Disclaimer: Still not mine. I promise. I'm not lying. Neither Harry Potter nor Avistrum are mine.
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Chapter Fourteen: Weddings and Graveyards
"I'll not be after takin anyone who'll whinge at getting dirty."
Several of the girls traded wry looks before answering the spindly young man in front of them. The five girls that were gathered at the end of the village road were all dressed simply in thick jeans and turtlenecks, flannel overshirts and boots, well worn and well suited to the tears and catches of branches and brambles. "I daresay those of us who are here are non-whinging, Amos," Kushiel informed her oldest friend dryly.
He nodded, looking down on them from his six feet five inches, hands on his narrow hips. Amos of Hallowed Haven, the unknown bastard get of a woman who died in childbirth, had made his unexpected friendship with the younger daughter of the manor at the tender age of four. When the lady of the manor and her two daughters had come into town for the May festival, he had been dared by the other boys of the village to steal the pendant from the older girl's necklace. He had managed it, surely enough, and ran like hell afterwards, but had not counted on the younger one pursuing him like the punishing angels chase sinners. She'd caught him, tackling him to the ground in the middle of a mud puddle, and reclaimed her sister's pendant.
That would have been enough, probably, to secure an uneasy truce between them, had she not promptly punched him in the nose and ordered him to teach her the skill of it. Lady Séraphine had healed his nose, amusement dancing in her blue eyes, and given her leave for her heir to pursue the unlikely attachment.
Cliona, Elowen, Elena, and Gwen had followed their schoolmate down to the village, leaving the others fast asleep in their beds, to meet the famous, and infamous, Amos. For some of them, it was their first trip to Hallowed Haven, and they were eager to see the grounds of the home Kushiel loved so well. She had warned them that they would be going through the woods as well, if they truly wanted to see everything, and the House Elves provided for what they had not thought to need.
Pale hazel eyes narrowed, he nodded once more and turned his back on them. "Come, then, and if the lads say aught, ye're on your own."
"What does he mean by that?" Elowen whispered to Kush as they started after him.
"It simply means he won't defend us," she explained, her lilting Irish brogue more pronounced than ever now that she was home. "If we take umbrage at aught the lads say, he'll be leavin it to us to defend ourselves."
"And what, pray tell, does that entail, exactly?"
The redhead shrugged. "Whatever you wish, whether it be ignoring them or punchin them in the face. It's up to you, if you'd like to take one or t'other."
But rather than leading them immediately through town, Amos strolled away from the village, his hands in his pockets. "Ye're sure your Yanks are up to this, Kush?"
"Boy, I spent my younger years huntin' coons in the woods with the boys," Elowen retorted sharply. "I'm up for anything you can throw at me."
Once again, he nodded wordlessly, but there was a pensiveness to it, as well, and a grudging approval. Kushiel left Elowen to the others and caught up to her male friend, her thumbs linked through her belt loops as they walked. "Has all been well?" he asked quietly, knowing the slump to her shoulders.
"Persephone has gone so far as to attack the school," she answered, equally lowly. "They can't find her, nor the painter. People have been hurt, friends."
"Killed?"
"None of ours."
"Then you have some time yet before you can be so down," he told her philosophically. "Until ye've been hit personally, it's naught to do with ye."
"I've been attacked."
He fell silent, regarding her from the corner of his eye. "Yer mam said naught."
"She knows naught."
"Why haven't ye told her?"
"I will," she promised softly. "It's not somewhat to deliver in a letter."
"Ye'd best, or I'll write to your teachers and ask them to tell her themselves."
She smiled in spite of herself. "Amos, you can't even write."
"Then I'll find someone to write it for me," he replied implacably. "Yer mam's a smart woman. No doubt, she'll have somewhat to tell thee."
"I'll tell her."
The group of six made their way into the forest, dwarfed by the ancient trees. Birds trilled from time to time, high overhead, and they were surrounded, embraced, by a strange sense of timelessness. It was an odd feeling at their age, poised on the cusp of adulthood, so close to having to make their own way in the world. Eighteen, or nearly, was a time of impulsiveness, of spontaneous motion and momentous fluidity. The forest erased all of that, regarding them as wayward children between gnarled, leaf-burdened branches.
"Too bad it's not a full moon," Cliona murmured. "This would be a fun time."
"You remember the villagers, yes?" Kushiel replied. "As lovely as the woods would be, I don't know that you'd want to tempt superstitious villagers."
"Ah."
"This place is so old!" Elowen exclaimed, her voice unnaturally loud against the stillness. "Nothin' back home feels like this."
Elena smiled gently, trailing her hand along a thick, vine-wreathed trunk. "We're a younger country. Give us time."
"By the time we have that time, there won't be any forests left," Cliona predicted gloomily. "They keep cutting them down."
"They'll never touch the trees around the Den."
"No, but that's not the only forest that matters."
Amos leaped across a somewhat wide ditch and searched about for a fallen branch stout enough to suit his purposes. Kushiel took a running leap and flew over it, landing lightly on the other side with the ease of long practice, assisting him in his search. Between them, they found a thick branch and lowered it across to bridge the gap for the other girls. They clambered across on the unsteady structure, coming to rest on firm earth on the far side. Once they were regathered, they continued, through the forest, alongside the river, up through the hills to the house. Rather than returning inside, however, they passed it by and took the road back to the village.
So far as Cliona could recall, the village didn't actually have a name, at least not one that she had ever head Kush utter. It was simply the village, an extension of Hallowed Haven, though perhaps it could be called Haven after the ancestral estate. Hallowed Haven itself wasn't terribly old, not so far as the British purebloods reckoned such things; Henri de Navarre, future Henri IV of France, had bought it for his Irish mistress in 1574, when Aisling had informed him she was pregnant with his child. Kush had told her that the magical estates originally inherited by Henri were much, much older, located in the rugged Pyrenees in what used to be the sovereign kingdom of Navarre. The village was simply an extension of the estate in a way, created to support the mansion and provide for its non-elf workers.
The single street widened in the center to a square, narrowing again to form the street leading to the other half of the houses. It was while they were in the square, dropping the bucket down into the well to pull up some water, that they finally met the village boys.
By village standards, they really weren't boys anymore. At eighteen and older, they had been in the fields and workshops for several years by that point, and it showed in the musculature of their arms, bare under tunics despite the chill of the season. "So, the high and mighty lass is back, come to remind us of our stations," one of them, with a frizzy mop of red-gold curls, sneered.
"What in the Sam Hill did he say?" Elowen asked softly, unable to decipher the extremely heavy brogue.
"He was insulting Kush," Cliona replied dryly.
