Esme's mouth dropped from much of that tirade, only to snap shut to grit out a forceful response. "I see me as an adult and think all of you can go hang if you dare think to take that away from me. Including you, All. I don't think like some nubile child."

Althalos began to protest but she placed her hand on top of his-gripping his knuckles tightly in her own-then barreled through. "I know I don't have your education or experience. If you use those as the standard, I'll never catch up to you. You all say I'm different, allow me to be so."

Rileus' bark of laughter startled them both-not so much the rest of the table. "I'm glad you didn't challenge her competence on intelligence. I'm afraid she's got you beat, All."

"Shut it, for once, Rileus." The braw Aelif was not in the mood for his cousin's taunts-especially as he found this more taxing than having lived the events he was being questioned on. "Grandfather, what is your judgment?"

"Two of three accounts points to adulthood. The one objection places her near adulthood and that objection stems from a ruling I had horribly wrong-for which I'm sorry, my boy-based upon the assumption of an isolated event. She's adult now. You were adult enough then, although not legal. I wish I had seen it at the time. And please tell me you don't drink like that anymore."

Althalos tapped the table at that, nothing loud. "I rarely touch the stuff, at all. It gets in the way of muscle formation. I couldn't drink like that and follow the path I have."

Esme smiled at that thought. "In spite of my...ah, our month of drinking, we would be having far more major fights if he behaved like mother in front of me."

"Good." Octavian's smile briefly matched hers before he shifted back to the task at hand. "Truebell, you were interrupted on your account, if you please."

"Well, I was giving one where much of the blame fell on me. That's been upended."

Althalos hadn't been asking much of anyone, given how disturbing the series of events were to him, but Rileus wasn't taking over, either. Perhaps he had some deference to Grandfather? He knew which direction the discussion had to take-and he didn't want long stretches of gnawing quiet. "What kept you from sending her back to me, Truebell?"

"I came to collect her on your fourtieth birthday. She was beginning to cocoon herself in the middle of the pefumery, saying there wasn't enough room in the suite I had rented for her. They fired her on the spot-no matter that they were crossing me, an Aelfine lord. I hurriedly bought the bar and shoved her into it. Had to shut it down for a month until the grub-Esme, that is-was born. I was still for introducing her back to you even after the child, if she would stay-for all that I knew she'd fly away leaving me with a bar I didn't need." Truebell paused to sigh. "You know I've never felt the bond, but I have never felt anxiety like I did that month."

The Elder chuckled, at that point. "Any account of ours, your men worried but didn't understand. Even if we chose to stay with our bondswain, we really should go back to the Crystal Queen. And, no, I'm not going to explain much more than that, not yet."

"But she did not." Truebell was quick to counter that much before explaining. "She stayed, struggled through a month of feeding this baby sized grub until it had grown large enough to molt into this wild little girl of four. And from what Tal-Anan had told me, you should remember that day, Esme."

"My first memory of you was being wakened, crouching under a table while you were in Mother's face yelling at her."

Truebell was subtly nodding his head, almost agitatedly, like he was still back in that moment of time. "She threw the grub. It bounced under the table and split open. I thought she had had enough and had killed you."

Esme's nose crinkled, remembering more. "Did she really reach behind her with a knife and cut off her wings?"

"I had demanded she take you to her people, have you checked out for any damage. She cut them off as a response, handed them to me and started shouting at the Crystal Queen that I could take you to her, if she and I were so worried."

Rileus again decided that snide was appropriate. "That sounds sane."

The Elder smiled her gap-jaw grin. "I got that. Most the time I don't understand your humor. Anyway, that was sane enough. I can contact the Queen at will-though very difficult. All of us can to varying degrees, save Esme, here. Likely the Queen had been arguing with Tal-Anan since she emerged and could fly. Not going allowed Esme to have a mostly human childhood, beyond extremes that any bondmaid has faced."

"They were extremes beyond what most humans had, but that is irrelevant," Esme quipped, quickly. "When were you planning on bringing my mother back, to fulfill the bond?"

