Unhappily Ever After

Chapter 38 - Many Happy Returns

"Yeah, actually, I did get you something," Eira said defensively. "I haven't wrapped it, though."

"And I didn't get you jack shit, because no one told me it was your birthday, so go figure," Lee added under his breath.

And Mort grumbled, "I wasn't told neither."

"I couldn't care less if it's wrapped," I told my sister, ignoring the both of them, which was easy to do, considering that they were both lying flat on their backs and Eira and I were both stood up, holding our conversation a long way over their heads.

"Oh, good," Eira beamed, and she dug into one of her pockets and threw me something. I managed to catch it between my thumb and forefinger — which was fortunate, because it was a knife, and it was quite sharp. When I was finished swearing at her, I ran an eye over the plain wooden handle, the worn, scratched blade—

I sighed deeply. "This is yours, shithead."

"Not anymore," she assured me. "I'm going to buy myself a nice new one. That's yours now. Call it revenge for all your hand-me-downs."

"No thanks. Mine's nicer," I said, trying to hand it back. She wouldn't take it, of course, so I had to catch her wrist and dump it into the hood of her jacket. By the time she had managed to extract it without cutting herself, I had retreated to a safe distance.

"Well, I'm not getting you anything else," Eira grumbled.

Frankly, I hadn't been expecting her to. "Fine."

"Fine."

"There's some guy looking for you, Llewellyn," Lee piped up suddenly. He had rolled onto his side since I'd last looked at him. There were grass stains mixing with the sweat on his shirt. Our training sessions with Mort had expanded to multiple opponents, and Lee was always willing to volunteer. "He's down near the river — one of my buddies linked."

"Really?" I asked, not expecting an answer. I got visitors very rarely, and by 'very rarely' I meant never. There were plenty of people wanting a word with Dafydd but this ... this was new.

Naturally, I went down to the river. No one had wanted to come with me — they were too worn out from training to trek all the way across the field in the hot sun — so I went alone. There weren't many people near the water's edge, because there were so many flies around. I had to swat at several of them before I spotted Lee's friend, whom I recognised from the evening campfires as a scout called Blonde Joe. He shrugged his shoulders, mouthed something I didn't have a hope in hell of understanding, and jerked his thumb at someone waiting a dozen feet to his left.

It was a guy of average height with dark hair. He was facing the other way, but once he heard my footsteps and turned, it took about a heartbeat to recognise him. He was about my own age — well, older, actually, but he had such massive, innocent blue eyes that it was hard to think of him that way — and he had something tucked under one arm.

I had to blink a few times to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks — because what the hell would Quinten Davengard be doing so far from Anglesey on a Sunday morning?

"Quin?" I demanded. "Can I help you?"

"Rhodric," he replied, beaming. "Happy Birthday."

I did some more blinking.

"Gwen wanted to come herself, but her absence from the court would have been noted. I only got away by pretending my mainland great-aunt had fallen down the stairs. We're having a day of mourning for you — did you know? It's all rather miserable," Quin sighed.

It was easy to forget that I was supposed to be dead. "That's ... nice. But why are you, um, here?"

"I was sent to deliver this," he explained, handing me a wrapped box with some considerable weight. "But I do have to rush — the patrol escorting me thinks I got lost on my way to the toilet."