The Eagle & the Nightingales: Bardic Voices, Book III Page 36

  The Captain took custody of Lord Atrovel himself and fired off a burst of orders as the rest of the Lord Advisors scattered like so many frightened quail. T’fyrr ignored them all, turning back to Nightingale.

  The terrible rage inside him was gone.

  She went weak-kneed with relief as she saw his face, and sensed the calm that now lay within him. He doesn’t need revenge—

  “I don’t need revenge,” he said softly, echoing her own thoughts, taking her hands in his. “I have you, and I have love. Vengeance is a waste of valuable time.”

  She smiled up at him tremulously. “It is, isn’t it?”

  He touched her cheek with one gentle talon. “I know that you don’t like cities,” he said wistfully, “but—could you consider making your home in one?”

  “A home is where the people you care for are,” she told him, impossible joy beginning to bubble up inside her. “And if the people I care for live in a city—or the High King’s Palace—then that is where my home will be. I think I will survive living in this one.”

  He laughed, then, and gathered her to him for a long embrace. Together, they turned and walked back to the side of High King Theovere, who watched them with a truer smile than any he had worn in Nightingale’s memory.

  Theovere clasped the hand of the Captain of the Elite Bodyguards, and the stalwart soldier smiled as broadly as his King, with the glint of a tear in one eye.

  “Welcome back, my King,” was all he said, and then he turned to face T’fyrr and Nightingale. He nodded, still smiling. And as he walked away to tend to his duties, Nightingale heard with some surprise that he was whistling a Gypsy melody, of how all was right with the world.