"Why?" She demanded, highly affronted.
"Because they're boys and she's a girl?"
"Oh."
Kushiel leaned back against the brick wall of the well, flipping her long red braid behind her. "So, no cheery welcome home, Brendan? I'm hurt."
"We're sendin' our tithes to the estate, lady, never fear," he retorted, sweeping her a mocking bow.
"I'm simply showing my friends where I grew up," she stated mildly. "Have you a problem with that, Brendan?"
"Me only problem is you lording your ownership over us."
"Do I lord my ownership, Amos?"
"Not that I've seen," he answered gaily, an evil glint to his pale hazel eyes. "I think it's just Brendan here chafing at the bit."
"Are you chafing at the bit, Brendan?"
His hand curling into a fist, Brendan growled at them furiously. "Why can't ye just stay at yer fancy school?" he demanded. "Or up in yer fancy house? Ye've no need to come traipsing along to remind us we're not our own creatures."
"You are your own creature, Brendan," she told him calmly. "Ye pay in bare rent and token service, tha's all. Whatever else ye do is purely upon you." The punch came without warning, but it was not wholly unexpected, and Kush leaned to one side and watched the large fist slam into the arch of the cistern. "Ye all right there, boyo?" she queried in mock concern, voice oozing sweetness.
"Ye know how to start a party, don't ye, lass?" Amos chuckled, cracking his knuckles in anticipation.
John, one of the other boys, came to the defense of his friend's honor, and the fight was begun. Cliona, Elena, and Elowen stayed out of it, backing slightly away, while Kushiel and Amos thrived in the heart of it. That is, until yet another of the boys came close to them, running his hand along Elowen's cheek. "She brings pretty lasses back," he murmured. "But to the victor goes the spoils."
The Southern belle smiled sweetly at him. "I'm sorry, boy, but you're really not good enough for me. I prefer a measure of looks and intelligence in my guys."
He grabbed her wrist in a firm grasp, fingers digging into her skin. "You may not get that chance, Yank."
She kneed him directly in the crotch, putting all of her strength into it. As he doubled over in severe pain, she patted his head. "I'm no Yankee, I'm from the south, and you'd do well to remember that." A healthy push sent him reeling into the dirt, where one of his friends landed on him a moment later. Between the two of them, Kush and Amos managed to send the bullies off running, with a well danced symmetry that spoke of long years of practice.
Kush blotted the blood from her split lip with the back of one hand, grinning at her friends. "Ah, how I do so love coming home."
Amos gently fingered his left eye, which was already starting to puff and swell. "It's certainly livelier," he agreed. "Ye think yer mam will fuss?"
"Not if we take care of it before we enter the house." She winked across at the slightly flustered Elena. "Think you could patch us up before home, Elena?"
"No, I'm going to make you go to your sister's wedding looking like you've been beaten," she retorted with some asperity.
"It's just a split lip!" Kush protested indignantly. "Amos looks a hell of a lot worse off than me."
Sighing, Elena made to pull out her wand, but Amos stopped her by grabbing her wrist. "What?"
"The villagers know of magic, being so long tied to the de Navarres, but they've naught of magic themselves, most of them," he explained lowly. "So it's considered somewhat rude to perform it in front of them."
"Why do you say 'them'?" Elowen asked curiously. "Aren't you a villager, too?"
He shook his head with a wry grin. "I'm naught but the bastard boy on the fringes. They tolerate me, but I'm not one of them."
"We'll do the charms at home, Elena," Kush murmured. "We'll just do it before we get inside."
"This is a weird place, Kush," Elowen muttered as they trudged back up the street towards the mansion. "I don't get it at all."
"It's quite a bit backwards here," she explained. "The village is completely isolated from aught else. Most else," she amended. "Our forest is magicked to stay alive and nourished, to not drop its leaves, and none of them have even heard of a phone, much less used one, for all that they're muggle."
"But why is it a muggle village?"
"Because Aisling was born from muggles, and Henri wanted to honor that. He was a clever man in the game of thrones, but he didn't read people very well. It's caused a lot of dissention through the generations, between the villagers and the family," She shrugged casually. "In the end, though, things stay as they are, because it's what everyone knows. It's not much different than the plantation, El."
Elowen toyed with the loosely curled ends of her ponytail, considering. "I guess," she allowed. "It just seems weird, though."
"That's just because it's different."
Outside the house, Amos did a quick cast about, and nodded sharply to Elena. "Now's the time, when there's none to be seen."
She pulled out her slender wand and performed the charms, cooling Amos' black eye and healing the bruised tissue before repairing her friend's split lip.
"No need to ask if you managed to have fun without us," Carriegan quipped from the doorway, Aurelia, Raven, and Sabina clustered behind her.
"We were entertained," Elowen replied cheerfully.
"So, if you're done traipsing about, shall we see something?"
"We saw bunches of things already."
"Something other than woods and fists?" Sabina suggested archly.
"Would you like to see the graveyard?"
Many sets of eyes turned to stare at Kushiel, and she shrugged. "What? It's gorgeous."
"I'm for it." Cliona yawned and stretched, mussing her wavy brown hair. "Creepy statues, here we come."
"I'll leave ye lasses to it," Amos said, nodding to them as a group. "I've lunch to steal."
"Amos, ye do know that the elves will give ye anything y'ask for?"
He gave her a roguish grin. "But that's not nearly as much fun. I'll see thee later, Kushiel."
She waved him off and curled her thumbs through her belt loops, turning to the other girls. "Shall we, then?"
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Raven's eyes grew wide as they took in the scope of the ancient burial site, the monuments and statues and mausoleums. It sloped gently on a hill nearly two miles from the house itself, the oldest at the top and the newest down closer to the bottom. She followed Kush up the steep slope of the closer side, not yet covered in the markers of death, up to the very top.
A marble angel, weathered and cracked with age, stood at the crest, wings spread wide and arms held out in benediction or supplication; she couldn't figure out which. Her marble plinth bore an inscription on the front, etched into the hard stone.
Aisling Rhiannon FitzSimmons
1556-1627
Gone to join her Henri, together in Heaven
"This is THE Aisling?" Raven asked in awe, running her fingers reverently along one of the spidery cracks. "The mother of your line?"
"So far back as we bother to trace it, yes. The muggle born magical mistress of Henri II of Navarre, who became Henri IV of France. She kept a journal faithfully, and they show her to be an incredibly gentle, sweet soul. Being a secret mistress was hardly a socially acceptable bit, and her own family reviled her both for her choice of heart and her innate magic. Ooh!" She skipped down to another statue, this one sculpted from black marble. A brooding, beautiful young man stood shrouded in an elegant pair of wings, his expression dark and foreboding as he embraced a stunning, distant eyed young woman.
