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Orperhapsheis too angry with me to respond.
She tried to brush the thought away, but her heart sank as Terault’s expression softened with regret, or sympathy. ‘I am sorry, Lady Oriane, but Marcel brought no message. I will ask, though, that he request a reply with this next missive.’68
‘Thank you,’ Oriane said quietly. She hoped that reply might not be a letter at all, but her father himself, arriving at the palace. Then she might be able to relax fully, with him back by her side.
‘Are you well, Oriane?’
The question snapped her out of her fog of worry. Terault had disappeared, and Kitt was appraising her, looking concerned.
She nodded. ‘Perfectly well.’
‘You’ll hear from him soon, I’m sure of it,’ Kitt said. ‘And I very much look forward to meeting him when he arrives.’
Oriane managed a smile, grateful for his kindness.
He offered her his arm with a wink. ‘In the meantime, Lady Lark, might you accompany me on a ramble through the gardens?’
Andala met them outside, and the three of them spent the afternoon wandering the expansive gardens that surrounded the palace. Oriane had never seen a more beautiful place. There were people out here, too – people other than the handful she’d met since she arrived. She hardly knew where to look first: at the flowers or the fascinating strangers who walked among them.
But even more than the sights, she enjoyed the conversation. It thrilled her to be able to talk with Kitt and Andala as if it were nothing out of the ordinary – as if this were not the first occasion she had spent time like this with anyone but her father.
Kitt did ask her a lot of questions, as Andala had predicted he would, but they didn’t seem to be solely borne of scientific interest. He wanted to know about her life before she had come here. About her father and their cottage, and what had happened to her mother. The last he asked with careful delicacy, but Oriane69didn’t mind talking about her mother. She couldn’t remember Ilana, so the pain of having lost her wasn’t as sharp as it might have been otherwise.
‘She died the day I was born,’ she explained as they meandered past fruit trees and flowerbeds. On her left, Kitt was listening with his head lowered respectfully, but to her right, Andala’s scrutiny was like sunlight on her cheek. ‘She was the skylark before me, of course. And her mother before her, all the way down our line.’
‘And she transferred her power to you? Right before she died?’ Andala asked.
Oriane frowned. ‘I’m not suretransferredis the right word. I … inherited it, I suppose, as all the larks do.’
Andala nodded slowly, now staring at the path beneath their feet.
‘And your power …’ Kitt began.
‘Here he goes,’ Andala muttered, and Oriane stifled a grin.
‘Could you describe it to me? How it works, how it feels?’
Oriane was silent a moment, trying to figure out how to put it into words. ‘I’m not surehowit works, exactly, but I do know that it’s as if … as if there’s some sort of tether between the sun and me …’ She put a hand to her heart, imagining the end of the tether there. ‘And when I transform it pulls taut. And when I sing, it’s as if I’m pulling the sun above the horizon – but it’s not heavy, or difficult. It’s like breathing, really. Something I do without thinking, that I suppose I couldn’t stop even if I tried.’
The gravel footpath crunched as they walked on. A breeze ran its fingers along the hedges, the carefully manicured leaves shivering in response. Somewhere nearby, a bird was singing. Its warbling call was much more melodic than Oriane’s.
‘Haveyou tried? Can you control the transformation?’ Kitt asked. ‘The process of turning back and forth?’70
‘Turning back, yes. It took me a while to master it, but now I feel quite confident that I can become human again at will. Turningintothe lark, though … I’m not so sure.’ Oriane paused. ‘I’ve never actually tried to transform outside of the usual period at the end of the night. It just comes over me – the feeling that it’s time. And then it happens.’
‘Perhaps that’s something we could experiment with together,’ Kitt said, smiling warmly at her. ‘If you’re interested, of course.’
She had never really thought about it before, but she supposed it might be a useful thing to learn. It was her power, after all – why shouldn’t she master it? ‘I’d like that,’ she said.
‘If you’ll excuse me,’ Andala said suddenly, ‘I’ve been neglecting my duties this afternoon. I’ll see you back in your rooms to help you get ready for dinner. I expect the king will want to dine with you.’
And with that she took off, rounding a green-hedged corner and disappearing from view.
Oriane looked at Kitt, puzzled.
‘She tends to do that,’ he said with an apologetic grimace. ‘Once she’s ready to leave, she’ll leave, propriety or politeness notwithstanding. I’ve tried to tell her it will get her into trouble one day.’
Oriane smiled and waved it off. But there was something about Andala’s abrupt departure that didn’t sit right with her. A feeling of something unfinished, like the sun going down on an argument, or an unresolved cadence in a song.
