True, I had met him once. I sort of liked him then too, but working with him everyday was going to be different than a tour of the High King’s gardens. I feared it would be awkward. After three years without much contact with the outside world, I was beginning to worry that I wouldn’t fit in when I had to return to it. The parties, social visits, and duties of a king’s daughter seemed so far away. I much preferred the simplicity of this little home with Errol, Adreet, and the girls. I was going to miss Candra a great deal.
In an attempt to distract myself, I traced the road just beyond the far side of the meadow with my eyes. Then, when I could no longer see it, I traced it with my second sight. The dancing particles in the wind, the warmth of the sun, I slipped into observing the path of a turtle as he began the laborious journey across the baked surface.
Then something brushed my thoughts or rather I brushed it. Either way, a strangely familiar taste filled my mouth and then was gone. I quickly drew within myself and turned my attention to my full pail. My energy was still extended, but I was no longer seeking, just detecting.
“I am going to catch up at this rate,” Candra commented as she appeared at my side. “I keep catching you daydreaming. One would think you had a beau like Eloine. She at least has a reason to gaze of into nothingness.”
“And I don’t?” I asked.
“Don’t tell me you have a boy interested in courting?” Candra grimaced at me, screwing her fourteen–year-old face into terrible contortions.
“Stop it,” I said, laughing in spite of my efforts to not. “I have no such thing and you know it.”
“Good.” Candra sighed in relief. “If you had said you did, I would have had to throw this at you and then you would be ahead by three pails again.”
The presence that I had felt before was continuing to move closer. Though I did not taste his thoughts, I could sense that it was a man and he was being drawn by the sound of our voices. I couldn’t exactly drag Candra beneath the bushes and hide, though I had a strong inclination to just that. Of course, he would probably detect us there. Instead, I said, “Candra, someone is coming.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. He is coming from the direction of the road and following our voices.”
“Friend or foe?” She had developed a habit of asking that whenever I announced someone’s impending arrival. This was one of the first times that she actually sounded serious.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“What?” She frowned up at me. We had both grown, but I still stood over her by a head. “The one time it is crucial and you cannot tell me? What is the use of this gift of yours if you can’t tell me whether or not those approaching are going to hurt us or not?”
“He isn’t going to hurt us. I mean, he doesn’t have the intent to hurt us. Candra, I brushed his mind accidentally. I could be in real trouble here if he isn’t a talent.”
“Then let me look.” Evading my attempt to hold her back, Candra dropped her pail on the ground, hitched up her skirts, and waded through the tall grasses toward the center of the meadow. “Who goes there?” she called to the approaching stranger, still just out of my range of sight.
“A friend,” was the reply. His voice carried clearly. “Candra is that you?”
“Ilias.” Candra let out a shout and ran at the new arrival with arms flung wide. I stepped from the shadows of the trees in time to see the man enfold Candra in his arms and sweep her around before setting her on the ground again. I continued my tentative approach.
“My, you have grown. Ever the ruffian, I see,” he said as he pulled a leaf from Candra’s wild red hair. “Selwyn says that you managed to finish that tree house that we had been planning.”
“Oh, yes, but I didn’t do it all by myself. Zez helped a lot.” Candra suddenly turned to me and smiled. “See, Zezilia, I told you Ilias was a real man,” she crowed.
Heat climbed my cheeks as I lifted my eyes to the man’s face. Over the last year or so, I had proclaimed to Candra that Ilias couldn’t have been an actual man. All the stories that everyone told couldn’t be true of only one man.
The man hesitated a moment before lifting his warm brown gaze to meet mine. Then suddenly, it dawned on me who he was and why his taste had been so familiar. The mythical Ilias was the Sept Son.
Hadrian
SHE STOOD TALL, SLENDER, and beautiful in sunlight. Warm red highlights brightening her dark tresses as the summer sun kissed her features. She had changed. Not that I could have expected anything else if I had taken the time to think about it. I had not.
Her striking grey eyes, intriguing and mysterious, glinted in recognition. The heightened color in her cheeks from Candra’s offhand remark about my existence was fading already. She smiled slightly. A memory of her laughter and unrestrained smile, almost three years old, flashed through my thoughts as she inclined her head to me now. Candra was making introductions.
“Ilias, this is Zezilia.” She caught Zezilia’s hand and dragged her forward. “Zez, this is Ilias.”
“I caught that,” she responded.
“We have met before,” I informed Candra.
“You have?” She looked from one of us to the other for a moment. “When?”
“At the Caelestis Novem celebration almost three years ago.”
“Oh.” Noting the disappointment in her voice, I drew my attention away from Zez. “Then you have known
