The Spell of Rosette - Kim Falconer [95]
‘Naked?’
‘Of course naked, Rosette! Naked bodies generate heat much faster than ones in wet clothes. I started a fire and hung a skin tight over the entrance. I stripped us both, and with me on one side and the familiars on the other, by the grace of the mountain gods, you came back to life. If grace we can call it…’ He mumbled the last sentence: ‘Maybe it’s more a curse.’
‘What?’
‘Completely back, it seems, with only slight memory deprivation. Are you satisfied? Can we sleep now?’
Crossing her arms, she watched him brace for her retort. ‘I’m not satisfied.’
‘Didn’t think so,’ he sighed.
‘I still haven’t been told a thing about this journey. What are we going to do when we reach the summit? Tell me that, at least.’
An’ Lawrence didn’t answer. He lay there, his head still propped, staring at her, his brow forming into a deep frown.
‘What’s wrong now?’ she asked.
‘Where did you get that?’ He pointed at the silver pendant around her neck—a crescent moon nestled in a five-pointed, sapphire-tipped star.
‘Stop changing the subject! I want to know why we are here.’
‘Rosette, answer me, please. This is important: where did you get that pendant?’
She touched her throat, fingering the star tips. ‘It was a gift, if you must know. I can’t see how that’s of any importance at this point.’ She held it in her hand protectively.
‘A gift from whom?’
She’d never heard him sound desperate before. It startled her. She took a deep breath and let it out. ‘It was an initiation gift from Nell, my mentor, though that’s really none of your business.’
An’ Lawrence rubbed his jaw, his eyebrows going up. ‘How old are you?’
‘For demon’s sake, what’s this about? Didn’t you even read my apprenticeship application?’
‘Just tell me how old!’
She could see the intensity in his eyes and the tension around his mouth, even in the dim light. ‘Twenty-two,’ she replied.
‘Twenty-two?’
‘Do I need to say it again?’
He shook his head.
‘What’s the big fascination with my jewellery and my birthday, Sword Master? Has the cold sent you daft?’
He didn’t take his eyes from her neck. ‘The big fascination, my fractious witch, is that I had that pendant made twenty-three years ago as a solstice gift for the woman…I…um.’
‘Go on. The woman you what…?’
‘A woman I worked with,’ he said.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean? Who? Who’d you work with?’
‘It’s whom…’
She growled at him and sent another kick his way. He moved his leg back before she connected.
‘I worked with Nellion Paree. The pendant was for her.’
Rosette was blank for a moment before sucking in her breath. She stared at him as she pulled the furs up around her neck and clutched her knees, her brow wrinkling. ‘There must be many like them.’
‘It was a one-off commission.’
‘That doesn’t make sense. Nell gave it to me at my initiation saying…’ She put her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.
‘Saying what?’
Rosette didn’t speak.
‘Tell me!’
She said: This is a message to your source for the day you meet again, for the first time. She sent the words directly to his mind. She couldn’t speak them aloud.
‘Your source?’ he asked.
‘That’s how she put it.’ Rosette closed her eyes and rocked.
‘Until you meet again?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘For the first time?’
‘I didn’t know what she meant.’ Rosette looked out into the dark. ‘And I still don’t.’
‘I think I do.’
She continued to look away. ‘Well, I don’t.’
‘Rosette, whatever family you grew up with—those that called you daughter—I don’t think they were blood kin.’
‘What are you saying?’ Tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks.
‘I’m saying,’ he reached up and touched the pentacle and then her tears, ‘that this was a message to me. I think you’re my daughter, Rosette, my child with Nell.’
Rosette’s jaw went tight. ‘That’s not true. My mother is Bethsay Matosh, and if Nell was my mother why would she have given me away and not raised me herself? Why wouldn’t I have known all this?’ She blurted the words before she could stop