The morning was filled with a collection of scents: human bird eggs, herbal teas, and beast milk. Cress tapped a finger on the tabletop as he watched Thelma bring over two plates of it. His brows were tipped in, his forehead was creased, and for the faeborn life of him, he couldn’t seem to shake his scowl. But Thelma didn’t ask about it.
He’d had a miserable sleep in Kate Kole’s bed upstairs.
The old woman said a short prayer, then scooped half her eggs into her mouth in one bite.
“Eat, Cress!” She pointed at his eggs with her spoon. “It’ll get cold. Then you’ll wish you ate fast like me.”
She glugged down a tall glass of beast milk, too. When she was finished, she set it on the table with a light thud. Through his stern face, Cress cracked an ever-so-small smile at the line of white milk left on her upper lip.
“Are you worried about me?” Thelma asked through it. “Is that why you’re here for breakfast again?”
“I suppose that’s part of the reason,” Cress admitted, stealing a glance out the window at the crisp, early morning where light snow drifted from the heavens. He wasn’t hungry, but he scooped a heap of bird eggs into his mouth. “Mmm,” he said dully, so that Thelma wouldn’t demand to know if he liked them.
“There’s orange juice in the fridge—”
“I’m fine,” Cress assured, setting down his utensil. He scrubbed his hair and rubbed his face, then leaned with his elbows on the table like any bad-mannered human, folding his hands with his mouth pressed against them. “What do you do if you like someone, Grandma Lewis?” he asked.
Thelma snorted a laugh. “Any girl would be an idiot not to like back someone as handsome as you.” She shovelled in another mouthful of eggs, and Cress nodded, dropping his hands onto the table.
“Thank you. Queensbane, I’m glad there’s at least one human here who sees it.” He slouched back against his chair and folded his arms. “I am handsome,” he mumbled to himself.
Thelma kept eating, and when she was finished, she dabbed her mouth with a cloth, erasing the milk stain.
“But what do you do if you like someone you can’t have?” Cress asked, leaning forward again. He twiddled his thumbs and waited.
Thelma burped.
“Well, who in the world do you like? The Queen of England?” she asked, and Cress’s brows furrowed again. He couldn’t tell if she was making a jest. Truly, he didn’t even know the human realm had queenes.
“No,” he said. “It’s someone else.” He scratched his chin as he thought of a better way to put it. “What if you liking someone may cause them pain and trouble? What do you do then?” he rephrased.
Thelma folded her ever-shaking hands and looked at Cress more seriously now. “You leave them alone, son. If you being with them will hurt them, then you let them be in their happy life—assuming it is happy—and you leave so you’re not temped to do something stupid and take that happy life away from them.”
Cress tapped his finger on the table again. He slung an arm over the back of his chair. “I don’t like that answer.”
Thelma shrugged. “Then go ask someone else.” She went to stand but halted halfway up. Her lashes fluttered and her hand flew against her chest.
Cress’s eyes narrowed as he heard the slight change in her rhythms. The scent of fear filled the air, and a wave of panic followed. The Prince sprang from his seat and caught Thelma Lewis before she could tumble to the floor of her kitchen.
“Queensbane,” he said to her. “Are you ill?”
Thelma held tightly to his arm. She stayed that way until the rapid beating of her human heart slowed back to normal. Finally, she looked up at Cress and said, “You know I am.”
There was no banter in the woman’s tone anymore. It was a tone that told Cress a detailed story her mouth didn’t.
Thelma slid off him and shambled to the kitchen counter. Cress watched her with fresh eyes. He said nothing as she moved from the sink to the cupboard, to the table, then back to the counter.
“Do you have a car?” she asked with her back turned.
Cress was about to tell her no, but he thought of Shayne’s chariot on wheels back at the café. “I know of one,” he said.
Thelma nodded slowly. “Maybe we should go for a drive. I want to see the lake.”
Cress thought long and hard about that. After moments of staring at the old woman’s back, he grabbed the hunting jacket off the hooks, and he strutted out into the snow.
Cress crept around the café, certain his brothers would catch a whiff of him if he got too close. He headed out back where the ugly red human chariot on wheels was half covered in snow.
He used his sleeve to clean it off. When he opened the door and slid in, it was bitter cold. Thankfully, Shayne was foolish enough to leave the keys inside.
Cress had never commanded a human chariot, but on his first day with the officers, he rode in one briefly with Officer Larrens, and he’d studied the machine. Cress turned the key as he had seen Officer Larrens do.
The chariot squeaked to life. “That’s right, wake up,” Cress instructed, and he patted it on the wheel so it would know he was a friendly rider, not a cruel one. “Take me to Thelma Lewis’s dwelling place,” he commanded.