"I didn't want to at all." A small frission of a shiver caused Truebell to twitch in his seat. "Octavian demanded that I bring back both by Althalos' fiftieth birthday, if not sooner. So I checked in quite often to see if she had given up on ruining her life, and if you were old enough to be taken from her."

"That never became easier for her. I was fourteen...no ten, by your account, when I last saw you."

"I decided that I was bringing you back and leaving her. She tried scaring me with stories of you being Althalos' bondmate-which happened to be true, but I didn't know it then. Remember, she behaved insanely by anything I could judge-I did not trust this truth. I gave her a week to have you packed and ready to go. I should have taken you then, but everything about it has been off-putting the whole time. I came back to find you gone and her claiming that you were sold to a 'skirthouse. I spent nearly a year looking for you but came up with nothing. I assumed you were dead. What happened?"

"She goaded an old lover into buying me outright. What did you do to her, afterwards?"

"I refused to have anything to do with her at that point and sold the bar after I gave up on finding you. Given everything, she did the best she understood with what she had, and I'm the cause of her being out on the streets."

The Elder smacked her own hand on the table, at that. "No. Tal-Anan was still in control. She could have called on the Queen's aid the whole time. She wanted death, which is unnatural to a bondmaid. Courting it like that, she chose to never return to her people. She didn't even contact those of us who stayed here."

"But what of the debt? Is that guilt still on me and Octavian?"

Illes shook her head. "It was fufilled by her child. There is no broken bond, just one broken person of her own free will. There are many reasons we leave. One of them is that children, especially firstborns, can bond with their Aelif fathers-a situation that would throw the whole of peace into a discord. We know enough about you to know that its as bad as the men who chased the boy, to you. Perhaps more so."

"Why is it not distressing for us?" Esme had to know. "I mean, I'm holding on alright, although the idea of mother seducing Althalos makes my skin crawl."

"Well, a child is her mother. We are hive, and it takes a lot of work on the Crystal Queen's part to break us of thinking we are all the same person. We don't send descendants back to their ancestral father's kingdom until he is dead for the Aelif's sake. But in this case, she did what she could to keep part of herself here and waiting for him-as it was too late for her."

Althalos leaned forward to look at the Elder bondmaid. "Are you saying that Esme will be forced to seperate me from my child, so we don't go through this cycle all over again?"

Illes shook her head. "She is unique. No one can predict how this individuality will play out in a normal bondmaid. With her? It's evenmore variable. I wouldn't be surprised if she had a son for her first child. And that's far too rare. Remember, the hives are female dominant."

Esme had to grin at the idea of having a boy, swiftly followed by the shudder of birthing a grub. That ended her desire to continue the conversation. "I assume that will be sufficient for any documentation we want to do on this subject, yes? Other than anything you could tell me still about my childhood, Truebell?"

"Only that you were an adorable flirt as a little one. You are far more like your mother now than you were then."

That caused her to wrinkle he nose in disgust. "I doubt that I'm much like her, at all. My master knew her and didn't often see any resemblance in either looks or behaviors."

"I didn't know her well enough to make a true distinction, dear. I just meant that you are far closer to a bondmaid's sobriety instead of the more human engagement."

That left no one in the party with much else to say. They had managed to eat their meal throughout the conversation, each staying only minutes longer than the meeting required.

The rest of the pair's day went more typically, and that night they shared a bed. All Althalos did was hold his bondmate in spite of his natural interest in more. His mind was too full for the distraction.

In the morning he rummaged through his belongings until he held a stack of letters in his hand. The Aelif left her alone before she had even climbed out the bed.

For her part, Esme understood that the man was disturbed by the previous day's revelations, but she was done with the loneliness. She again donned her new gear and left the castle grounds for the first time since she had been brought there. The Princess set out to play vagabond.

Of course, the guards at the entrance had a different idea about her leaving on her own. Not even a minute past the gates and she had a tail. Moments later, she noted several men stationed along the way who were likely guards, as well. Esme didn't know whether to be sad that they couldn't let her be or mad at why they had to be so bad at doing it.

Either way, they had made her outing into another level of prison, so she headed north towards a park she had heard about but never seen called The Alabastar Straight. She could lose her tail, but where would she hide? Nowhere she wanted to be other than away.