Free Web NovelChapter 473: Chapter 473
Circe knocked before pushing open the door to her mother’s chambers. She stepped inside and moved to the side to make room for the maid behind her, who entered carrying a loaded tray.
The maid crossed the room to the round table near the window and set the tray down, then arranged the table before turning back to face Circe, waiting for another order.
"Thank you. That will be enough for now," Circe said.
The maid dipped her head and left, pulling the door shut behind her.
The room was silent now that it was just them in it. Thalora watched her daughter from where she sat, curious, as Circe made her way deeper into the room and stopped just short of the table.
"What is all this?" Thalora asked.
Circe gestured lightly toward the spread. "I thought we could share a meal together. Just the two of us."
Thalora didn’t question her further. She didn’t refuse either. She simply pressed her hands against the armrests of her chair and pushed herself to her feet, moving carefully toward the table, mindful of each step. The improvement in her condition over the past weeks had been astonishing.
When they had first brought her back, she had been mostly unconscious, barely able to hold herself upright. Nine years of being trapped had done that to her. But rest and care had worked well for her and now she could walk across the room without assistance.
Circe pulled out the chair across from her own and Thalora settled into it with a grateful smile. Circe sat down opposite her.
"What prompted the occasion?" Thalora asked.
Circe looked at her as she turned the question over in her mind, searching for the right answer, and at the end of it she chose the one that felt true and also safe. freeweɓnovel.cѳm
"I just wanted to spend time with you," she said. "Like we used to. All those years ago."
She reached across the table and placed her hand over her mother’s, a touch that was both tender and affectionate.
The meal was pleasant. Genuinely so. They talked easily, moving between topics without effort, and for a stretch of time it felt as though the nine years they had spent apart had simply ceased to exist. Circe felt something loosen in her chest the longer they sat there.
She felt young in a way she hadn’t in a long time. Right then she felt fifteen again, sitting across from the person who had been the most important thing in her life for as long as she could remember, back when she had not known that things would change as drastically as they did.
She knew it now. She was twenty-four, expecting a child of her own, and the world she was sitting in looked nothing like the one she had grown up in. Even with their shared meal and the ease of their conversation, there was still a melancholic feeling woven in it for the years they had lost and would never get back.
When the dishes had been cleared away and there was nothing left to keep them at the table, Circe suggested a walk. Thalora agreed readily, as though she had been hoping to be asked, eager to extend the moment between them.
It had snowed heavily only three days prior. Snow had piled against the low walls and dusted the paths between them, and the air outside carried that particular cold crispness that followed a snowfall. They walked side by side at a leisurely pace.
Circe suspected her mother hadn’t been outside much since coming there and so she made a point of steering them toward the parts of the estate she liked best, pointing each one out as they passed, talking about them with more enthusiasm than she typically allowed herself. There was a wide smile on her face as she did it.
It was the most animated she had been since Ragnar left to join the hunt, and Thalora noticed. She watched her daughter out of the corner of her eye before she finally said something.
"You like this place very much," she said. "You seem very happy here."
"I am," Circe said. "But it wasn’t always this way. There was a time I wanted nothing more than to take Rowen and leave."
"So why didn’t you?" Thalora asked even though she already knew the answer. But she asked anyway because she wanted to hear it from Circe directly.
Circe answered without hesitating. "I fell in love."
Then she let out a soft laugh.
"It’s funny, truly. One moment I thought my husband was the most infuriating man I had ever met and I was itching to scratch his eyes out." She shook her head slightly. "And now I love him so much that I cannot think of a life without him in it."
Without thinking about it, she placed a hand over her belly. The pregnancy wasn’t visible yet, but in time it would be, and she found she was looking forward to it. To all of it. To holding the child in her arms.
Her expression shifted, growing more thoughtful. Three weeks ago she had walked out of this very woman’s room in frustration, furious and desperate for answers that Thalora had not been willing to give her. And before she had gone, Thalora had told her that she would do anything for her children, that she would remake past mistakes if it meant having all of them with her again. That same day, she had proved it. She had used her magic to save Circe, and her unborn child.
Now, thinking of that child, Circe understood what her mother had meant in a way she hadn’t before. She understood it now deep in her soul.
She would do absolutely anything for the child growing inside of her.
Thalora smiled at her daughter’s words, something wistful moving across her face.
"Your father and I were just like that," she said. "He used to say he fell for me the moment he met me. I think I did too, though I was too stubborn to admit it at the time." She paused, her eyes distant as she reminisced on fond memories. "He was his father’s only heir. Next in line for the throne. And still he went against the old king just to marry me. A strange woman he had stumbled upon while out hunting in the woods. He always said that I changed his life. But it was the other way around. With him I had something I never thought I would get to have. I felt loved and cherished. He made me happy. And he gave me my three children. The lights of my life."