"Oh, he's a cheery soul, isn't he?" Gwen snickered. "Who is he?"
"Henri-Michel," their hostess answered promptly. "The grandson of Aisling and Henri. He was a melancholic soul, much given to depression. The family rejoiced when he fell in love and married, because it seemed like he'd finally found a little light come into his life. But, then, his bride died, trying to save some children from a fire in the village. The building crashed down on her. After that, he retreated so far into his sorrow that he became known as the Lord of Tears. In his arms is his wife, Arianrhod."
"You have such a cool history," Raven sighed. Wizard born, yes, but only three generations, and she felt the lack of magical history keenly. She was fascinated by history, and planned to spend life after school studying it intently.
Kush shrugged, wandering a little further down the slope. "I'm sure your muggle family has some incredible history behind it; they came over on some of the first ships, didn't they?"
"Well, yeah, that's true."
"Here's Aine de Navarre, and her husband Alexis Penyitriov. It was an arranged marriage, but they really were madly in love with each other. But. She refused to marry him, purely on principle, but didn't scruple against sleeping with him, so their first child was minutes shy of being born a bastard. He finally convinced her to marry him in spite of the arrangement while she was in labor, and they performed the binding right then and there."
Aurelia giggled, bobbing an impudent curtsey to the smirking woman. "She sounds like she was fun."
"The elves claim her mother despaired of her. Díane retired to Chez des Anges as soon as Aine was married, and refused to leave it for the rest of her days, nor would she allow Aine to come visit.
They made their way down to the base of the hill, where five table-like tombs stood all in a row. Made of rose marble, they bore trailing roses carved along their seams and rows, the inscriptions cast in a flowing, elegant script. "Who do these belong to?" Carriegan queried, squinting to make out the interlocking scrollwork.
"My nanan's sisters. Practically the only multiple birth in family history, and it came about as a direct result of stupid experimentation. My great-grandparents were having great difficulty conceiving, so they went to St. Mungo's and were seen by an absolute quack, who gave them a potion guaranteed to promote fertility. It was poison and nearly killed her. So, great-granpère decided he would make his own potion. He succeeded, I suppose; she conceived, and gave him quadruplets, but she and all four girls died within a week of the birth. He remarried eventually, and his new wife conceived my nanan, but great-granppère never really recovered." She slid up on top of one of them, laying back and dangling her feet over the side.
"Kush!"
"It's okay, Raven, they don't mind."
Cliona perched next to her best friend, clasping her hands at her knee and leaning her head back to the weak December sunlight. "It's not like they really have much of a say in it anyway," she observed.
"I used to come out here to play," Kush mused, closing her eyes. "Rhon and I would play hide and seek among the tombs, or we'd challenge each other to see who knew the most family histories. Later on, we would study out here, when the weather was nice."
"That's kind of sick, Diamonds," Aurelia commented, but that didn't stop her from hopping atop one.
"It's beautiful, though, and that was what mattered."
"I wonder if Persephone would agree," Cliona murmured in Kush's ear. She hadn't learned all the details, those were still bound by oath, but she'd figured out more or less what the other girl had been up to all these months.
"Perhaps She would," she agreed softly. "But I'm not Her."
"Beauty in death? You could be."
"But I'm not." She turned her head and gazed at the Queen of Spades. "I always felt very safe out here, in the protection of my ancestors. Somehow, I don't see Her as being all that into protection."
"And is it out here that you'll run when your father comes home?"
"If Mum lets me," she grumbled. "This is my home, Cli; Da has no right to muck it all up."
"Diamonds, I think your sister's coming down," Elena pointed out.
Kush sat up and shaded her eyes, watching the slim, petite form approach them. Rhonwyn and Kushiel looked almost nothing alike. The structure of their face was similar, their frame, the cast of an eyebrow. Mostly it was the way they held themselves that lent awareness to their relationship. Rhonwyn had fair skin scattered with a handful of freckles, charming in their dusting, and wide set grey eyes. Dark brown hair, sleek and glossy, fell in straight length to her waist, two sections pulled back away from her face and tied with a plain white ribbon. There was a reticence to her movement, a hesitant fluidity that may as well have screamed shy. "What brings you out here, Rhon? I thought Grandmother had trapped you with the florist."
"Da's home," she said simply. "Grandmother is fussing over him, and Mum sent me out to fetch you." She watched the color drain from her sister's face and held out her hand sympathetically. "It might as well be now, Kush."
Sighing, the heir of Hallowed Haven slid off the tomb and dusted off the back of her jeans, clasping her twin's hand warmly. "Do you guys want to stay here or head back?"
"Um…let's stay here," Carriegan suggested carefully. She'd been dormmates with Kush for far too long not to know the tumultuous history between father and younger daughter. She had no wish to be in the middle of that.
"As you wish." The two sisters, only minutes apart, started walking the long way back to the house. "How does he look?"
"Thinner," Rhonwyn O'Grady, soon to be Rhonwyn McAllison replied succinctly. "Aught else I'd no chance to see, as Grandmother threw herself all over him, weeping and wailing."
At that, Kush couldn't help but laugh.
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Aidan O'Grady had been seven years away from his family, and he had returned, as his eldest daughter and heir had observed, thinner. He had never been a large man, tall and rather lean, but there was a prominence to the bones of his face that spoke not so much of deprivation as of forgetfulness. Gazing upon him from the doorway, Kush could well believe that he'd simply forgotten to eat. He looked like an older, male version of Rhonwyn; if her twin had been male, she would have been a mirror image. She turned to Rhonwyn, who regarded her with infinite compassion.
"He's our Da, Kushiel," she murmured. "This is right. We don't have to like it, but it's right."
"I know. It doesn't make it easier."
"I know."
Aidan endured his mother's dramatics with an old patience, patting her soothingly on the back. He had just gotten back and already she was tutting about the length of his shaggy hair. His wife sat at the sidebar, amusement dancing in her bright blue eyes as she watched him. "Mother, do ye suppose-?"
"Oh, Aidan, it's so good that you're home, my son, and you have a great deal of explaining to do, young man, and if you think you're getting by with your usual vague answers, you can think again, because I am not-"
Not bothering to hide her smile, Séraphine ducked back behind the bar and spoke to the house elf waiting in attendance. Nodding, a moment later it reappeared in the doorway to the kitchen. "Mistress O'Grady, florist regrets to inform you that florist has broken a vase."
"What! Oh, the clumsy wretch!" Still in high dudgeon, the matriarch of the O'Grady line sailed out the door to deal rage upon the hapless florist.
