be educated alongside them. That’s actually how my parents met, and it’s how I met Cass. She was mortal—the daughter of a merchant from Summertown.Nobles from the rest of Faerie sent their children to Acanthia too, but I didn’t care about any of them. By the time I was old enough to know what a friend was, I already had her. Her, and Daisy, and Beau. The royal four, they called us.”
“I am sensing you got into mischief.”
“Somuch mischief.” Aislinn laughed. “I think Cass was probably the instigator, but I was just as bad. Beau and Daisy were the sensible ones—although they rarely told on us. We got into all sorts of trouble, laying mortal traps for our least favourite school teachers, abandoning lessons to swim in the lake… unleashing the monsters we were supposed to be studying. Once, we transformed a barghest into a mouse. It’s like a giant spiky dog-bear thing.”
“Sounds like transforming it into a mouse wasn’t a bad idea.”
“Yeah… the spell didn’t stick long. It destroyed a fair chunk of Master Mayhew’s room when it transformed back.”
Caer laughed. “You werewild.” He paused. “When did that change?”
“What?”
“You. There are moments when I see that in you—that wildness. But you seem more serious now. Did that happen when Cass—”
Aislinn shook her head. “That may have solidified it, but I started to wise up a bit when I hit sixteen. People started to court me, you see. Never mind how young I was, how many centuries I had for romance—they wanted a piece of whatever glory might be coming my way, wanted to take advantage of my youth, hoped to elicit a promise out of me that I could be kept to in the future.” She stopped for a moment. “My father took me aside once, told me that he knew all about love, how it could make someone feel like it was forever no matter how implausible that truly was. To begin with, I was surprised—because he and my mother always seemed so very painfullyforeverthat it was sometimes difficult to look at.”
