Victory’s razor-sharp focus narrowed on Toria. “What boy?”
Toria groaned and dropped her forehead to the table.
The two women talked late into the night, first in the kitchen before switching to plush armchairs in the sunroom off the kitchen. Victory imagined an airy room with sun streaming through the large glass windows during daylight. She pried the story of Liamacorin, elven deputy curator, out of her daughter before packing an exhausted Toria off to bed.
She sat up for another few hours, staring into the shadowy trees at the house’s rear, before slipping upstairs herself. After checking the blankets pinned over the window, she curled under fresh-scented bedclothes and passed the day in sleep.
When she woke after sunset, verified by the lack of light around the edges of the blocked