"Say hello to your daughters, Aidan," Séraphine instructed, still smiling.
Rhonwyn stepped forward first to greet their vagrant father, embracing him respectfully. "Welcome home, Da."
"Hello, Rhon," he said simply, dropping a kiss on the crown of her head. He glanced up at his younger daughter, still leaning in the doorway. "Hello, Kush."
"H'lo, Da." She inclined her head slightly, arms crossed against her chest. Her mother raised an eyebrow, but she quirked one right back, and Séraphine shook her head warningly.
"Your hair got darker."
"Aye, Da. That can happen when you get older."
"Kush," Séraphine cautioned, and her younger daughter shrugged.
Something that might have been sadness passed through Aidan's grey eyes as he held his elder daughter. "I hurt ye, didn't I, lass?"
She looked at her father, seeing the weathered tan, the newly acquired lines in his face, and nodded. "Aye, Da, ye did."
"I'm sorry."
She just nodded again. They stood there for a time in silence, the four of them; Rhonwyn, content and forgiving in her father's arms; Séraphine, amused and concerned in turns; Aidan, older and mayhap finally wiser; and Kushiel, uncertain and unwilling to forget. It was almost a relief when a house elf came in to tell them that the misses were wanted for their fittings.
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She was actually asleep when her mother came in to her room, the neon orange Nicolas squeezed in the crook of her elbow. Kush started violently as a weight descended on her bed, sitting up in disorientation. "Wha-?"
"Come," Séraphine instructed. "It's time for cookies, don't you think?"
"Okay…" Bemusedly, Kushiel reached for a barrette to tame her wild curls and slid out of bed, pulling a deep blue quilted dressing gown over her pajamas. It was rather chilly, and she thought fleetingly about putting on a pair of slippers, but decided she'd probably be sitting with her feet tucked underneath her most of the time anyway. Grabbing her wand off the nightstand, she tucked it into the waistband of her pajama bottoms and followed after her mother.
The kitchen in Hallowed Haven was the only one she knew of with armchairs and papa sans in it, Kush reflected as they entered the room. Her mother had already set everything up, so she merely sank down into one of the armchairs by the low table that held all the ingredients. Séraphine sat down across from her, handing her a mixing bowl and keeping one for herself. "Double batch tonight." Her mother informed her.
"Any particular reason?"
"We've a great deal to talk about." The elegant blonde woman scooped out some butter and plopped it into her bowl, working by memory rather than by measurement. "Starting with your Da."
"He seems like he's learned something, at least," she noted carefully, one finger traversing the rim of the metal bowl. "Eight years ago, he would never have picked up on the fact that I was hurt. Or that my appearance had changed somewhat."
"I've never truly understood why you were angry with him," her mother admitted, passing her the spoon for the butter. "It's not like you've ever been particularly fond of him, and you were going to be going off to school the next year anyway."
Kushiel scooped the butter into her bowl, using her finger to get as much as she could off the spoon. "I never understood Da, Mum, you know that. But it was another year that I could have tried. Besides, he took my Legacy Locket with him, and it's not exactly like I could just replace it. That was enough to piss me off on its own."
"But it certainly wasn't the only reason you were angry."
"He just left. However much he was incapable of being a normal father most of the time, we were still his responsibility, and he just abandoned us. And for what?"
"He claimed to have had a vision."
"But did he ever tell us what that vision was? Or why he needed to follow it? In the seven years he was gone, did he ever send us word? He could have been dead for all we knew."
"And all you cared?"
The redhead crumbled some of the clumps of brown sugar as she poured them into her bowl. "I never wished Da dead," she clarified, "though it might have made things easier."
Pouring white sugar into her bowl, Séraphine didn't even look up. "How do you mean?"
"It would have made explanations easier, for one," her daughter pointed out, holding out her bowl for the white sugar. "It's a hell of a lot easier to say your father's dead than it is to say you don't know where he is. Two, you could have gotten a job. I know you keep up on things, and you have your projects, but you've always wanted a job. I also know that it's in your marriage contract that you not have a job, because the O'Gradys wanted you home with the children. If he were dead, you could have gotten one. And maybe you could have met someone, fallen in love, and married for choice."
"You wouldn't mind a step-father telling you what to do?" she twitted.
"I wouldn't mind a man you were madly in love with trying to tell me what to do," she corrected with a grin. Her mother handed the bowl back to her and she began mixing the two sugars together with the butter, forming a gritty kind of paste. "Three, we wouldn't have had to wonder. I think that may even be the most offensive bit, really. Like it wasn't enough that he'd abandoned us, but he had to be constantly in our thoughts too, wondering if he was alive or dead, why he'd left, would he come home, yada yada yada yada." She dipped her finger into the bowl and claimed a small taste of the beginnings of the cookies, just sugars and butter, and smiled. "Nummy."
"That's wildly unhealthy for you, you know that, right?" Séraphine felt obliged to point out as she did the exact same thing.
"Of course I do."
"So long as you know."
"Rhon said you packed a lot of your projects away." She added the two eggs, looking at her mother from under her lashes.
"Well, your father isn't going back to work straightaway, so I thought it might be politic to spend some time with him, rather than locking myself away in my study all day."
"Did you ever love him?"
Séraphine stopped stirring, her blue eyes lost in thought. "I was fond of him," she said finally. "Whether or not that qualifies for love, I don't know, but I would have been sad had he died. Sweeting, I didn't even meet your father before the engagement party. In twelve years of marriage, affection slowly grew, but that wasn't the point of the marriage. Your sister is luckier than most that she has grown to love her intended husband. You will be luckier still, in being able to choose."
"Marriages should be about love."
"Perhaps they should be, but they aren't always," Séraphine said pragmatically. She added in the vanilla, salt, and baking powder, stirring it all together. "And speaking of love, tell me about this teacher of yours."
To her great surprise, her daughter flushed crimson and ducked her head. "It's not love," she clarified adamantly. "It's just crush."
"So then, tell me of your pang."
She stirred slowly, although the ingredients were already blended and just awaiting the flour next. "You were right enough in hoping it was the Headmaster, and Cliona is determined that he likes me as well. It's certainly true that he tends to touch me a great deal when we're talking, though nothing inappropriate."
"Well, that's disappointing."
"Mum!" Kushiel laughed and added the first bit of flour. It was easier, they'd found, to add it in stages. "You're horrible."
"And you enjoy it, so keep telling."
"I don't think there'll ever be a point when I'm more than a student to him, though. Like even if he were to kiss me, he'd freak out because he was kissing a student."
