Page 28 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
“Yes, and she’s already hatching a plan to find herdeadfather,” Glennis remarked. Her eyes sparked with reproach.
“What do you mean?” Tyghan asked.
Kasta swirled her glass of whiskey. “It would appear she’s a lot like Kierus. In a few heartfelt words, she charmed Mae into a purring kitten. Mae is going to ask around to see if anyone has seen a Logan Keats. She told Keats to check back in a few days.”
Tyghan worked to show no surprise. Mae never did anything unless a bit of gold warmed her palm first. It was hard to believe Keats possessed any charm at all when she’d only showered him with surly demands.
Glennis scowled. “Why did you tell her that her father was still alive?”
“I didn’t. It was Eris. It was his way of getting her here by her own choice. Eris did what he had to do.”
“It’s still rotten,” she replied.
Tyghan’s blue eyes turned a shade colder. “A lot about our lives is rotten right now, in case you hadn’t noticed. Get used to the stench.”
“And if she finds out he’s really dead?” Cully asked.
“She won’t, will she?” Tyghan said to Kasta. “You’ll make certain of that, won’t you?”
Kasta nodded. “I’ll speak to the others.”
“And her parentage must be kept—”
“Eris already told us,” Cully answered.
Glennis frowned. “But it won’t be easy to keep that under wraps. If someone goes poking around Bowskeep—”
“You’re officers of Danu,” Tyghan said. “You didn’t sign up foreasy.” He turned and walked away.
Not easy.
It was a truth Kasta lived with on a daily basis. Knighthood didn’t allow for errors—not if you wanted to live. Kierus had learned that lesson. And Tyghan nearly had, too. But even perfection was no guarantee of survival. Kasta made a mental note to send a squad back to Bowskeep that night to quell any loose tongues.
“Not wasting any time, is he?” Cully mused as Tyghan headed for the grand staircase. They all knew where he was going. Recruits always joined the festivities, usually quite eagerly. It was part of their orientation. If they didn’t care about those they worked with and for, they could hardly care about the outcome. They needed her to care.
But Kasta knew it was more than that, too. For Tyghan, this particular recruit was different from any other. She held part of his past in her eyes, in her voice, in her very existence that was never supposed to be. She was a reminder of how everything had gone wrong. Even Kasta struggled to grasp that Bristol was here at all. If she had done her job even halfway to perfection, Kierus’s daughter wouldn’t exist. She carried the shame of it with her every day.
CHAPTER 21
Bristol skimmed her hand across the green silk coverlet on her bed. It was as bright and soft as a spring leaf. Every aspect of her room was lavish and large, but she felt lost within it, like a sitting duck on an open plain.
Cobalt-blue drapes covering tall windows flowed from fluted golden rods like waterfalls into graceful puddles. Their folds settled across a woven carpet that resembled a forest floor. She stared at a butterfly in the design, its tiger-striped wings opening and closing. She reached down to touch it, and it flew away, as butterflies do, but it was only woven of fibers within the confines of the rug, like it was part of a living painting.
She scanned the details of the rug with dark fascination as she rationed sips from the bottle of water she brought from home. Between sips, she nibbled crumbs from a crushed granola bar and read another page ripped from Anastasia Wiggins’s book.
9.Do not eat fairy food, or you will be trapped in their world forever.
10.A fairy will honor a promise or oath to the death.
11.Never join a fairy dance. You’ll be unable to stop and will die of exhaustion.
How could anyone know these things?
Unless Anastasia had been there herself—like Bristol’s own father. She wished she had the rest of the book. The few pages she ripped out were only a small lifeline to this world.
Her room was whisper quiet. No clattering of dishes, no thump of the washer out of balance, no squeaking of Angus rummaging through trash, no pounding of footsteps up and down the stairs. But therewassinging. Sporadic. Faint. It sounded like Cat singing scales. At home, she was annoyed by her sister’s repetitive singing exercises, but now she found the sound calming. Distance gave her a new perspective on petty nuisances—a new perspective on a lot of things. Including lying.
When Tyghan had asked what her father was like, she didn’t mention the times her parents skipped out in the middle of the night to avoid paying at a motel, lifting the girls out through windows, or the times they slipped groceries beneath their coats.We’ll pay double next time, they’d say, but next time never came.
