Come on, Mom. Don’t make me ask the question.
“That’s what they called him, I assume. In that prison you mentioned.”
“Is it really called Chateau D’rahl?”
Bianca snorted. “I doubt it. Those people are very fond of their codenames.”
“Like Inmate 4872.”
“When I met him, Cheyenne, he told me his name was Leon.”
Cheyenne swallowed, drank more wine, and couldn’t look at her mom anymore. No wonder she didn’t want to talk about this. It’s like she lobotomized herself to anything related to the man. “Is that his name?”
For a few seconds, her mom didn’t respond. Then, the woman blinked and tipped her head back to look at the rolling hillside behind the lodge that used to be home to both of them. Maybe it still was, but Cheyenne couldn’t let herself go there right now.
“Mom?”
“I don’t know. That’s the full truth.” Bianca turned toward her daughter and lifted her shoulders in a weak shrug as if she’d lost all her energy and couldn’t move more than that. “I have no idea if what that man told me was real. I don’t know where he came from or who he was before that night. I’m not sure I want to know.”
“But you know something.” The halfling set both hands in her lap and stared at her mom. Just say it. For once, don’t make me lance the truth out of you.
“Yes. I know he’s your father, Cheyenne. Leon Verdys or Inmate 4872 or whatever other name he might have used or might still use today.”
Cheyenne folded her arms, then unfolded them and ended up pressing both hands to her mouth. Now we’re getting somewhere. For real this time.
“Okay.” She nodded and stared at the empty wine bottle. “So, you slept with a convicted drow felon doing time in a max-security prison for non-human criminals. And then you had me.”
“And then I had you.” Bianca closed her eyes. “You didn’t learn that from me.”
“What?”
“The art of simplifying the most complicated things. I haven’t mastered that skill, Cheyenne.” When the woman opened her eyes, she reached for the wineglass and raised it to her lips. “I will say there’s a certain satisfaction in just saying it like it is.”
Instead of taking a sip, Bianca laughed and raised her glass in a toast to an invisible someone across the table. She chuckled and kept drinking.
“I know it’s not that simple, Mom. And I know it made things a lot more complicated for you.”
“And we did our best with what we had, didn’t we?” Bianca smiled at her daughter and seemed to return to herself. “I’d say our best was pretty damn good.”
Cheyenne gave a wry chuckle. “Not gonna argue with you on that one.”
They sat there on the veranda, sipping the wine as old as Bianca Summerlin’s half-drow daughter and watching the sky morph into shades of orange and pink as the sun set.
“Okay, so that brings up another question.”
“Of course, it does.”
“Did you…” Cheyenne cocked her head, trying to imagine how in the world this scenario had played out twenty-one years ago. “Did you have any idea he wasn’t…I mean—”
“That he wasn’t human?” Bianca’s laughter didn’t lack in bitterness or cynicism, yet there was some fondness in it too. “Cheyenne, I met your father at a New Year’s Eve party with some of Washington’s highest-ranking officials. He was handsome, don’t get me wrong. Mysterious. Calm and somehow gravely intense and…well, he caught my attention. I hadn’t let my guard down like that since my freshman year of college.”
“You were drunk.” Cheyenne pressed her lips together, fighting not to laugh.
It’s not funny. Except because the one time in a million Mom gets drunk enough to have fun, she gets into bed with a drow and gets knocked up just like that.
“Yes. I was drunk. Have a good laugh about it, my love. This might be the only time you’ll get away with it.”
“I’m not laughing.” Bianca’s daughter hid her smile in another sip of wine.
“For the record, I hadn’t had so much to drink I wasn’t completely aware of what I was doing. Lowered inhibitions don’t equal heightened ignorance or a complete lack of clarity and judgment.”
“See, that’s the mother-daughter speech not everyone gets.” Cheyenne smirked and watched for her mom’s reaction, which had eased out of the already low levels of amusement and now looked much more like regret. “I’m not judging you if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried about that, Cheyenne. If you were to judge me for anything, a few too many glasses of champagne would be the least of it, and we both know that.”
They fell silent, and that silence inched its way under the half-drow’s skin until she couldn’t help but break it. “But did you know?”
“Some part of me did, I’m sure. I buried that for so long until the day I—well, when he approached me at that party, I knew there was something different about him. He shook my hand, and there was this…” Bianca glanced down at her hand and blinked. “It felt like destiny.”
“Probably magic,” Cheyenne muttered into her wine.
“Really, though, you can’t blame me for not having picked up on that right away, can you?” Her mom tittered and shook her head. “Even after I found out what he was, it took me years to come to terms with the fact that magic is a real thing. Inaccessible to me, of course, but for you?”
“Pretty hard to hide.”
“Quite.” Tossing her head back, Bianca smoothed the hair away from her face and gazed at the sunset again. “I couldn’t deny what was right in front of me when you experienced your…what do they call it? Manifestation? Awakening?”
Okay, now she lost me. Cheyenne stared at her mom, waiting for the woman to continue the rest of that thought.
“Whatever they told me it was, you proved