"What about after you graduated?"
"I dunno. I think he'd still freak about it. After all, the man's been my teacher since I was twelve years old. He's watched me grow up."
"But you like him."
"But I like him."
"I'm not quite sure what to tell you, sweeting," she admitted. "Other than wait and see, there's nothing really that comes to mind. Well," she amended, an impish gleam in her eyes, "nothing that isn't like to get you expelled."
"Thanks, but I'll leave that to you," Kush giggled, remembering her mum's story of Professuer Artaud.
"So, to change the subject once again," Séraphine began, adding the last bit of flour into her bowl. "Tell me about this letter I got from Professor Bloodthorne."
"That depends; what letter did you get from Professor Bloodthorne?"
"He said that you'd been targeted by Persephone?"
"When did you get this?"
"A couple of weeks ago. He said it had happened in mid-October, but because he couldn't see any proof that you had told me, he would have to inform me himself. What is this about, Kush?"
She sighed and grabbed a handful of chocolate chips, followed by a handful of chilled caramel chunks. "What exactly did he tell you?"
"He said that you had been attacked in mid-October, but that he wanted you to tell me yourself. He added in that I was not included in your oath."
"Okay." She took a deep breath, finding it a great deal easier to stare at the bowl than at her mother. "Since the beginning of summer, I have been doing research on Persephone for the Headmaster and the rest of the Dark Hunters. We've just been trying to figure out what it is that makes Her different than any of the Dark Lords and Ladies that have come before. We finally figured out that it was simply a question of beauty; what She thinks of as beautiful doesn't coincide with the average person's conception of it. We're just not sure where knowing that is really going to help. Back in October, I was the target of a rather ill-conceived recruitment attempt; the painter, Her current minion, got into the castle with the aid of a house-elf and trapped me into nightmares. We were able to stop them, but we haven't caught them yet."
Séraphine said nothing for a long moment, her golden blonde hair pulled away from her face by a simple tortoiseshell clip. Her mother was young still even by muggle standards, much less by wizarding standards. She winced when she realized that her mother was actually younger than the Headmaster by two years. Married at seventeen, a mother at eighteen, she was still young, still beautiful, with luminous blue eyes, pale skin, spun gold hair, and a trim figure. She got to enjoy very little of her beauty; she was engaged at a very young age and virginity was prized too highly in pureblood marriages to allow her the luxury of play. "Why you?" she asked finally.
She winced again. She had known it would be asked, but she really wasn't looking forward to explaining it. She kept stirring the cookie batter until her mother eventually just reached out and snatched the bowl from her lap. Sighing, she brushed a wisp of blood red hair from her cheek. "There are some…similarities. We see some things the same way, but I don't take the idea to the extreme the way She does."
"But you're safe now."
"We hope so."
Regarding her daughter solemnly, Séraphine set both bowls of dough on the low table between them. "Most girls would have said yes to prevent crowding."
"Most girls have to worry about crowding. I don't."
"And I don't suppose it would make one bit of difference if I asked you girls not to go to Howl until She's caught?"
Kushiel quirked an eyebrow, twirling her wand about in her hands to keep them occupied. "Somehow I highly doubt She's going to do anything in the middle of a muggle nightclub. She's deranged, Mum, not stupid."
"Thorn." A house elf with a frilly pinafore over it's immaculate pillow case winked into view at Séraphine's elbow, and the woman handed it both bowls. "Please set these to baking, will you?"
"Yes, Mistress."
The mistress of Hallowed Haven watched the elf trundle off, then turned her eyes back to her daughter. "I want you to promise me you'll be careful, pet. I can't say this doesn't worry me, but I also know I can't keep you from doing anything you feel you need to do. Just be careful."
"I will, Mum."
Getting to her feet, the Beauxbatons alumni came around the table and curled around her daughter in the arm chair. They sat like that for a time, Séraphine slowly rubbing her hand up and down Kush's arm. "Will you at least try harder to be nice to your Da?"
"I'll be nicer to Da, or nicer to Grandmother: take your pick."
She snickered and swatted the redhead lightly. "Oh no, my dear, you don't get to make that kind of ultimatum of me. You must be nicer to your Da. You can back down to civil with the harridan, if you wish to make a trade of it."
"Nicer to Da and ignoring Grandmother?"
"Civil, or I go back up to nice."
"Civil it is," Kushiel agreed, and they shook hands on it.
"He may surprise you, pet."
"I've little doubt that he will. The question is whether or not it will be a pleasant surprise."
"Wait and see, poppet. Then make you decision."
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The day of the wedding dawned bright and clear, which was a relief against the solid day of snow that had preceded it. By unspoken agreement, Kushiel and Rhonwyn had spent the night together in Rhonwyn's king sized bed, clutching each other's hands and talking late into the night. They had always been different, but close in spite of it, understanding each other in a way that no one else could. Now, things were about to change drastically. It should have changed when Rhon went off to Hogwarts, should have changed even more when Kush started at Avistrum, but it hadn't. Now, however, they feared the change. Different schools still meant that they shared the trials of being students, but now to be wife…that was something Kushiel could not understand.
Séraphine entered the room and stood at the foot of the bed, watching them. She had wished better for her daughters, for all that her eldest seemed happy with her very soon to be husband. Scooting onto the bed beside Rhonwyn, she stroked the glossy sable hair, pushing it gently away from her face. "Wake up, mon bisou," she whispered. "There is much to be done to prepare."
The two girls both awoke, stretching languidly. "What time is it, Mum?" Rhonwyn murmured sleepily.
"Later than your grandmother would wish," she answered humorously. "But your nanan was all for letting you sleep in."
"Do they really both have to help with the preparations? Can't it be just you and Kush?"
"Unfortunately, no." She smiled and kissed her elder daughter's forehead. "One of them will help you, one of them will help Kush, and they'll switch off. I'm there to make sure they don't kill each other."
"So does that mean you wouldn't stop one of us from attempting to do so?" Kush yawned, wincing as her mother smacked her lightly upside the head.
"Come on, sweetlings. We need to get you bathed."
The girls reluctantly rose from the comfortable and warm bed, following their mother to the master bathroom. They had one attached to the room, but it wasn't quite big enough for five people. Rhonwyn leaned over to whisper in her twin's ear. "Does it really take five people to take a bath?"
"I don't have to get married traditionally, so my answer would be no," she murmured back.
"An entire morning with both Grandmother and Nanan in close quarters…." She closed her large grey eyes squeezing Kush's hand tightly. "Nimue and Circe preserve us."
"Amen," Kushiel seconded fervently.
When they entered into the bathroom, the two grand-dames were waiting.
