Plenilune by Jennifer Freitag

Author:Jennifer Freitag [Freitag, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Fiction
ISBN: 9780692272473
Published: 2014-10-20T14:00:00+00:00

18 | “She Might Not Have Known”

When she woke the next morning, feeling stronger and more alive, Margaret was startled to find herself alone. There had been a snow in the night, but the sun was already well into the morning house of heaven and the air outside her window was full of a smoky golden light as the sun on the snow burned it back into the sky. But Dammerung’s chair was empty, and the weather did not matter so long as Dammerung’s chair was full.

After some fighting Margaret got herself disentangled from her bedsheets and put herself out in the cold, leaning haphazardly on the mattress to keep herself from falling. A sick singing began in her ears.

Maybe—she shook her head to clear it—maybe he has gone to breakfast. But he always has his breakfast here.

She was just pulling herself together to walk to the door when, to her relief, Aikaterine stepped in. The quiet white-clad maid had come and gone in the three weeks Margaret had been at Lookinglass, but she had never truly noticed the maid until now. It was such a relief to see the maid, and to realize that in Aikaterine she could place her perfect trust and be at ease, that the singing in her ears stopped at once.

“Oh my—” said Aikaterine when she saw Margaret out of bed. “What curious verities of my Lord of the Mares.”

“Where is Dammerung?” Margaret demanded. “And what verities?”

The maid shut the door and went directly to the wardrobe. “I had just brought in their breakfast when my Lord’s cousin sent me up to you, telling me—and I quote—‘the horse would be trying to get out the barn doors’ if I was not speedy.”

“I have been called a vixen, a m-mouse, and a precocious chit,” gingerly, on shaky foal-like legs, Margaret followed the maid toward the dressing table, “but never a horse.”

Aikaterine soothed her fingers through Margaret’s hair and smiled at the reflection in the mirror. “There are worse things to be called.”

Margaret sat and Aikaterine worked awhile in silence. It had been a long time since a comb had been coaxed through Margaret’s tangled hair, a long time since she had had a proper soak in a tub, or had slid with any kind of independence into a clean, starched set of clothes. It felt oddly like being reborn. Her body and feelings were no less tremulous when, groomed and clothed, she went out on Aikaterine’s arm to join the gentlemen for breakfast. The morning sun was splitting in shear white splendour all over the Lookinglass halls, breaking up on glass and marble and diving this way and that in a confusion of brilliance. She could not remember the place looking so like its namesake, and wondered—had Dammerung done this?

She had never been in to Skander’s study. It was spacious and well-furnished, full of light and books and a cheery fire in the fireplace. Skander, she saw as soon as she was led in, was seated

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