hiding, she had thought a lot about her attitude toward her parents and decided that it could use some improvement. So one of the first things she did on her return, once they were reassured that she was unharmed, was to tell them how sorry she was for not trying to understand better that they had only her best interests at heart. Her father responded at once by telling her he was sorry he had treated her as a child.
“I still think of you that way,” he told her. “Maybe I always will. Parents do that. We can’t help ourselves. We can’t help thinking that you need us to look after you. We can’t get used to the idea that you are growing up and need space to find your own way. We don’t like it that you might one day discover you will be just fine without us.”
“I would never be fine without you and Mother,” she had replied and hugged him so hard he thought she might break something.
Thom had come back with her, deciding that he would return to Rhyndweir as successor to his brother. This decision had more to do with his determination to change the way things were done in the Greensward than anything to do with Questor’s repeated references to destiny and fate. Ben had received him warmly and told him that he could count on the throne to support him. He had suggested that he send Questor to the Greensward to make certain the transition went smoothly. Not that he believed there would be any problem, he was quick to assure the boy. Berwyn Laphroig had not been well liked, and the people of Rhyndweir would be happy to have a new Lord. They would be especially accepting of one who seemed so willing to put the welfare of his subjects ahead of his own.
“He wants to give the land to the people,” Mistaya had told her father later. “He wants the people to feel they have a vested interest in it, something they can call their own and pass on to their children. All he wants in return is for them to agree to pay a reasonable tax to the crown. He has a plan to accomplish all this, and it is a good one. Listen.”
Her father did so, and after asking a number of questions he was inclined to agree. Perhaps Thom’s openness would provide a working model for the other Lords of the Greensward, one that would revolutionize the old practices and herald the beginning of an era of fresh cooperation between the Lords of the Greensward and their subjects.
Perhaps.
“I think Thom will become a valuable ally, Father,” Mistaya finished. “I think you’ll come to like him very much.”
She had not missed the way the boy looked at her, of course, and she knew how he felt about her. What she didn’t know was exactly how she felt about him. The two had shared a very dangerous and exhausting ordeal at Libiris, and that sort of experience had a way of bonding people. She liked Thom, but she wasn’t sure she liked him in that way—even though she couldn’t stop thinking about the way he had kissed her in that storeroom at Libiris when she was to be married to Laphroig. It still sent chills up and down her spine when she thought about it. It still made her want to try kissing him again. Someday.
She sat with her father for a long time after that without speaking, comfortable just to be together. She couldn’t remember when they had last done this, and she was almost afraid to say or do anything that might break the spell. One or the other of them was always rushing away, and time spent doing nothing, father and daughter sharing space and nothing more, was a rarity. Thinking on it, she felt a pang of regret that it might be another broad stretch of time before they would do it again.
She caught him looking at her and said, “What?”
He shook his head. “I was just thinking about how much I enjoy being with you like this. Just sitting and not saying anything or doing anything. Just …”
He trailed off, unable to finish. “I know,” she said. “You don’t have to say it. We don’t do this like we did when I was a little girl.”
“You remember, do you? I thought that maybe all that was so far in the past that you had forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten any of it. We would go on picnics, and I would sit next to you and watch everything you did. Mother would set things out, but I would sit with you. Sometimes you would carry me on your shoulders into the trees and pretend you were my charger.”
He grinned. “I did do that, didn’t I?”
“You did a lot for me—you and Mother both. Since coming home, I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been doing a sort of self-assessment. There might be some areas of improvement needed. What do you think?”
He arched one eyebrow at her. “You’ve got to be kidding. You don’t really expect me to answer that one, do you?”
“Not really.”
“Then don’t ask me things like that. I’m trying to walk a fine line here between parenting and friendship.”
“They’re supposed to be the same thing, aren’t they?”
