Page 15 of A Honeymoon of Grave Consequence (The Unexpected Adventures of Lady and Lord Riven #2)
Margaret followed, already composing new notes in her head to scribble down at the first opportunity.
She nearly lost all of them, though, an instant later, when she stepped out from the trees and beheld the Diamantensee spread out before her like a vast, gleaming, mirrored bowl, reflecting every inch of grey sky and cloud above its still waters and all the hundreds of tall, green conifers that surrounded it.
Half-blinded by the first true sunlight she had seen in hours, Margaret hurried forward on a gasp of wonder?—
And the nixe who had led her there snapped, “ Careful !”
Margaret froze just in time. What she’d taken to be mere sandy ground between her and the lake’s edge shifted before her eyes, giving a long and sinuous yawn.
Then he slowly rose all the way to a standing position to loom above her, shaking off the blanket of red dirt and grass that had covered his long, lean figure and stretching his arms languorously above his head.
Left shamelessly naked apart from his waist-length brown hair and the remaining fragments of sand and dirt on his bare skin, the male nix turned a deeply disgruntled gaze upon their guide. “Unfair, Gisela! Why take away my meal?”
“I’ve brought another meal for you,” Margaret said brightly, and reached into her basket to pull out an apple. “If you’re hungry?”
Eyes lighting up, he snatched it from her hand—but Gisela lunged forward to seize the whole basket from Margaret’s grip before he could reach in again.
“Only one apple is for you,” she snapped. “These two are visitors, not intruders, and I was first to greet them. I decide who eats the rest.”
“Pah.” The apple crunched under the nix’s pointed teeth.
He slid a dismissive glance over Margaret’s figure before turning back to Gisela and the nachzehrer who stood behind her.
“ Your pretty creature is one matter, but this boring one looks just like all the others who’ve bothered and stolen from us in the past. Why don’t we drown her and divide her apples between us? ”
“She’s with me.” Leonie’s voice trembled, but she stood firm, her red eyes narrowed against the sunlight. “She’s not like the other humans.”
“ And I gave her my entrance blessing,” Gisela said sharply. “Would you have me break my word now, like a human?”
“Ugh.” Sighing, the nix turned and stalked into the water with a discontented splash. Still chewing his apple, he sank under the lake’s surface a moment later, leaving the water still and calm above him.
“There,” said Gisela briskly. “Now, Lady Riven, you may freely conduct your research while I get to know my treasure. I must learn everything about her, so I may know how to properly tempt her into letting me cherish her.”
“Ah...?” Raising her eyebrows, Margaret looked to Leonie for her reaction to that plan; research might demand some sacrifices, but Margaret would never allow any assistant of hers to be harassed.
“I believe Fr?ulein Leonie actually chose to accompany me in order to take her own part in this research?—”
“Oh, but you don’t need me looking over your shoulder right now, do you?” Leonie blurted the question out; her quick, furtive glance at the nixe by her side looked torn between wariness and dazzlement. “I mean, I mostly came to act as your protection, so if it wouldn’t harm your work...”
Well! Apparently, the nachzehrer did not, in fact, mind being flirted with by a stunning nixe maiden.
And Leonie certainly did deserve some fun after everything she’d been through...so, biting back a smile, Margaret left them both to their mutual entertainment.
Pulling out her pocket notebook and pencil, she began to scribble down estimated measurements and observations as she set off to pace the narrow, sandy bank that separated the thick line of trees from the water.
Unlike the more natural arrangements found in most parts of this forest, no clear spaces had been allowed to form between any of these green guardians.
Whenever that misguided tourism venture had taken place, the humans involved must have chopped some sort of entryway, but that was nowhere to be found anymore; clearly, the nixen had taken care to regrow and strengthen their lake’s living walls ever since.
Margaret would love to know just how many nixen were currently swimming nearby, far below the Diamantensee’s smooth surface—but that question was beyond the remit of today’s expedition.
Instead, she focused on the astonishing reflectivity of that surface, remembering all the hints and clues in the old letters she had found.
In order to see truthful visions in Reflection’s Heart, a proper form of address had to be used. The exact details of that address remained sadly unclear, scrambled by alternate translations and languages across the centuries, but she was very nearly certain...
