Something was different. Something was wrong. Sperantia knew it as she lingered on the edge of consciousness, only dimly aware of her environment.
At first, she tried to dismiss it. Since she’d returned to Madrid, everything had felt different and wrong. The servants regarded her professionally but Sperantia’s keen ears had caught snippets of their quiet corridor gossip, and she knew that her unexplained disappearance and reappearance was a key theme. She kept herself to herself mostly, choosing to remain polite and quiet. She was even polite to the – the woman, on the rare occasions she’d send a word to her. Usually, she wasn’t in a room with her for more than a few seconds, and never alone unless by accident. The cat had taken to sleeping in the children’s rooms – usually Ned’s – rather than on her fairy’s bed unless Croe was out of town for the night.
Even on those nights, it wasn’t right. She slept at the foot of Mallos’ bed instead of on his back like she’d always done in in the past and he, for the most part, ignored her. In daylight hours he was emotionally distant at best and physically absent at worst.
Living in this house was beginning to give Sperantia a pretty good idea of what it felt like to be a house spider. The best she seemed to be able to do was be tolerated.
The bad feeling this morning was worse than all of that, though. It niggled, refusing to let her go back to sleep. Sperantia stretched, pushing her paws against Ned’s feet, and jumped a mile when she heard her name being screamed through the ajar door from the other end of the house. She stood bolt upright, the hair on her tail fluffed out, and leapt up and over the side of the crib. From there, she bolted across the room, along the corridor and down the stairs, only stopping when she accidentally ran straight into Ximena’s legs. The poor maid had been exiting a nearby door in a hurry when the two of them collided.
“Ahh – Sperantia.” She said nervously, twisting her hands. “Lady Croe…”
Taking a deep breath, Sperantia sat on her tail in an attempt to try and flatten it out a little. Croe had screamed her name? Whatever for?
The nagging sense of wrongness stirred again, knowingly. It hit Sperantia a split second later with all the force of a truck.
Where was Mallos?
Their connection had been cleanly severed. That wasn’t an unheard of or even inexplicable phenomenon, since their connection faded every time he travelled too far away, but…
A swift, efficient interrogation of Ximena revealed that Croe had been heading towards the children’s rooms, right where Sperantia had come from. She turned and retraced her steps, trying Ned’s room first and then moving on to Ángela’s. She poked her head around the door and spotted Croe instantly, sat on the other side of the table to the little girl. The woman had Ned on her lap, one arm around him, while the other was reaching across to take her daughter’s hand. Ángela had grasped it eagerly, abandoning the Lego project she had been building on the table to watch the situation with intelligent curiosity. Her eyes swivelled between her mother and the cat while the former spoke.
At first, Sperantia considered resisting the telepathy, briefly. Something was very, very wrong and Croe knew it too. She listened, her heart dropping down to her toes.
Silence, for a moment.
“Morning.” She answered stiffly. ‘I will burn them,’ was her first thought.
Then after a moment, ‘you should take them and go somewhere quiet. There’s a house in Moraira, Valencian region, or a boat off the coast of Tarifa. Anyone who’s done a modicum of research into Mallos will know that burning his skin isn’t the way to hurt him.’
Her mouth was set in a grim line, sharp blue eyes fixed on the woman. Sperantia would deal with this. She had experience enough of Omniety participants threatening her fairy.
“You two have been in the same room for more than three seconds.” Ángela noted astutely in Spanish. “Why? What’s happening?” Her dark eyes narrowed. “Where’s daddy?”
Sperantia
la soledad es un tipo de veneno
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