Yadje smiled and held out her hand for the halfling to drop the intricately crafted copper armband into her palm. She held it in both hands and turned it over, then looked up again, her blatant curiosity bursting out all at once. “What are you?”
Chapter Eighty-Five
“Now you just…now wait just a minute,” R’mahr stammered, ogling his wife as his mouth opened and closed without any other sound.
Cheyenne smiled back at the female troll and nodded. “Finally, somebody’s asking an up-front question.”
“Cheyenne, I apologize for my wife’s disrespect.” R’mahr wrung his hands and bobbed his head. “Yadje tends to push too far for the sake of knowledge, a trait she’s passed down to our Bryl. Please, don’t hold this against us. We can forget this ever happened. Bryl, hand it over. Then we’ll go home.”
Why is he so terrified?
Despite R’mahr’s bumbling and backpedaling, the half-drow couldn’t help but let out a little laugh. “Don’t worry about it, R’mahr. Seriously. It’s not a hard question to answer. Most people who don’t already know won’t just come right out and ask.”
“Did you hear that?” R’mahr hissed at his wife. “Most people don’t ask.”
Yadje scoffed and waved him off. “You worry about every little thing. What is this supposed to teach our child, hmm?”
Cheyenne looked down at Bryl again and shrugged. “You wanna take a guess?”
The child’s eyes grew wide, and her teeth—much straighter than her parents’ but still with the crookedness normal for trolls—flashed under the hallway light. “You’re a phér móre, aren’t you?”
“Uh…” I really need to brush up on my Ambar’ogúlish. Or whatever language people keep throwing at me.
“A phér móre!” R’mahr laughed, although it still sounded incredibly nervous. “Don’t insult her, Bryl. That’s nothing more than myth and fireside stories from the reservation. Cheyenne has much better things to do with her time than entertain myths.”
Cheyenne wiggled her eyebrows. “Phér móre. If that translates to ‘halfling’over here, then you nailed it, kid.”
Bryl gasped in wonder, her mouth falling open. Her father choked, patting down his bright-blue t-shirt that looked a size or two too big. Yadje lifted her chin and gazed at Cheyenne with a renewed excitement behind her scarlet eyes. “I knew it.”
“You did not,” R’mahr whispered. “How could that thought even enter your head?”
“It entered our daughter’s, cin naeg. You’re the only one who thinks as slowly as a giant slug.”
“What?” The male troll looked baffled, blinking furiously. Then he rubbed a purple hand over his pale-pink hair, unbraided and not quite as long as his wife’s, and looked at Cheyenne again. “Is this true?”
“Yep.” The halfling shrugged and gave the family a smile that felt strained and unsure. “No armband, no illusion spell. Just half-human.”
“And half-drow,” Yadje added with way too much enthusiasm.
“Right. After this morning, I guess that part was pretty obvious, huh?” Taking in the looks of awe, admiration, curiosity, and shock—the last coming from R’mahr—Cheyenne couldn’t help but wonder what telling other magicals straight off the reservations about her mixed heritage meant for her. “Is that, like, frowned upon? Or something?”
“Oh, of all the—” R’mahr clapped both hands to his head and gaped at her. “How can you even ask that? Please, my wife’s curiosity does not come from a place of fear, I can promise you that. Or rejection.”
“I…okay. I didn’t think it did.”
“It is most certainly not frowned upon, phér móre.” Yadje thumped the metal armband against her husband’s chest, which he took without the ability to argue, and reached out both hands toward Cheyenne. When the halfling just stared at those violet hands opening toward her, Yadje nodded in invitation. The half-drow slowly took the troll’s hands and was surprised by the strength and gentleness in them at the same time. “You cannot know how much this means to hear you say this is what you are. To O’gúleesh, Cheyenne, a phér móre brings hope. Two worlds overlap at the Borders, and you are living proof that full peace can be made between us. That life can endure on either side. Maybe even love.”
Cheyenne didn’t have the heart to tell the woman that she had not been conceived in love or for any attempt to bring two worlds together. L’zar didn’t love my mom. He just took everything she had for one night and left her to pull it back together on her own.
Yadje was looking at her with such open adoration, waiting for a reply to her little speech. The halfling had to say something. “Well, it’s good to have hope, then, I guess.”
“If we have nothing else, hope must always endure.” Yadje squeezed the halfling’s hands and finally released them, looking like she’d just realized she was standing in the presence of a god.
Or a demigod, and I’m not either of those.
“Bryl.” Yadje turned loving eyes on her daughter, who’d been standing there with a ridiculous amount of patience. The kid couldn’t have been older than five or six, at least going by human years. “It’s your turn.”
The kid pushed the basket toward Cheyenne, her arms quivering under the weight now that it wasn’t tucked against her body. “We made these for you. To thank you for protecting us. And for being our friend.”
“Oh.” The halfling reached slowly out to take the basket, the tips of her perfectly round ears burning, not with the threat of shifting into her drow form, but with plain old embarrassment. “Thanks. You really didn’t have to make me anything.”
“This is to show our gratitude.” R’mahr had apparently gotten hold of himself again and now looked every bit as eager as his wife. “We can’t repay you for what you did today, but please don’t forget that we are in your debt. I am in your debt. We’re still learning the ways here on this side, and you did for my family what I could not. That will
