Liv couldn’t help grin at how Rei had his face pressed up against the glass windows of the carriage; the boy was up on his knees, perched atop the cushioned bench. Had it really been – Liv had to do the math – eight years ago that she’d first come to the city, with Master Grenfell there to explain everything they rolled by?

“The bay is enormous,” Liv explained, reaching back into her memory to try to dredge up what her old teacher had told her on her own arrival. “The southern harbor is for fishing vessels and trade ships: you should be able to see all the masts, as we come downhill. The north contains the King’s Port, which is walled off and part of the palace compound.” She glanced over to Keri, and was pleased to see sparks of blue light drifting from his eyes. They’d discussed their precautions ahead of time, and everyone had agreed that it would be better not to be taken by surprise.

The six panes of coherent mana which Liv had conjured and placed along the floor, ceiling, and sides of the carriage compartment were one of those precautions. Wood and glass might stop some attacks, but anyone who was serious about wanting to kill Liv wouldn’t even be slowed down by something so flimsy. Her barriers, however, created by Aluth, would stand up to a great deal more punishment. Not as strong as Genevieve’s, however, Liv couldn’t help but think. Yet another thing she wanted to speak with Caspian Loredan about.

So much of Freeport was just as Liv remembered it: the circling gulls, the salt-scent of the air, and even the fact that to get north from the waystone, one had to go through a rather disreputable neighborhood. The theater she’d begged to go to had, however, changed its name at some point over the course of the decade: rather than The Swan, the placard now informed passersby that the same building was The Rose.

“We never did get to see a show, the last time I was here,” Liv remarked, as they trundled past along the cobbled street.

“Perhaps we can find a chance on this trip,” Keri said. He reached across for her hand, taking it gently in his. “If they’re anything like the puppet show in Al’Fenthia, Rei would love it.”

Liv opened her mouth to respond, and then hesitated, her eyes stuck on their joined hands. This was less of an intimate gesture than a kiss, surely – but that hadn’t been in front of Thora and Rei. Keri’s son wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention, but the lady’s maid’s eyes were narrowed to such sharp points that Liv half-expected the other woman to swat at them.

“I think I’d like that,” she said, finally. And she did not snatch her hand away, no matter what Thora might be thinking, or how she might scold Liv later, when they were alone.

“The local rift is Gull Island, out in the bay,” Liv explained to Rei. “I don’t think you’ll be able to spot it from here, but it erupted during the coronation. Ractia was using it to keep most of the Mages Guild away from Coral Bay.” That last was directed to Keri.

“Which means it's unlikely to erupt while we’re here,” he mused. “And now that we’ve seized Nightfall Peak from her, there’s been no indication that she’s still able to cause eruptions whenever or wherever she wants.”

Their carriage passed through the same gate of wrought iron, into the paved circle with the fountain and the garden at the center, and rolled to a halt. Liv waited a moment, maintaining her mana shields around the four of them, while Kaija and her guards spread out to secure the grounds and the house. Only once the head of her guard knocked twice against the carriage door did Liv release her magic.

The door swung open, and Keri climbed out first. Liv waited for him to offer her a hand – which would also give him a chance to scan their surroundings with Bheuv. That word really was so terribly useful; Liv was able to admit to herself just how close she’d gotten to asking either Keri or Triss to imprint it on her. The only thing stopping her was the knowledge that she hadn’t mastered half the words she already had, and that adding a sixth would be spreading herself far too thin.

“Your Majesty,” Basil greeted her, from the foot of the stone steps which led up into the house. There were two lines of servants standing at attention, spreading out to either side of the steward as he bowed. It could almost have been the same, if his hairline hadn’t visibly receded over the course of a decade.

“The house is in order?” Liv asked.

“It is now,” Basil grumbled. “Apparently it was gifted to the Fanes, for a very brief moment of time, after Benedict declared war on your family. Lady Basilia had just started to remodel when word came back that not only had the crown forces lost the battle, but her husband had been killed on top of it. I’ve tried to set the house to rights as best I could, but she began with the master suite, and much of the original furniture had already been sold off by the time I got here.” He ushered them up the steps and into the house.

“That isn’t the end of the world,” Liv admitted, with a sigh. “Matthew and Triss are back in Whitehill, anyway.”

Basil coughed. “The master suite is yours, your majesty.”

Liv paused at the foot of the staircase which led up to the second floor. “I had assumed I would sleep in the same room as last time,” she admitted.

“That wouldn’t be at all appropriate,” Thora pointed out. “A room like that is suited for your cousin, perhaps, or Lady Wren.” She turned to glare at Basil. “I presume you’ve replaced the furniture, then? You can’t be expecting our queen to sleep on the floor.”

