Since Esmera was abandoned on a stranger's doorstep as a baby, the only person who has looked out for her is herself.
Until a lark starts visiting her, leaving behind exotic flowers and iridescent pebbles that the internet doesn't recognise.
Esmera...
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Esmera had thought Tauram's mountainside cottage was fancy with its dull sheets of metal manipulated into little yaks standing on the server and china vases filled with Himalayan musk roses, but although cosy, it was simple compared to a mansion that housed nobility.
She merely stared around her in open-mouthed disbelief as the guards at the door to the Vinsingh's manor allowed Lady Hetal past. The end of the deep purple fabric draped around her plump frame flew out behind her as she pulled Belaren along, her bright-winged familiar hovering above them.
Tauram led Esmera through a passage formed by varnished wooden pillars topped by elaborate clusters of leaves and plums that glistened as though they were the real thing. The white tiles were so polished Esmera could see her reflection in them. Lady Hetal led them past a wall covered in family photographs too quickly for Esmera to spot Belaren in them, then around a golden statue of a man Esmera didn't recognise. He wore a turban, a shirt and something that looked like a skirt. A large moustache dominated the lower half of his face.
"Belaren's grandfather," murmured Tauram, probably feeling the pull of Esmera's hand on his as she lagged him, studying the set of the mouth and the line of the brow and trying to figure out why it looked so familiar to her.
Of course. She had seen the same features in Belaren, only they were in flesh and blood and colour rather than gold.
"Though he was a human before they made him a statue." Tauram grinned.
Esmera rolled her eyes even as she fought a smile. "I figured."
"Did you?" Tauram tilted his head. "Because you were staring at him as though you were expecting him to step off his pedestal and welcome you to his humble abode."
Esmera elbowed him. How was it her fault that the man had been recreated with such care, with every hair etched onto his moustache and every wrinkle set into his face to the point that he could be a real person rather than the sculpted image of one?
Tauram laughed breathlessly, too softly for anyone but Esmera to hear him. She liked these little moments when it was just the two of them, when he let down his guard and she saw him smile like he must've before he lost everything he loved.
She'd help him win it all back just so he could smile like that again. Even if his being king would mean he'd no longer have time for those jokes that were so hilariously bad that they were good. Even if his reuniting with Ghallia would mean he'd never look Esmera's way again.
She frowned at the sobering thought. She had known she was doing this for herself so that she could learn the truth about her family and for the people of Milatanur, so they could live lives as long as they had been destined to be, but she had never realised that she was doing this for Tauram so that he could claim back the life he had lost and so longed for.
Her hand tightened around his. She had never thought of what their victory over King Ruagu would mean. She had never realised that their accomplishing this mission might mean her never seeing Tauram again, and before now, she might not even have cared.
