The Silver Rose (11 page)

“I'm self-taught.”

Rosa fixed her gaze on his. “I don't believe you.”

• • •

Aden didn't want to lie, but there was no way this side of the veil he would violate his promise not to reveal his identity or magical status.

This knowledge was something Rosa could only divine for herself. She was deeply suspicious of him and his motives. Few knew the hard road he had walked to attain atonement for his rebellious act centuries ago and earn the position of Dragon of Marylebone Coven.

So, when Rosa glared at him in disbelief, Aden knew he was treading dangerous ground. Her look said it all. He would have to give her something to satisfy her increasing suspicions. But what?

He returned to the couch and perched on the upholstered arm. “I've worked with silver as a medium since almost before I could walk,” the ring of genuine truth in his words. “My father is a jeweller. You could say I learned at his knee by osmosis.”

This much was true. Having been present in his father's workrooms from the time he had taken his first steps, and possessed of a very strong magical potential inherited from both his parents, he had learned the basics of the craft long before he actually picked up a single tool.

His father crafted, and still did by all accounts, for men and women from all walks of life. He mixed easily with royalty, heads of state, and the well-heeled. He was equally at home with the common man and moved seamlessly between the mortal and magical realms, respected by all.

“My mother was a lace-maker but once she married, she never worked outside the home.”

“Lace?” Rosa's eyes lit with interest. “How unusual. So few make it these days. Where did she learn?”

“Italy. Venice, actually.”

“Is that where you were born? Venice?”

Aden shook his head, happy to impart the truth without raising any suspicions. “My family is from everywhere.” At Rosa's puzzled expression, he elaborated, knowing the nationalities of his family were not public knowledge.

“My father is Cypriot, my mother Italian. As for my brother and sister, we're an international lot. I was born in Cyprus, my brother in Portugal and my sister in Spain. There's a family home in Cyprus, and that's where everyone migrates every spring and autumn.”

“I can't imagine what that must be like,” Rosa admitted. “I've lived in this same town my entire life. Everyone knows me, and I them.”

“We're a nomadic family.” Now that he'd started talking, he found the words flowed more freely. “I can't imagine what it must be like to embed oneself in one place for a lifetime. I don't know if I could do it.”

“So they're in Cyprus now?” Rosa queried. “It's spring here, so it will be autumn there. I'm surprised you accepted the invitation to travel halfway round the world to Raven's Creek.”

“They won't be expecting me.” A vivid memory of raucous laughter and happier times echoed in the place where Aden's heart used to be. In his mind's eye, he saw his family sitting beneath the boughs of ripening lemons in the arbour outside their whitewashed home, as if he had been there only yesterday, when it had been, in fact, hundreds of years since he had returned to the family enclave.

He had not thought about his past in a long time. A conscious choice, an aid to keep the pain of his self-exile at bay. “Yes. The start of autumn. They're there now,” he murmured, knowing the statement to be fact.

The luxury of allowing his mind to remember brought with it an intense longing to return to his roots. The scent of citrus, olives, thyme, and wine assaulted his memory, and for a split-second he forgot he sat in Rosa's living room. Instead, he was swept through a rift in a Veil, courtesy of his familial link and visible only to him.

Light, happy laughter caught his attention and he swallowed hard, fighting back the urge to call out to alert them to his presence. Chewing the inside flesh of his bottom lip, he recognized his father, his mother Sophia, brother Santos, and sister Imelda. Their life partners were there too, along with a bunch of others Aden did not recognize. His absence had prevented him from getting to know his nephews and nieces.

He could almost smell the roast lamb smothered in rosemary-and-garlic-infused olive oil. Saliva pooled under his tongue, and he unconsciously moistened his lips, remembering. The meal would last long into the night, well past witching hour.

Did they miss him, he wondered? Did they think about him and wonder where he was? How he was? He was no longer a participant in their lives. He had cut his ties with the past, and, until this very moment, he had not returned in thought, body, or spirit. Not once. Swallowing hard, Aden fought back the ache of longing at the back of his throat and soaked up the images before him as if he had been deprived of water for an eternity.

