"Why indeed?" she retorted. "This whole situation is disgraceful. A barmaid's daughter in the family tomb? What were you thinking?"
"You agreed to the arrangements!"
"For your own good," she argued. "If I did not grant some apparent concession, you would not rest until you had your way in every particular."
"Nor will I." Danilo studied her, trying to fathom what went on behind that lovely, composed face. "Aren't you at all curious about Lilly? Her life, her fate?"
"No. Nor do I want to discuss this further. Not now or ever."
"Damn it, mother, you're as stubborn as a full-blooded elf!"
Finally, his words had effect. A look of consternation crossed her face, quickly controlled. "You should choose your words with more care. There are those in this city who might read too much into your comment."
A terrible, impossible suspicion snaked into his mind. Perhaps Lilly was murdered because she was a child of a noble house who clearly carried more than a little elven blood. Arilyn had been attacked. Elaith. Perhaps someone was determined to separate the Thann family from any contact with elves.
Perhaps Cassandra's desire to deny her heritage was so strong that she struck out against anything that reminded her of it.
Quickly he thrust this thought aside. He could not believe that of his own mother—he could barely fathom how he himself could have imagined it.
"You may hear that Elaith Craulnober had a hand in Lilly's death," he said as soon as he could trust himself to speak. "I do not deny it is possible, but I will find the truth of the matter. Until then, do not support any efforts against him." He paused, then added with difficulty. "Or any others of elven blood."
His mother was dumbfounded, speechless for the first time in Danilo's recollection. "You presume to instruct me?" she said at last.
"In a manner of speaking. Our elven heritage might be a faint and distant thing, but I want you to understand that I am proud to own it."
She shook her head in disgust. "Khelben!" she muttered, turning the archmage's name into a curse. "You must have gotten this notion from him. I must say, he picked a fine time to stop being close-mouthed and enigmatic!"
"Then it's true. Why did you never say anything?"
"Why should I? It has been forgotten for generations! There is no need to open the closets and let the skeletons cavort about."
"The Thann family fortune was built on the slave trade," he reminded her. "Are you saying that it is acceptable to have slavers as ancestors, but not elves?"
"Watch your tone," she said in a voice that simmered with anger, "and watch your step! Elaith Craulnober has overstepped, and he will pay for his presumption. Take care that you do not go down with him."
She stalked out, leaving Danilo standing alone amid the ruins of his long-held illusions.
* * * * *
Arilyn waited at the agreed-upon tavern until the moon rose and the fire burned low. Danilo came in, looking as windblown as a sailor and more desolate than she had ever seen him. He threw himself onto the bench and dashed his damp hair off his face. "I'm sorry. I was walking the Sea Wall."
She knew the spot. It was a good place of solitude. A sharp wind, laden with salt and spray and secrets, blew in from the sea on the mildest of days. Nothing provided shelter from the buffeting wind or offered much of a barrier between the path and the long, sheer drop to the icy water below. It was not a stroll for the fainthearted or those too fond of comfort. A person could walk the length of the wall at nearly any hour and not meet another soul.
"Looks to me as if you came in too soon," she commented. She tossed some coins on the table and rose. "Let's go."
He did not argue. They headed north and climbed the stairs carved into the stone wall. For a long time, they walked along the rim. The setting moon glittered on the restless waves. The receding tide exposed the expanse of barnacles desperately clinging to the wall. There was no sound but the crash and murmur of the waves. It occurred to Arilyn that she had seldom seen a more lonely, desolate place.
"I come here from time to time," Dan said suddenly. "The sound of the sea often serves to wash clean my thoughts, allows me to start anew and think with greater clarity. Tonight, it does not avail."
He related his conversation with Lady Cassandra, his terrible suspicions. "I have always felt somewhat apart from my family, but I never realized how little I knew them. I never conceived of the possibility that they could turn on their own."
"It happens," she said shortly, for Danilo's tale was too like her own early life for comfort. After a moment's hesitation, it occurred to her that he might find, if not comfort, then at least community in her story.
"My mother died when I was barely fifteen," she said. "A half-elf of that age is little more than a child. Her moonblade came into my keeping. She had always intended that it pass to me, and she had begun training me with an eye toward its demands, but as you know her time was cut short before she could tell me all I needed to know. My mother's family came to Evereska for the funeral. They were robed and hooded in traditional elven mourning. I never saw their faces, but I heard them argue about the sword and its fate. None of them thought I should have it, but they left it in my keeping. Much later, I realized why. No one thought that a half-elf could claim a moonblade. They fully expected I would die in the attempt and that the family could then reclaim Amnestria's sword. But they gave me no word of warning or explanation."
Danilo's lips thinned in anger. "I never knew that."
"It's not something I like to talk about. It took me a long time to realize that my mother's family are not evil or even thoughtless. Far from it. I was simply not a part of their world. Half-elves are not people to them and so do not merit consideration. That sounds harsh, but they have reasons for their way of thinking."
"Even so, you were left alone, and at a very young age. I think I have some understanding of how difficult that must have been."
Arilyn halted him with a hand on his arm. They moved without speaking into an embrace, two figures silhouetted against the night sky.
"You are not alone," she said softly. "Never that."
As they stood together a small tendril slipped into her mind, a presence that she had always sensed, but never so vividly. She recognized Dan's merry, blithe spirit, but behind it was a darkness that she had never glimpsed. She accepted them both, understanding what this meant. They were connected by elven rapport, a deep psychic and spiritual bond. It was far from complete—the soul-deep union of the feyfolk was beyond either of them—but still infinitely more than a meeting of flesh or even of hearts.
"There is that, too," he said softly, answering her unspoken thoughts. By that, Arilyn knew the elven bond encompassed them both. The joining was made, the circle complete.
Suddenly, he swept her up into his arms, as if she were a silk-clad maiden rather than a warrior. To her surprise, she found she did not mind. Danilo had his own patterns, and at this moment the alien urgency of a human's desire seemed as natural to her as the coming of spring.
She circled her arms around his neck. Magic engulfed them, and the roar of the sea was lost in the sweeping tide of the travel spell.
They emerged from the white whirl of the magical transport into a world that, to Arilyn's heightened senses, seemed just as enchanted. Apple logs crackled on the hearth fire, and lamps fueled by scented oil burned low. Globes of blue glass filtered the lamplight and cast an azure glow over the room. Arilyn glanced down, half expecting to find herself clad in the deep blue silk and gems of Danilo's preference.