Meadhbh O'Grady was a tall, almost severely thin woman, with sharp features. Dark grey, almost black eyes regarded them in close scrutiny, her thin lips twitching in disapproval. Black hair, shot through with grey, weighted down her hair in a tight bun. Like her daughter in law, she was dressed simply in unbleached robes; they would change later for the binding ceremony. She was straight as a rail, and as stiff in one. After one of their more famous run-ins, Kushiel had darkly argued that the meaning of her name was true; intoxicating one, indeed, because after being around her everyone wanted to drink themselves into insensibility.
At the other end of the room, Zéphyrine de Navarre observed them with amusement sparkling in her astonishingly green eyes. She stood only three inches above five feet, the same height as her granddaughters, and her strawberry blonde hair cascaded in thick curls down her back, not a strand of grey in it. Her skin was smooth and unwrinkled, flawless in its pale beauty, and her figure well rounded. She looked barely old enough to be their mother, and acted young enough to be their older sister. They adored her entirely.
"Come," Meadhbh sniffed imperiously. "Off with those things and into the bath with you."
They glanced down at their simple pajama sets, so clearly not the nightgowns their grandmother would have preferred, and sighed. Kushiel was used to disrobing in front of other girls; it was not unusual on a hot day for the girls to lounge around one of the dorms in their underwear while they talked, but Rhonwyn had always been shy, and her cheeks burned a painful scarlet as she slowly pulled the red camisole over her head.
The water steamed in wispy silver spirals in the huge bathtub, with dried roses and lavender floating on the surface to release their subtle fragrances. Vanilla oil had been added too, floating in slightly discolored pools alongside the flowers. The two girls stepped carefully into the tub and sank down to their shoulders, hair floating about them.
Meadhbh came to stand beside Rhonwyn, holding a silver ewer in her bony hands. Dipping it into the tub, she lifted it up and emptied it over the girl, ignoring the muffled sound of protest. Zéphyrine stood beside Kushiel and gently poured the water over her head, shielding her granddaughter's eyes with one hand. The two women bathed the girls, bidding them to stand when necessary, washing their long hair. Séraphine perched up on the counter, her long legs crossed in tailor fashion.
The twins emerged from the bath, where their grandmothers rubbed them dry with oils rather than towels. For Rhonwyn, it was a heady gardenia, a scent with more a presence than she herself. For Kushiel, it was her traditional vanilla and roses. Zéphyrine moved to Rhonwyn and sat her down at one of the vanity stools, picking p a brush to gently untangle her knee length hair. Kushiel winced when Meadhbh dragged the brush through her thick curls, and her mother winced with her in sympathy. Weddings were one of the oldest rituals, and though the trappings changed, the honor never did; preparations were au naturel. Free of tangles and rubbed dry with silk, Zéphyrine took Rhonwyn's mass of hair in hand and pulled it back from her face, fastening two combs with fresh white roses to keep it in place. She brushed her eyelids carefully with kohl in thin black lines, staining her lips with berry juice and powdering her face in finely ground chalk. Her younger twin suffered patiently under her grandmother's ministrations until her mother rescued her, rewetting and rebrushing her hair to capture it gracefully in a complicated nine strand braid. Tiny dwarf roses were woven into the strands, white and pure. Her makeup mirrored her sister's, all completely natural.
Still nude, the two girls retreated from the chilly bathroom to wrap themselves in blankets in front of the fire in their mother's room, mindful not to muss the hair and makeup. Rhonwyn glanced down as her stomach rumbled loudly. "Natural I understand, but can't we please eat?"
"No," Meadhbh answered sharply.
"Why not?" Kush asked idly. "Food is natural, right?"
Her grandmother sighed deeply, an overly dramatic sound of long sufferance. "Kushiel, I know you have little enough reverence for anything, but could you at least pretend to have some respect for the traditions of our people?"
"I wasn't being disrespectful, Grandmother, I was simply asking," she replied mildly. "I'm just curious to know the reason behind the tradition."
"It is tradition; that is enough to know."
Zéphyrine rolled her eyes.
"So will it still be natural when my stomach grumbles in the middle of the binding?" Rhonwyn grumbled. Unlike her sister, who could handle the early hours well enough when she had to, she was not in any way a morning person. Grandmother had pushed for a dawn wedding, but on that one point, the bride-to-be had stuck to her guns.
A house elf with flower petals sewn painstakingly onto his pillowcase winked into the room, bowing to them all. "Florist regrets, misses, but florist is hases problems with the flowers."
"What!" Unadorned robes snapping behind her, Meadhbh shot to her feet and sailed out the door.
Zéphyrine glanced over at her daughter. "I certainly hope you're paying that florist extra."
"Twice the price he agreed upon with the harridan," she agreed. She clapped her hands and Thorn, the head elf for the kitchen, popped into the room with a large tray of steaming cinnamon buns and hot chocolate. White icing dripped down the sides of the pastries, with raisins sprinkled atop and inside. "Eat quickly; who knows when she'll be back."
"With someone to bitch at?" Kushiel pried a raisin off the top of her cinnamon bun, leaning her head back and dropping it in her mouth. "She'll be hours if someone doesn't distract her."
"Kush!" Rhonwyn giggled, scarfing down the food as quickly as possible. "She's not that bad."
"You only say that because you're the good child," her twin retorted. "She likes you."
"Quickses, misses," Thorn urged. "Herself is returns!"
The four women licked their fingers clean and finished off the dregs of their cocoa, placing them back on the tray just in time for the elf to wink out again. Meadhbh stalked back in, scowling fiercely. "Whatever made you hire that imbecile, Séraphine?" she demanded. "I swear, he is incapable of performing the simplest tasks correctly."
"He came highly recommended," the blonde replied mildly.
"Come. Enough dawdling. There is more to be done."
"How much more?" Rhonwyn groaned softly, burying her face in her sister's shoulder.
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Cliona smoothed her mint green dress, grateful for the Warming Charm that wrapped about her. Soft and clingy, the dress was far more suitable for late spring, but it was the most appropriate formal dress she owned. Most of the rest of her dresses were more suited towards Howl. It may not have been the traditional robes that were the choice of most of the other guests, but she thought she looked more than presentable.
Snow had fallen the day before; Sweet Nimue, had snow fallen. They'd been trapped in the house all day. Now, however, the snow covered the lawn in a clean white snow. Special charms had been laid upon it by the florists to keep it unmuddied and unsullied despite the traffic across it, and they'd set up the white folding chairs atop it. A deep blue velvet carpet split the congregation, strewn with white rose petals, leading up to a silver arch with deep green vines and white roses woven through the pickets. A sharp nudge in her ribs brought her attention back to her friends.
