Light spilled through the ajar door of the circular sitting room, precisely the amount one would expect from a candle. Charlie moved to the door and peered inside.
Artemis was seated on the sofa, her legs up beside her, just as she’d sat in the bookroom. She held a folded handkerchief in her hands, which rested on her lap. Her gaze was on the bit of linen, and what he could see of her expression was deeply sad. Heartbroken, even.
Charlie’s heart dropped to his toes. He hadn’t caused this, had he?
“Artemis?”
She didn’t look up. He knew she wasn’t asleep.
What was he meant to do? He didn’t know what was causing her distress. He certainly didn’t know how to fix it.
What would you do, Father?There was, of course, no answer. He was on his own, muddling through life, as always.
He crossed to her, pausing just long enough to set his candle and the letters on the side table next to the sofa before sitting beside her. “Is something the matter?”
“Nothing I can’t sort out.” Her usual tone of defiance felt forced. She had often frustrated him with her playacting and insincerity. Seeing that mask crack, though, was not the satisfying experience he would have expected.
“Not much can be said for me, but I am generally considered a good listener,” he said.
“I suspect I have forced you to listen to more already today than you’d prefer.” She shrugged a shoulder and tipped her chin at an arrogant angle.
Not once in the last two years had Charlie expected he would ever feel empathy for Miss Shamcaster.
“I am sorry about how you were treated,” he said. “A father is someone who ought to... ought to be there when you need him.”
Eyes still on her handkerchief, a bit of linen that appeared to have seen better days, she asked, “Was yours?”
He seldom spoke of his father, almost never, in fact. But he felt in his bones that she needed him to. She needed to know that her difficult feelings about her father were something others could empathize with.
“My father died when I was seven years old,” he said. “So, no, he has not been around when I’ve needed him. I suspect, though, if he had remained alive, he would have been.”
“I wonder sometimes which is more difficult: missing the kindnesses one once had or mourning the tender moments that never were.”
How easily she could have been describing the last thirteen years of his life. “I’ve wondered that myself.”
She took a slow, deep breath. It was the sort of thing one did when hoping to retain one’s composure. “Did you enjoy your mathematics?”
“Ialwaysenjoy mathematics.”
She shook her head. “You are a strange person, Charlie Jonquil.”
“Yes, but a strange person with letters.” He reached over to the table and took up the stack. “And two of them are for you.”
Eagerness entered her expression. He was glad of it. Seeing her so downcast weighed heavily on him.
He set her letters in her hands.
“Daria,” she said, eyeing the first. “And Nia,” she said about the second. She looked at him briefly. “Two of the Huntresses.”
“Ah.”
She bent over her letters, so he turned his attention to the one addressed to him in Mater’s familiar handwriting. He flipped it over and broke the seal.
It was a single sheet of parchment written on one side only. A brief letter, then. That was a bit disappointing.
He read silently.
My dearest Charlie,