Liv sighed. “Why don’t I give you two a moment to sort it out. Rei! There’s something I want to show you.”

All the way up the stairs, Thora called down to Liv that she’d have everything sorted, in between a hushed discussion with Basil. On the one hand, Liv trusted the other woman to handle everything – and on the other, she had absolutely no desire to be involved, herself. So, she led Keri and Rei out back, through the garden and down the steps to the beach. Half a dozen guards followed in their wake, and then spread out to take up stations along the strand, north and south of the stairs.

With a cry of glee, Rei immediately ripped off his boots and most of his clothes, before sprinting across the sand and directly into the breakers. Liv, for her part, sat down on the bottommost stone step, where Keri settled beside her. “I knew he’d enjoy this,” she said, unable to keep a smile off her face. The shrieks of laughter, the splashing, and the wind whipping off the ocean brought back memories of mornings here with Cade and Matthew.

“He won’t be cold?” Keri asked.

“Oh, he will,” Liv said. “You’ll probably have to drag him out shivering, with blue lips and wrinkled fingers. In another few weeks, it will be out of season to get in the water anywhere north of Coral Bay. But in the meantime, he can have a bit of fun.”

“Thank you,” Keri said.

Liv watched him, how his eyes never left his son, not even for a moment. She knew for an absolute fact that, if Rei’s head dipped beneath the waves for too long, Keri would be off the step and into the water, clothes and all, to pull the boy back to safety. It was, somehow, an intensely attractive thing. She tried to imagine either of her two previous lovers as a parent, but couldn’t make the picture come.

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“Are you bothered about what happened with your rooms?” Keri asked her.

“No. Actually, I spent most of my time down here or in the library,” Liv admitted. “If the wretched Lady Fane tore that room apart, I’ll be furious. But I can hardly remember even seeing the master suite, so I’m not attached to it. It might even be better this way. I’m not certain I could sleep in a room that felt strongly of Julianne and Henry.”

“I doubt I’d want to sleep in my father’s bed,” Keri admitted, with a nod. “How long do you think you can take this, without needing a rift?”

“I have this,” Liv said, drawing the stormwand. “That will help a little.”

“But not enough,” he pointed out. “I recall how bad you got at the pass.”

“Well, it turns out Sidonie and I had a talk about that,” Liv told him, with a smile.

☙

After Rei had been wrapped in a towel and sent off with Miina to be wrangled into a clean set of clothes, Liv scandalized Thora by bringing Keri into her bedroom.

“He’s only here to help me set the enchantments up,” Liv told her maid, who had pursued them into the room, wringing her hands in desperation. “Besides, we already went through this at Coral Bay.”

“The servants here don’t know anything about that!” Thora insisted. “And your reputation is more important than ever, now.”

“Good thing you’re in the room with us, then, and that the door is open,” Keri remarked. “Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing what the two of you have come up with, Liv.”

“Here it is.” Liv hefted a great wooden case up off the floor, nearly dropped it, and was quietly relieved when Keri stepped in to take it from her. The whole collection was heavier than she’d expected it to be, packed for travel. Once it was on the mattress, Liv used a key to release the lock, and swung the top open.

Inside were eight small mirrors, each set into silver frames with three legs, with eight pieces of mana stone, held in place by eight sets of small prongs. The gold frames had been etched with Vædic sigils, and the stones carefully carved.

“Aluth,” Keri said, clearly recognizing the word of power at a glance.

“The idea is to form a sort of inward facing ward,” Liv explained, “that only affects mana. Once the mirrors are set up around the room, they should prevent mana from flowing out of the array. At the same time, there’s a second enchantment on the back of each mirror.” She lifted one out of the case and turned it so that Keri could see. “This is adapted from my notes on the Tomb of Celris. It will pull in mana from outside the ward, concentrating the ambient mana in the area into one small area.”

“You’re going to set them up to surround the bed?” Keri asked.

Liv nodded. “And then I’m going to open up the stormwand inside. If it works how we want it to, I should have a nice well of dense mana to sleep in. We think it will be about the same as the shoals of a minor rift. Help me put it all up?”

There followed half a bell of dragging furniture around the room. The enormous bed needed to be moved toward the center of the room so that the headboard wasn’t up against one wall, and that particular endeavor ended up requiring the assistance of Ghveris, who had to duck to get into the bedroom, and once again to get out. Liv could have used a plane of mana, but she was loath to waste any of her magic on something that could be done another way, when they were so far from a convenient rift or friendly territory. The vanity, wardrobe, chairs, and even the travelling bags that Thora had carried up the stairs were all shoved out of the way in favor of precisely placed mirrors. By the time they were finished, the very ornate and carefully planned suite looked more like a storage closet.