"Isn't that Guy's baby cousin?" Gwen whispered, pointing over to a red-faced infant wrapped in tartan.
"Yeah, that's Charlie. Charles Cooper," Aurelia giggled. Having cooed over the pictures for a straight week, she could identify him at least as well as Guy.
They fell silent at the sound of pan pipes, Rhonwyn's instrument of choice for her wedding music. The grandmothers had already joined their husbands on the bride's side, so they all turned in their seats to watch the procession of the wedding party.
Mrs. McAllison, a slender brunette in a flowing, pale blue set of robes, walked down the aisle of blue carpet on her husband's arm, a lacy handkerchief clasped in one gloved hand. She was followed a few moments later by Séraphine, walking alongside Amos. Cliona couldn't quite stifle the wonderment at seeing Amos clean and dressed up; she wondered what threats Séraphine had used to force him into it.
Carriegan snickered into her hand. "She should be next; I can't wait to see the bridesmaid's dress."
"Her mum promised it wouldn't be wretched."
"We're talking about her grandmother."
And then there was Kush. Her gown was elegant snow white covered in deep blue lace, sweeping off her shoulders and trailing behind her in a full skirt. She held a single white lily in her left hand, her right resting on Guy's arm. Guy and Pierce had grown up as friends, so it was only natural that the Scots in exile be his best man. Representing his native pride, Guy wore his blue, green, yellow, and red kilt with a white blouse and deep blue jacket. White socks came up to the knee, matching the white rabbit fur sporran. It was a wee bit incongruous, the Scotsman nearly a foot taller than the redhead, but just before the arch, he bowed and gallantly kissed her hand before they separated to their sides.
Kush took a deep breath and turned to face the way she'd come, watching the rest of the assembly stand in honor. "I'm not ready for this," she sighed to her mother.
"Who ever is?"
"Someone who's legally allowed to drink at their own wedding?" she murmured dryly.
Pierce McAllison was a tall young man with silky black hair down to his mid-back, tied back for the occasion in a simple queue. He wore a spotless white tuxedo with deep blue accoutrements, a red rose at his lapel. He nodded to Kushiel and Séraphine before taking his place at the arch, turning to watch his bride approach.
Rhonwyn had that radiance that all brides seemed to have, whether they'd chosen their husbands or not. Despite the fierce pang in her heart as she watched her sister clutching for dear life to their father's arm, Kushiel had to admit that she Rhon seemed luckier than most; while Rhonwyn and Pierce might not have been desperately in love, they seemed well on their way towards it. Her dress was nearly identical to her sister's, the style an exact copy but for a longer train. Deep blue silk clung to her body before whispering out to full skirts, the entire piece covered in snowy white lace. Amidst a knot of trailing ivy, white and red roses peered out from the bouquet in her left hand.
Much to Kush's surprise, Aidan O'Grady had cleaned up rather well for his elder daughter's wedding. He looked decidedly uncomfortable in the deep blue tuxedo, but he managed not to fidget too much, his dark brown hair falling about his face. Delivering his daughter at the end of the aisle to her nearly-husband, he came to stand behind his younger daughter and wife.
All eyes turned to the binder, a venerable old man nearly lost within his voluminous white robes. Watery blue eyes smiled kindly at the young couple, but when he spoke, his voice was surprisingly strong. "We are here today to celebrate a union between two souls, one which shall last through eternity and beyond. From this time forward, they will no longer be man and woman, but husband and wife, bound to each other body, mind, and heart. Pierce James McAllison, do you undertake this wholeheartedly?"
"I do," came the firm reply, and Pierce smiled down at his bride.
"Do you swear to love, to honor and cherish, to protect and to serve, to strengthen and to shelter this woman all the rest of your days?"
"I do."
"Do you, Rhonwyn Siobhann O'Grady, undertake this wholeheartedly?"
"I do," Rhonwyn answered, glancing up the foot and four inches to her groom.
"Do you swear to love, to honor and cherish, to protect and to serve, to strengthen and to shelter this man all the rest of your days?"
"I do."
"Are there any here who object to this union?"
Under the sharp eye of her Grandmother, Kushiel didn't even visibly bite her cheek, for which she was very proud of herself. Silence reigned for a moment among the guests, and the old man blessed them with a gap toothed smile.
The binder held out his hand palm up, the joints gnarled from age and the veins running close to the surface. "By fire, I bind thee." A small wreath of red-orange flames crackled into his hand, running around Pierce and Rhonwyn's joined hands. "By water, I bind thee." Leaping from his fingers, a stream of water wove itself around the fire, not touching, but simply circling. "By earth, I bind thee." A small sprinkling of soil joined the running elements. "By air, I bind thee." Hardly visible but for the effect on the other three coils, a breeze began blowing around the clasped hands. "By nature itself, I bind thee, ne'er to be sundered. Peace be with thee, husband and wife."
Silence once again covered the assembly, and the old man grinned roguishly. "That's your cue to kiss her, boy!"
Pierce actually looked startled, and a murmuring laugh rippled through the seated guests. Bending down, he placed a gentle kiss against his wife's lips that managed not to look too awkward, and Rhonwyn blushed becomingly.
"I present to you, Mr. and Mrs. McAllison!"
The guests applauded enthusiastically, then followed the binder into the house for the reception. Cliona stood and caught Kushiel's eye, waiting for their friend to accompany them. Making a face, the redhead lifted her hands to her face and made a clicking gesture: wedding pictures. Nodding in understanding sympathy, Cliona walked with the other girls inside the house, leaving the wedding party and immediate family to their 'fun'.
"Holy shit!" Elowen whispered as they walked into the ballroom.
Carriegan smirked. "It's a pureblood wedding, El, what did you expect?"
"For the snow to stay outside?"
Long tables swathed in deep blue silk and laden with all manner of food and drink lined the walls, silver and white snow enchanted to flurry down from the ceiling, evaporating before it could land on any of the guests. Raven's comment brought their attention to the tables furthest from the double doors.
"Aren't they supposed to wait for the wedding party to arrive before they start digging in?"
The girls all looked to where she pointed, and Carriegan started laughing. "Oh, this is priceless!"
Elena shook her head. "I don't get it."
Still chuckling, the metamorphmagus brushed a wisp of hair from her eyes, momentarily a respectable blond in honor of the occasion. "You saw how Mrs. O'Grady was running the caterers ragged yesterday. This is their revenge?"
"Yes, because slaking someone's thirst is such a great revenge." Gwen rolled her eyes, but the Colubrae girl simply smirked.
