Twilight's Dawn

the dishes and set them in the sink.
    Tersa frowned at him. “I was able to do it, but . . .”
    Grinning, he wiped his hands on a towel. “Let’s see.”
    Using Craft, she called in a small wooden frame and set it at one end of the kitchen table. The carefully constructed web attached to the frame held the illusion spell. She triggered the illusion spell, and they watched as a small black beetle appeared and headed for the other end of the table. It grew and grew with every step. When it got as big as his palm, it burst open with enough gore and green goo to delight a small Eyrien boy.
    “You have the box?” Tersa asked.
    He called in the long wood-and-glass box he’d had made to hold the illusion web and keep the entire illusion contained. He valued his skin—and his marriage—enough to make sure the bug remained in the box.
    After she placed the illusion web into its part of the box, they watched the beetle once more. Lucivar grinned at the way the gore and goo splattered all over the inside of the glass before it all faded away. “Darling, this is perfect .”
    Tersa looked uneasy. “Maybe I should ask your father.”
    Not quite a statement, not quite a question. More a tentative testing of an idea.
    He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, not quite sure if he was troubled or intrigued by the words. “Why?”
    “I made little surprises for my boys before, and it caused trouble. Almost hurt them. I don’t want to cause trouble for my boys. Your father will know what to do.” She nodded, as if she’d made a decision. “Yes. Your father will know.”
    Lucivar vanished the box and decided this would be a good time to give her something else to think about— before she contacted his father.
    Boys. My boys.
    The ground shifted under his feet. His breath caught. He felt like he was riding a current that could be a very sweet wind or have a cutting edge.
    “What boys, darling?” he asked.
    “My boys.” She glanced at him, suddenly shy and hesitant.
    Painfully sweet words, and a possibility he hadn’t considered about why Tersa had welcomed him from the first time he’d knocked on her cottage door.
    “Am I one of your boys, Tersa?” he asked.
    She was Daemon’s mother. She would have been around during the childhood years he couldn’t remember. She had known him as a child—and he must have known her. That hadn’t occurred to him before.
    “The girl,” Tersa said hesitantly. “Luthvian. So angry because she wanted what couldn’t be. So angry because she wanted to deny what was.”
    She reached out, not quite touching him, her eyes caressing the very thing his own mother had always pretended not to see.
    “Sails to the moon,” she said softly. “Banners unfurled in the sun. She was always so angry about something as natural as an arm or a leg. Such a foolish reason to hate a child.”
    “Tersa?”
    Her eyes had that unfocused look. She was no longer seeing the room she stood in, wouldn’t know where she was physically if he asked. She was looking at a memory seventeen hundred years in the past. Seeing Luthvian. Seeing him when he was Daemonar’s age. Maybe even younger.
    “She wanted the boy, but did not want the boy to be the boy,” Tersa said. “But what else could he be? Cuddles and hugs. Their father’s love is strong, and they need him, but they want softer love too. Cuddles and hugs. And little surprises.” She smiled. “They pick flowers in the meadow. The boy brings his flowers to me. I tell him the names of the ones I remember as we arrange them in a vase. His father tells him the rest. Tells both boys. But the girl doesn’t want flowers from the meadow. That is too simple, too Eyrien. She will not take the flowers, so the winged boy brings them to me. There is so much fire in his heart, so much laughter. And trouble. That gleam in his eyes. Oh, yes, he is trouble. But there is no meanness. He is a boy. He will be a strong man. She will not look, will not see. So he comes to me for cuddles and hugs and little surprises.”
    Tears stung Lucivar’s eyes. He blinked them away. Swallowed them with his heart.
    He took a step closer, touched her shoulder with his fingertips. “Tersa? Am I one of your boys?”
    She looked at him, her eyes full of uncertainty. But she nodded. “My winged boy.”
    He took her in his arms and held her gently as he finally understood why spending time with her mattered so much to him. He hadn’t remembered those early years of his