Page 85 of The Moorwitch

When I step out again, I see Sylvie dragging her brother down the hallway, showing him our cleaning progress from the day before. He stops short when he sees me, his face grim. My eyes search his hair and clothing for souvenirs of Elfhame—cobwebs or glittering bits of crystal—but if he did spend the night in Morgaine’s realm, he has brushed away all signs. He’s wearing a rough tweed suit, and his hair is damp from the outside, his long, thick curls shining not with faerie magic, but with earthy dew.

Sylvie, still holding tight to his hand, glances between us curiously.

“Miss Pryor.” He inclines his head in a formal nod, but his eyes pierce me from beneath his dark lashes.

“Mr. North.”

“You’re still here.” There is nothing in his tone—no accusation, no inquiry, no disappointment. It is as if he doesn’t yet know how to feel about my presence, so he can only state a blank fact.

“So I am,” I reply. “It was raining yesterday, after all.”

We hold gazes a moment longer, and my heart quickens a pace. This is the first I’ve seen him since Lachlan confessed his true plans, and I cannot help but see Conrad in a different light. Oh, I’m still indignant over him interrogating me with a truth knot, and I still absolutely condemn his withholding Sylvie’s magic from her. But I understand him a little better now, and know that he is not, perhaps, quite the villain I first cast him as.

If anything, I am more the villain inhisstory than he is in mine.

“Oh, Connie, comeon!” Sylvie urges, pulling him away.

I trail behind the Norths as they stroll through the hallways. Conrad walks with one hand in Sylvie’s, his air distracted. He keeps glancing at me, as if to be sure I am there.

“And that,” Sylvie declares, “is where I killed forty spiders at once with a smack of my broom.”

“Forty!”

“And here,” Sylvie says breathlessly, “is our da.”

We stand before the great portrait in silence.

Conrad’s eyes soften. A curious expression passes over his face—sadness, regret, a little anger.

“I’d almost forgotten,” he murmurs. “The way he would scowl with his lips but laugh with his eyes.”

He raises a hand to touch the portrait’s frame, then pulls it back, his gaze falling upon the portrait of his mother I found and set out. He blinks, as if he doesn’t recognize her at first. Then his lips pull to the side, in either wry smile or grimace, I cannot tell.

“Fates be,” he says. “I thought this painting was lost years ago.”

He picks it up, the entire frame small enough to fit in his palm.

“She was beautiful,” I say.

“Aye. She was.” He seems held in a trance. “I have no memories of her but her songs. Her face I cannot picture, save for this likeness. But her voice ... she sang traveling songs, of the lands her people had walked before they swept through this one, leaves on the wind.”

I am not quite sure how to respond. He seems lost to himself, speaking as much to memory as to me. Sylvie glances at me, her eyes wide, seemingly as unsure what to say as I am.

“She was like a bird that soared into a fisherman’s net, my da used to say,” Conrad murmurs. “She tried to adapt to a life without wings.”

“No wild thing can long survive a cage,” I say softly, and he glances at me as if startled from his reverie.

“Aye,” he replies. He studies my face, and though I try, I cannot discern the emotion behind his dark gaze.

His sister narrows her eyes. “What are you two talking about? I can tell you’re hiding something, you know.”

Conrad clears his throat. “Sylvie. Go and fetch a block from the woodpile, and I’ll carve you another wolf.”

“But I want to show you—”

“Go, now.”

She huffs but skips away, her hair swinging.