Ask her for.
Again, a very telling construction.
“Nothing,” Elena said. “She spoke something to me. I didn’t understand it.”
Riad spoke. The woman replied.
“First, she says thank you for not hurting her baby.” A pause. “Then she says why you use this word, azeeztee?”
Respect bloomed inside Elena for the woman in front of her; she’d been terrified, was still scared, but she was asking a question. “My mother used it with me and my sisters,” she said, her voice growing thick as memory hit out of nowhere of her mother’s soft hands and sparkly eyes, the way Marguerite spoke in an accent all her own.
Looking away, she breathed deep while Riad translated.
When she glanced back at the woman, her dark eyes were soft with understanding, the words she spoke as soft. Riad sucked in a breath, but he translated. “She says when you first became Raphael’s and she saw pictures, her grandmother told her that you—” A deep frown, a sudden snap of his fingers. “That you put her in memory of a woman who lived here once. You understand? This is right word?”
Throat dry, she nodded. “What was her name?” she asked not Riad but the woman who still held her child in her arms, the little girl stroking her finger over Elena’s feather.
Dark eyes met her own. “Majda,” she said, and Elena’s heart turned to thunder.
27
“Almost white hair and this skin but more dark.” Riad pointed to his own arm, his voice penetrating the cacophony inside her skull. “The family had light hair many times in daughters, but she says Majda was first daughter with so light hair.” Pointing at Elena this time. “But her father knew Majda was his daughter. She had mark here.” Pressing his hand to the left of his abdomen. “Like father.”
Elena could barely breathe, her mind filled with a day long, long ago when she’d watched her mother dress for a night out with her father.
“Maman, why do you have a map on your skin?”
Laughter. “It is a treasure map, of course, chérie.”
A birthmark in the exact same place as that indicated by this woman. “How long ago?” she asked the woman in front of her, a woman who wasn’t that far apart from her in years. “Was Majda your grandmother’s age?”
A nod after Riad translated . . . and Elena knew Majda must’ve been her grandmother. She’d be cautious, investigate everything, but there were too many pieces that fit for it to be otherwise. Majda’s age. Her Moroccan origins. Her unusual coloring.
“What happened to her?”
The response had Riad scowling. The other woman spoke other words, her tone sharp. Rolling his eyes, the teenager said, “She says this is not for my ears.” His tone made it clear what he thought of that. “She will tell it to you and you must ask the English from a grown-up you like.”
“I understand. Go talk to Xander again. I think he’s bored with all the adults at Lumia.” She’d deliberately used the name of the Luminata stronghold and she was watching for his response—so she saw the ugly fear that choked Riad before he turned and ran back to the others.
Shifting her attention to the woman who’d confirmed Majda’s residence here, Elena nodded.
And the woman began to speak.
Thank you, Jessamy, Elena thought, as she memorized the words without understanding them. Elena’s memory had always been good, but it was the angelic Historian who’d taught her memory tricks designed to help her absorb and recall the vast amounts of political and etiquette data she was expected to know as Raphael’s consort. As if she’d gotten a damn download into the brain the instant she fell so hard for her archangel.
“Shokran,” she said afterward.
Smiling openly now, the woman turned to press a kiss to her daughter’s cheek, her tone chiding when she spoke. The little girl laughed and waved her feather with delight. It made Elena think of Zoe; affection in her heart, she hunted out a few more loose feathers.
Unexpectedly, Valerius came to join her, handed her a number of his feathers before leaving in silence. “Here,” Elena said, giving all the feathers to the woman. “For those children.” She indicated the big-eyed kids hiding behind their parents’ legs a few feet away.
Her smile impossibly deeper, the other woman moved to pass out the treasures. The adults stayed silent—at least until Elena’s back was to them. Then they began to whisper so furiously she knew they were grilling the woman who’d spoken to her.
Light shattered high in the sky the next second, so bright that Elena caught it with her peripheral vision.
Guessing what was about to happen, she quick-stepped her way to a relatively clear section near the tree. Aodhan landed two seconds later, with enough room around him that he wasn’t forced into unwanted physical contact. “A large squadron is headed this way. Uniforms are dark gray with red markings.”