Oh, hang it! There was nothing for it but to make a first attempt, embarrassingly wrong though it might be.
Oh, how Margaret did hate being wrong, though. Perhaps it was for the best, after all, that Leonie had stayed on the other side of the lake.
Already bracing herself for failure, she sank to her knees a careful foot away from the water—no one with sense would ever enter this lake without explicit permission from its occupants!
—gazed into her own clearly reflected face and spoke the first carefully worded request that she had drafted earlier that morning.
“Image be clear, image be bright, I bid you now share your gift of sight. Show me what you will!”
A blue-and-black-striped dragonfly dropped down to hover just above the surface of the water. A faint rustling sounded in the trees behind her, and Leonie’s and Gisela’s low voices drifted on the breeze...but Margaret’s reflection remained utterly unchanged.
At least no one had witnessed that mortification! Flipping open her notebook to the relevant page, she read back through her options and began again.
“Picture be sharp, picture be clear, show me something far from here?”
Apparently, even the dragonfly was unimpressed. It flew away, rattling its wings in what she could only consider an unfairly disparaging fashion .
Sighing, Margaret settled in for an extended trial.
By the time she’d worked her way through the first fifteen possible invocations on her list, her knees had begun to ache, and every rock hidden underneath the sand seemed to be deliberately poking through her gown to wound her.
Grumbling to herself, she shifted position, gathering up her skirts and rearranging her legs while keeping a sharp eye out for any camouflaged nixen beneath the dirt.
When she looked up again, she found a male head bobbing just above the water before her, long, wet, red hair swirling around his inhumanly sharp features and bright green eyes watching her with open disapproval.
Her notebook fell from her hands as she jerked back from the unexpected sight—and the nix drawled, “Are you done bothering everyone yet, little snack?”
Margaret managed to catch her notebook just before it hit the sandy ground, but she couldn’t collect her own pride so easily. Stiffening her shoulders, she forced a steady tone in her reply. “I beg your pardon. I wasn’t aware that I was speaking loudly enough to disturb anyone beneath the water.”
“No?” He raised a skeptical red brow. “Then who were you talking to?”
“The...water itself?” Oh, this was too absurd! Drawing a deep breath, Margaret reminded herself firmly that she was a professional scholar nowadays, not a stammering schoolgirl only allowed on her parents’ expeditions due to their loving indulgence. “Gisela gave me her entrance blessing.”
“To talk to the water ? I don’t think so. You humans tell many foolish lies, but this one—wait.” Frowning, he looked down, as if he’d felt some hidden signal from below. “A moment, snack.” He sank smoothly down beneath the lake, leaving only expanding circles of water to mark his passage.
Expelling her held breath, Margaret looked back down at her notebook—and the nix surged back above the water’s surface, sending water spattering towards her and shaking his hair back from his face as he crossed his arms over his bare, dripping chest. “I knew it,” he snarled. “You came to steal from us after all!”
“ What ?” It would be a fatal display of weakness to scoot backward in visible retreat; breathing hard, she forced herself to stay in place, but she couldn’t help darting a swift glance across the lake.
Leonie and her nixe were even further away now than they had been a few minutes ago.
Heads tipped close together, neither of them was watching her at all.
Could they still reach her in time if she yelled for help?
“My sister recognized the spells you were speaking, but you’re much too late,” he announced smugly. “Foolish snack! Didn’t you speak to any of your own kind before coming to take what had already been stolen from us?”
Her own kind? The only human Margaret had even met since her arrival was the probable-baroness in disguise.. .
...Who had said Margaret would never find Reflection’s Heart without her help.
Oh, no . Margaret squeezed her eyes shut for a moment of deep regret. This was why her husband took the time to make conversation with strangers, wasn’t it? It wasn’t always a waste after all...and she needed to start paying better attention to the humans around her, too.
According to Olga’s story last night, it had been a greedy noblewoman who’d sparked the nixen’s rage in the first place with her attempt to profit off the Diamantensee’s beauty.
This morning, the baroness hadn’t dared follow Margaret any closer to the lake, even in her all-encompassing disguise.
She hadn’t even allowed her name to be spoken aloud in these woods.
Of course she hadn’t...because Margaret had been terribly, humiliatingly wrong in all of her own theories from the beginning. This was what came of being too cowardly to face her own deepest fears.