His hold on the shield protecting him from detection slipped as suppressed sadness erupted to the surface and threatened to swamp him.

A young girl looked up. Hair long and as shiny as a raven, she shared Aden's features, and he knew just as surely as he new his own name that this young girl was a descendant of his brother's bloodline. Her potential was enormous. She pointed toward him.

Dragons' Oath! She could see him!

Now there was silence as one by one his family turned. Aden's skin prickled with a mixture of joy and trepidation.

His father moved first, twisting in his chair, a lemon in one hand and a knife in the other. Then his mother, still standing, her hands holding a dish laden with roast capsicums, tomatoes, feta, and garlic, turned around..

“Aden,” she cried, and the dish tumbled to the earth as she stretched out her hands in supplication.

The joy in her voice caused Aden to tremble. “Mama,” he uttered softly, unconsciously reverting to his childhood name for her. He wondered how he could have forgotten and so callously discarded the warmth and comfort of a mother's love.

There were other gasps of wonder. Hope. Joy.
They wait for me
. He did not know how he knew it, but the knowledge sent a knife slicing through his heart. He whispered softly to himself,
they await my return
. His world tilted beneath his feet. Deliberately, Aden severed the link between the veils. He needed time to assimilate what he had just witnessed.

“What is it?” Rosa's hands gripped his, her fingers digging into his skin. He looked down, surprised to see them there. Worry etched a furrow of lines across Rosa's brow. Again, she asked, “What is it?”

“I grew up in a land warmed by the sun and surrounded by love.” Surprised, he added softly, “Maybe it's time I went home.”

He offered nothing else. Words of truth were best, but any more and they would be lies. Rosa's opinion should not mean anything to him.

Apparently it did.

• • •

Rosa picked up on the yearning and melancholy Aden all too briefly and unwittingly revealed. He had given her the basics, but left out all the details.

“I love my home, the gallery, and most of all, my sisters. But — ” and she flushed, feeling guilty at the admission, “ — I've always wanted to travel further afield.”

“Why haven't you?”

A simple question. A difficult one to answer. “Timing, I suppose.”

Conscious she still held Aden's hands and not quite believing she was revealing something she had never told anyone, not even Zelda, she loosened her grip and moved back to the other end of the couch.

But then Aden followed, easing into the gap beside her. “You know the story of our parents dying. I've stayed on to look after my sisters.”

“A valid excuse when they were underage. What's stopping you now?”

“What's stopping me?” she whispered softly. Rosa leaned into the comfort of the old couch, rested her head against the back, and ran her right hand lovingly over the frayed material that reeked of history, of her family. “Maybe next year.” The words sounded hollow to her ears.

Aden rested his arm along the back of the couch and curled the ends of Rosa's hair into ringlets. There was warmth in his eyes she had not seen before. It was as if his decision to return home softened him, made him more human, more approachable. What kept him away from the ones he loved? What had gone so horribly wrong that he had not visited them in a long time?

“You'd like Cyprus,” he said.

She believed him. “I know.”

“Italy too.”

With a ringlet wound around his index finger, he reached out and stroked her heated cheek with the combined softness of his skin and her hair. The room was eerily silent except for the quickening beat of her heart. Warmth stole into the smile on his lips. One minute she distrusted this man and the next she wanted to explore deep physical contact. Perhaps one kiss, she half-convinced herself, just to see if she was imagining the pull between them and to satisfy her growing surety he was the one. She allowed him to slide into her space.

“Just a few more weeks and summer will be here. Raven's Creek is beautiful during spring and summer.”

“I believe you,” Aden murmured. “But I'll be leaving once the festival is over.”

“You could stay longer,” Rosa suggested, not quite believing she had uttered the words.

“Ah, Rosa.” Aden breathed a sigh that sounded a lot like regret. “I can't.”