“That’s the last of them,” Keri said. Liv had brought a roll of twine to measure with, but he’d ended up using small beams of light, reflected from mirror to mirror, to check the angles more accurately. “How do we know that it works?”

“The gathering enchantment will take a while before it does anything noticeable,” Liv admitted. “There’s really only one way to check.” She stepped into the area marked out by the mirrors, drew the stormwand, and let mana spill out of it.

At the same time, Liv coaxed Aluth to life in the back of her mind, so that she could perceive the flow of mana more clearly. Magic spilled out of the bone wand, like a cloud of sand beneath the waves, billowing up. If the enchantments worked as they were intended to, all of that power would be trapped in a small space around the bed. If not, it would leak out, spreading throughout the house. In that case, she’d have to cut off the flow immediately, before it became dangerous for the servants.

Liv found herself holding her breath. Compared to everything else she needed to do in Freeport, this really wasn’t so important – she could survive a headache for a few days, and the stormwand really would help even without this enchantment. But it certainly would be nice to have a place where she could sleep comfortably…

Mana swept up against the edges of the ward, and then stopped, as if it had hit an impenetrable wall. “It’s working!” Liv couldn’t help but exclaim. She threw herself onto the great mattress, spread her arms up above her head, and closed her eyes to luxuriate in the feeling. It was, perhaps, just a hair less dense than the shoal of a rift – but so long as the enchantments held, that should change over time. In any event, it would be enough, she thought.

Liv turned her head toward Keri and opened her eyes. “Come in,” she urged him. “See how it feels.”

Keri took a step toward the bed, and Liv could see the moment he felt it.

“Very like a shoal,” he said, and nodded. He took a deep breath, and Liv could feel the mana rushing into his body, circulating, in the same way that her father had taught her so many years before. She let Aluth go: now that she knew things were working the way they’d intended, there was no need for it.

“The things you do are amazing,” Keri told her, looking down from above the bed with a smile.

Liv met his eyes, and couldn’t help but grin in return. “That will be all for now, Thora,” she said.

There was a hesitation. “Your majesty, it really isn’t appropriate –”

“I said that will be all,” Liv repeated, and then waited for the echo of her maid’s steps as the other woman walked away. She reached her arm out, stretching her hand toward Keri.

“She cares about you quite a bit,” he said, slipping his hand into hers.

“Mmmm.” Liv tugged him toward her. He was so much larger than her, so much physically stronger, that she could never make him go anywhere he didn’t want to go without using magic, but Keri allowed himself to be pulled down onto the mattress next to her. He rolled onto his side, facing her, and she rolled toward him, so that their eyes met across a span of blankets. For the first time in what felt like months, there was no next crisis: there was nothing she immediately had to do.

“We haven’t really spoken about that kiss,” Keri said, after a moment. “Do you regret it?”

“No,” Liv told him. “No, I don’t regret it. I wish that I hadn’t been a sobbing wreck when it happened.” It seemed like she couldn’t keep a smile from her face.

“What did they show you?”

“A few things. What I could turn into, if I’m not careful,” Liv said. “Something like Celris, but worse. And I saw you in my hall, a frozen statue, along with everyone else I’ve ever cared about.”

“That’s why you thought I might be dead?” he asked.

Liv nodded, the movement pulling strands of her hair out of her braids, where they rubbed against the blankets. “I thought that I’d lost you, before I ever really even had you. I’m sorry that things have been so busy since then.”

“I told you, I can be patient,” Keri murmured. “I care about you, Liv. I don’t want to make a mess of anything, like –”

“Like with Rika?” Liv asked. She watched his face tighten at the name, but he nodded. “You know I’m not her, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Do you believe it?” Liv asked. “Because I understand you, Keri. We’re both fighters. Not everyone is, but you and I are. I wouldn’t ever blame you for fighting to protect your son, or to protect – me. I can’t tell you just how much it made me angry that she didn’t wait for you. She didn’t deserve you.”

Keri laughed. “How ironic to hear you say that. I never thought that Cade deserved you. He didn’t know what he had. He should have been the first one to support you, to give you anything you needed.”

“What do I need?” Liv asked him, in a very quiet voice.

Keri leaned toward her, and this time she wasn’t the one who began the kiss.

Liv closed her eyes, and felt a surge of warmth run through her when Keri put his hand on her hip. They broke apart just long enough to breathe, and then –

With a shout, Rei jumped up onto the bed, bouncing both of their bodies. Liv’s eyes shot open, and she looked up just in time to get a glimpse of Thora walking away from the doorway.

“Is this your bed?” the boy asked, and it wasn’t clear to Liv who he was addressing the question to. “What are we doing next? Can we go to the theater?”

Liv should have been annoyed, but instead she couldn’t help but laugh. She would try to be patient, too.