The chariot didn’t move.
Cress looked around, wondering if he was meant to use a whip. There were no reins.
A second later, the other door opened, and Shayne slid into the vessel. “Are we going for a drive, Cress?” the white-haired fairy asked.
“I need this chariot. Tell me how to use it. That’s a command.”
Thirty minutes later, Cress rolled the chariot up to Thelma Lewis’s house. She came out the front door immediately with a bag on her shoulder, and her coat zipped up. Her face was bright with a smile as she rushed to the opposite door and got in.
“Yes, this is perfect!” the old woman said.
“I don’t know the way to your lake,” Cress admitted. “And this is my first time riding a human chariot.”
Thelma released a raspy laugh. “You’re full of surprises, Cress. I’ll show you the way.”
Cress nodded. “First, I’ll need you to explain how to back the chariot up. I’ve only gone forward thus far.”
Thelma chatted the whole drive, which she claimed took hours longer than it should have since Cress’s vessel “was barely creeping along” because he “drove like an old lady.” Human drivers made loud noises with their own chariots as they passed. Some offered rude human gestures, but Cress glanced over at them, releasing rumbling power from his veins and the threat of death in his eyes. Most of them backed off with startled faces.
The snow was nearly melted, but a chill clung to the air as Cress helped Thelma out of the vessel. Wind rippled off the water, sliding up a sandy ledge and tossing the old woman’s white and gray hair.
Thelma smiled when she saw the lake. They walked down to the water’s edge arm-in-arm. “Oh, to be able to swim one last time,” she said with a long-drawn sigh.
Cress raised a brow. “Shall I toss you in?” he offered.
Thelma’s cackle echoed down the beach, and he grinned.
The sun was high in the sky, partially blotted out by misty clouds. Thelma seemed to take it in—the heavens, the sand, the glowing patches on the water. After a while, she whispered, “Son, you have made my last moments legendary.”
Cress’s face changed, but he hid his surprise as he turned to face her, his arm sliding out of hers. He took her shoulders instead. “Grandma Lewis, when are we heading back?”
“We just got here.”
“Yes, but…” He dropped his hands to his sides as it dawned on him. “Thelma,” he tried her real name. “I had a mother once, and I didn’t get to be there when she passed.” He shook his head. “Don’t do this to her.”
“To whom?”
“To… Katherine.”
Thelma only sighed. “Oh, Cress. You don’t understand. Katherine had to watch her parents die in front of her. I won’t be another loved one she has to watch. I’ll be a soft passing memory for her. A recollection of good times, not bad ones. That’s what I’ll be for Katherine, and Lily, and Greyson, too.” Her hand came out of her coat pocket around three letters.
Cress closed his eyes. He knew those letters.
Thelma put the letters against his chest and held them there until he took them.
“If this is what you want,” he said.
“It is. Now quit being such a whiny baby, and let’s go sit on that bench.” Thelma smiled as she limped off to a bench by the sidewalk. She brushed aside sand and watery snow before taking a seat.
After a moment, Cress marched up the beach and sat down beside her.
Thelma rested her head on his shoulder. “Now, tell me what it was like to grow up in a place where everyone always wanted to trick you,” she said.
Cress folded his arms with the letters peeking out from his elbow. “It was terrible. I had a vicious queene for a mother who wanted to both destroy me and keep me around at the same time. She pitted others against me, hired assassins to kill me, and played mind games to see if I would survive.”
“What a life that must have been. Obviously it wasn’t the life you wanted?”
“No.”
“What life did you want then?” Thelma’s voice was quiet, barely a whisper.
Cress studied the peaceful lake as he thought about it. The quietness reminded him of violet grass fields, jade-leafed trees with unusual personalities in their trunks, and warm weather in a gold-spun straw hut. “I wanted a life with my real mother.” His throat bobbed. “I just wanted a faeborn life that was simple.”
At first, he thought Thelma was thinking about all he’d said. He waited for a response, but as the minutes ticked by and he didn’t get one, he turned his ear to catch her rhythm. His heart slid a little deeper into his chest.
Thelma Lewis’s rhythm was no more.
Cress remained there, arms folded. A tear slid down his cheek. After a moment, he reached over and took the old woman’s hand, even though she didn’t hold it back. A low, quiet sob lifted in his throat, a sign of utter weakness he didn’t shew away.
There on the beach, he cried for the old woman. He cried for the loss he knew Kate Kole would feel. He cried for the mother who was taken away from him. And he cried for the simple life he’d never been allowed to have.