She wanted to ask why not, but a loud cough caused her to jump and Aden to move away, preventing her from pursuing the possibility of a kiss, because she was sure that was where they had been heading.

“Isn't this just the coziest picture,” Alanna drawled.

Cyprus — Dragunis Family Enclave

Leonardo could hardly believe his weary eyes. Surely they deceived him. But no, Sophia had seen their son too, and the evidence of her shock lay broken at their feet, the ground littered with shards of pottery and smashed vegetables.

“Leo,” his wife sobbed into her empty hands. “Did you see him? Did you see the sadness in my boy's eyes?”

Leonardo gulped down the first inkling of hope in centuries. His hands shook as he gripped his wife's elbows and pulled her into his embrace. “I saw more than that. I saw his intention to return to us.”

It had been the briefest glimpse, but in Leonardo's eyes it was a gift so precious his heart overflowed with happiness. His mouth widened into an enormous smile, and his cheeks ached from the strangeness of it. Placing strong arms about his wife, he hugged her to his chest. “This is a good sign.”

“The first and only sign,” Sophia sobbed into his chest. “I don't know if I can cope if he doesn't return to us.”

“You'll cope as you've done for the past four centuries.” Leonardo lifted his wife's face and thumbed away the tears on her cheeks. “I told you it would take time.”

“Time? Huh! I thought you meant months. How much longer can it be, Leo? One glimpse of him in four hundred years is not enough. I want to see him daily. I want to hug him. Cook for him. I want to tell him everything is going to be all right.”

Leonardo's gaze encompassed all of his family sitting at the long trestle table. The youngest, the one who had seen Aden first, spoke. “Poppa, who was that man?”

“That was Aden, Dragon of Marylebone Coven and your uncle. He's older brother to your father and your aunt Imelda.”

“Why have we never met him? Why is Nana crying?”

“Nana has not seen him in a long time. Her tears are happy ones. Not sad.”

Santos, Aden's brother, reached over and patted his daughter on the head. Moisture too, shone in his eyes. “So many questions. You're very hungry for information.”

Sophia wiped away her last tear and twirled a finger at the food littered on the ground. It flew into the kitchen for disposal later. “If Poppa says we will see him again, then we will. Soon he will be eating with us amongst the vines.” A smile softened her features as the shock wore off. “And what a celebration we will have.”

Leonardo winked at Nan. “And then you can ask him as many questions as you want.” But he whispered softly into his wife's ear. “A quick trip to Marylebone to see Anton might be prudent. Just to see what has happened to bring about this shift in attitude.”

• • •

Marylebone Coven, Marylebone House, London

As a past Ascended Master of the Supreme Council, Leonardo required no authorization to enter the hallowed halls of Marylebone Coven. He arrived in the main hallway of Marylebone House without fanfare. Still, there was a swift gasp of surprise from many walking the ancient hallway as they went about their daily tasks.

Leonardo Dragunis, Grand Master and revered artisan, had not favored Marylebone with a visit in a very, very long time, but his fame preceded him, and he was recognized immediately.

Leonardo might not have understood his son's actions in choosing to cut his ties from his family — self-punishment would not solve anything — but in deference to his son's wishes they had all stepped back, waiting silently in the background for the time when he would return. Patience was one quality Leonardo had acquired in the two thousand three hundred years he had walked the earth. But even this old warlock's patience was almost at an end.

Happy to be back in Marylebone, Leonardo could not prevent an enormous grin. He clapped his hands together and rubbed his palms with enthusiasm. Until this very moment, he had not realized just how much he missed the place he'd once called home.

A flurry of whispers reached his ears. It would not be long before his old friend, Anton, heard of his arrival. He had communicated with him often over the years, but they had not physically seen each other in all this time. It was good to be back. It felt right.

“Leonardo!” Eleisha, Dragoness of Marylebone and Anton's life partner, came running down the long, dark-paneled hallway. She threw herself into his embrace, her snowy white dragon, Victoria, fluttering softly at her side. “Oh, how wonderful! Anton will be ecstatic!”