Page 84 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
“Interesting.” Beau made a note. “What else—”
“Beau!” Aislinn admonished. “Thisstillisn’t the time!” She turned back to Dillon. “I’m sorry, Ser—Dillon. My brother is usually the more empathic one, but sometimes his curiosity does get the better of him.”
“I—thank you.”
“I’m Aislinn,” she said, “crown princess of Faerie.”
He smiled at her. “You look so much like your mother.”
“Should we…” Beau glanced around him, “wake the others?”
Aislinn shook her head. “This night has seen enough interruptions. Let them sleep.”
“I can keep watch, if you like,” Dillon suggested. “I don’t think I need to sleep.”
Aislinn and Beau exchanged glances. “You’re just going to sit here all night by yourself after just coming back from the dead?”
“Why not? It’ll give me some time to process.”
“That’s a fair point,” Beau concluded.
“Won’t you be a bit… lonely?”
“I’m sure I can handle it.”
Aislinn once more did not feel like sleeping. She wished it was her sensibilities reminding her that it was not a good idea to leave an undead man they’d just met in charge of their overnight safety—what if his sentience was only temporary? What if it was all a trick?—but the main reason was simple: she did not want him to be alone.
“I’m not sure I feel like sleeping at the moment,” she announced. “I certainly feel I could stay up for a bit longer.”
“Me too,” said Beau. “How strange.”
Dillon smiled.
For at least another hour, while Hecate dozed in Dillon’s lap, they spoke with him beside the dwindling fire, telling him about how the Unseelie King who’d killed him had been defeated, and what had happened afterwards—how their parents had married, how the Queen had granted him knighthood, how his statue was erected beside the lake in the gardens and they’d clambered over it as children. They told him the stories everyone had shared of him, how their mother spoke of him frequently, how his father had taught them how to ride, how Miriam had referenced him all the time when teaching them how to fight.
“It was all, ‘by the time he was fourteen, Dillon Woodfern could carry a wounded horse on his back with a broken leg! Another sack of flour, Princess Aislinn!’”
“It was a miniature pony,” Dillon insisted, “and my leg was only sprained.”
“Did you help Mother tie Father’s hair to his bedpost?”
“I was merely a lookout.”
“What about the time she stoleallof his clothes and flung them out of the high tower.”
“Please,” said Dillon shuddering, “don’t remind me of that time. He walked around naked all day, proclaiming how apparently someone wasdesperateto see him naked.”
Beau and Aislinn howled.
The stories seemed to ease Dillon somewhat, and, eventually, they could hold off sleep no longer.
“We can trust him, right?” Beau whispered as they rolled into their beds.
“Hard not to, isn’t it? This isDillon Woodfern.He was Mother’s Cass.”
Beau conceded, and shortly after, they both fell asleep.
They woke to the dwarves screaming.