"If you're using what they're using to slake said thirst, hells yeh."
By the time the wedding party finally trooped in from the long round of photographs, a large portion of the guests were well and truly toasted due to the generosity of the caterers. As far as Cliona was concerned, it was a prime example of an Irish wedding. Somehow, however, she didn't think the formidable Mrs. O'Grady would see it that way. Sure enough, when the expected polite handshakes and stiff semi-embraces of the receiving line turned out to be draping hugs and enthusiastic busses on the lips or cheek, the matriarch's nostrils turned white with fury, rage radiating from her ramrod straight frame. Her granddaughters very carefully didn't look at each other for fear of laughing.
Despite the unexpected amusement of sloppy guests, the receiving line was pure tedium, the same half-sincere words of congratulations and inquiry. Following her mother's advice, the redhead zoned out mentally and replied to the nosy inquiries of her own marriage arrangements with cool but civil disdain. The end was nearly in sight when she suddenly found herself draped from behind, one large hand grabbing her breast and squeezing it tightly.
"Hey, baby, have you missed me?"
The look the maid of honor sent her mother could have killed a stone.
"Padriac, what the hell are you doing here!" Séraphine demanded sharply, but the extremely drunk young man either didn't notice or pretended not to hear, stumbling around her daughter to fall on her from the front. "Padraic!"
"I know I've missed you," the young man snickered, burrowing his face into her neck. "And I know a certain someone else has, too," he added, fondling his crotch.
Her vivid green eyes narrowed dangerously. "Get the hell away from me," she hissed.
"Ah, Mister FitzEiyran," Meadhbh greeted graciously. "So good of you to join us."
"Come away with me, Kushie," Padraic groaned, fondling her breast through the silk and lace. "We'll find a nice warm closet and have some fun."
Before anyone could make sense of what was happening, Padraic found himself sprawled on the floor with Kushiel's ebonwood wand pointed at him. "You have one chance, Asshole," she told him through gritted teeth. "Leave now."
"But Kushie-"
Séraphine reached out to try to stop her daughter, she truly did, but the hexes were delivered before any word could be said. Resigned, her blue eyes dancing with mirth, she settled back to watch the ensuing disaster. Padraic's hazel eyes grew wide as a curious sensation began rippling through his bum, then he heard an ominous sound of tearing. He shot to his feet, nearly falling over himself in his drunken haste. As they watched, his rear end continued growing, splitting through his trousers and underwear, until the pale globes were nearly the size of all the rest of him; even yoga balls would have been put to shame by the twin halves of his ass. His hair started flaking horribly, snowing dandruff onto his dark robes, and in an unforeseeable event due to the combination of the two hexes, the skin of his butt began flaking off in powdery falls of dead skin as well, to which Rhonwyn delicately averted her eyes. Entirely unrepentant, Kushiel glared at him as he scuttled out of the room as quickly as his massive rear end and drunkenness would allow.
"Young lady, how dare you-"
Kushiel spared her sputtering Grandmother half a glance before meeting Rhonwyn's eyes. Sympathetic, her minutes older sister took her hand a gave her a light squeeze, nodding towards the side door. "Go," she mouthed, and the redhead nodded with relief. Without giving Meadhbh another thought, she gathered her skirts about her and left the room.
"Oh, dear." Elena made as if to follow her friend out, but Cliona stopped her with a hand on the arm.
"Let her be," she murmured.
"Who was that?" Aurelia inquired, twirling the end of one pigtail around her finger.
"That, my friends, was Padraic FitzEiyran, and Kush's first love. He claimed her between fifth and sixth year and promptly broke her heart." There was more to it, of course, but those were Kush's secrets to tell, not hers, so Cliona simply left it at that. "Today's hard enough, with her sister getting married. Give her some time to get her balance back."
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Shivering, the redhead re-cast her Warming Charm, leaning back deeper into the curled wingspan of the statue of Henri-Michel and Arianrhod. Her skirts pooled around her, spilling down the lip of the plinth in falls of white and midnight. She knew she would have to go in, soon, but she really didn't want to. Rhonwyn and Pierce would be apparating out at midnight, off to their honeymoon and the beginning of their life together, and she just didn't want to have to say goodbye. So, she stayed curled up within the embrace of the grave marker, the sad and distant Lord of Tears standing over her.
She flinched when she felt someone brush her shoulder, so lost within her own thoughts that she hadn't even been aware of the approach. From the corner of her eye, she saw her da sitting next to her. He didn't say anything at first, and after a time, she let her gaze drift back to the far hills.
"It's rather chilly," Aidan observed mildly, and his daughter shrugged elegantly.
"It's December, it's supposed to be."
"May I?"
She glanced at him again, not entirely sure what he meant, and squeaked when he lifted her and shifted her into his lap, wrapping his thick winter cloak about her. He scooted over to the spot she had been in, finding it to be a perfect shelter from the wind, and leaned back against the statue. "It's rather chilly," he repeated simply.
"Ah."
She shouldn't have been surprised to see the stars coming out; it was the night after Solstice, after all, and they were in northern Ireland, but there was something supremely comforting in seeing Orion high overhead. The myths surrounding the constellation were huge in number, but ever since Séraphine had first pointed out the cluster of stars, she had regarded the hunter as a protector, someone to guard her dreams and keep her secrets.
"In Australia, you can see a constellation called the Southern Cross," her father commented, running his hand absently along Kushiel's long red braid. "The first time I saw it, it was low on the horizon, and seemed huge. One of the legends says that it is a sword that once belonged to Orion, and he set it aside for the bow and arrow when he saw he could never truly catch up to Taurus. The gods thought to put it out of the sky, returning it to pure light it had been before its making, but the Fates stayed their hands, foretelling that one day, a new hero would arise to take the sword in hand and perform great and terrible deeds. So, the gods left it in the sky, awaiting the grip of a new hero."
"You've changed, haven't you, Da?" She asked quietly.
He smoothed a wisp of hair from her eyes and gently gripped her chin in his hand, turning her face towards him. "I hope so," he answered honestly. "I won't ask you to forgive me, Kushiel; I've hurt you too much for that, and it will take time, if ever. What I will ask is that you give me a chance." He smiled ruefully. "I'm new to this learning curve.
"It'll be hard," she whispered.
"I know." He reached into the inside pocket on the tuxedo jacket and pulled out a heart shaped silver locket, the chain puddled in his palm. He straightened out the chain and draped it about her neck, carefully fastening the clasp. "I know."
Curling her hand around her repaired legacy locket, Kush said nothing and merely rested her head against her father's shoulder. It was a beginning; the rest would unfold as it would.