Free Bodyguards by Kallysten

saying
entirely, and could only guess she had asked a question when she gave him a
hopeful look.
    “I’m sorry, what...”
    “Look behind you,” Aedan said.
“Above the fireplace.”
    Vivien threw a quick frown at
Aedan before turning around and looking up. From her portrait, Dame Eleoren
looked down at them all, stern and regal. Vivien took a step forward, then
another. A long moment passed before she asked, “That’s...that’s my mother?”
    The longing in her words was
palpable.
    “It was Dame Eleoren, yes.” Bradan
almost asked whether Vivien remembered her at all, but caught himself in time.
Clearly she didn’t, and there was no need to prod that wound.
    “She was standing right here in my
dream.” She had reached the fireplace and rested both hands on the mantel, her
head still tilted back toward the portrait on the wall. After a few more
seconds, she turned around and looked over the room, her eyebrows knitted as
though she were trying to remember.
    “What about my father?” she asked.
“Is there a portrait of him somewhere?”
    Bradan winced. This was not a
topic he had looked forward to exploring, at least not quite yet.
    “I...I don’t know who your father
is.” At her confused expression, he added, “Only Dame Eleoren knew, and if she
told anyone, I never heard of it.”
    She looked again toward the corner
of the room and the empty armchair there. “But... He called her...”
    She stopped abruptly and
approached the armchair. She stood in front of it for a little while before
sitting down.
    “There was a man,” she started
again, her gaze back on Bradan. “In my dream, I mean. I was playing, and I ran
to this room, and my m...mother was there, and a man was in this chair, and the
way he talked to her, they sounded close. Really close.”
    Bradan came closer to her,
crouching down at her feet so he wouldn’t tower over her.
    “This was the queen’s private
library,” he said, indicating the side walls and its shelves, overflowing with
books. “Only people the queen trusted were allowed here. If this man was in
here, in her chair, it had to be her husband. Lord Stefen.”
    He knew what she would ask before
she even opened her mouth, but he waited until she had voiced the question.
    “So...she was married, but he
wasn’t my father?”
    “She needed an heir.” Even knowing
he’d have to explain this didn’t make it any easier to find the words. “She
knew when she married Lord Stefen that he wouldn’t be able to give her a
child.”
    “So she cheated on him?” Vivien
blurted out.
    Irritation flashed through the
bond Bradan shared with his brother, and he knew he had better answer before
Aedan did.
    “Vivien, you need to understand
something. Things on Foh’Ran are different from the way they are on Earth.
People here don’t equate love and monogamy. She probably told him about her
affair, or affairs. If he had some too, he probably told her about them as
well. It didn’t mean they loved each other any less or that they weren’t happy
together.”
    As closely as he observed her,
Bradan couldn’t tell what she thought of it all. Did she believe him? Could she
comprehend that customs on Foh’Ran were different from what they were like in
the Otherworld? Could she accept it? The last thing he wanted was for her to
have a bad opinion of her mother.
    He expected her to ask more
questions about it, but after a few seconds she said, “There were more people
here in my dream. A woman and a man. I think... I think she was called Merel?”
    The same pang of pain that rang
through Bradan was echoed through his bond with Aedan.
    “Our mother,” Bradan said, choking
a little on the words. “Your nanny.”
    She nodded once. “And your
father?”
    “His name was Lasdan,” Aedan
chimed in when Bradan didn’t answer right away. “He was one of Dame Eleoren’s
QuickSilver guards.”
    Another nod. “He was there too,”
Vivien murmured. Her eyes became a little unfocused as her