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“It’s not really a love potion,” said Rhae to her sister, laughing fit to burst, after Egg had walked away in a high dudgeon, stomping his feet with great indignation.
Daella’s eyes widened. “It’s not? Then what is it? Not mere water, I should think. It has got such a queer color.”
“It’s only water, flavored with a little bit of mixed wine. Mixing Dornish red and Arbor gold will bring out such lovely and fascinating colors, depending on how much of each vintage you add to the mix,” replied Rhae, grinning. “I think this one is five parts Dornish red to three parts Arbor gold. Or perhaps it is the other way around. I would have to check my notes. I’ve kept very detailed records, like a good steward. No, like an excellent mistress of a castle and a first-rate alchemist combined. Mother would have been very proud, if she could see me now.”
“But Rhae,” Daella said, anxiously, “I don’t think Father would approve, if he knows what you’ve been doing with the wines. Mixing paints to get the best shade of red for your sunset is one thing, but mixing wines is a different thing altogether.” The specter of their oldest brother Daeron and his … over-fondness for wine was ever present at Summerhall. None of them could escape its shadow.
“I haven’t been drinking the wine!” exclaimed Rhae. “I know better than to drink myself senseless like Daeron. I’m only –“
“Playing with it?”
“Experimenting,” Rhae declared. Her face clouded over, giggles and grins suddenly forgotten. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there is a special kind of wine that tasted just the same as regular wine, but doesn’t make you drunk if you drink too much of it? I don’t mean grape juice. Grace juice doesn’t taste at all like wine. You can’t fool anyone’s palate with grape juice, even I know that.”
It wasn’t the taste that drew Daeron to wine like moth to flame. It was the state of inebriation itself that was the main draw for him, Daella suspected. Sober, her brother saw too much, thought too much, dreamed too much.
Daella dreamed, too. Her dreams were not as violent and as terrifying as Daeron’s, but perhaps that was because she was many years younger than him, and her dreams came across through a gauzy mist, through a veil of ambivalence and ambiguity that kept her terror at bay, at least for now. But how much longer would that last? How many years would it take until her dreams would begin to trouble her as much as Daeron’s dreams were troubling him? Would she, too, resort to –
No, she would not think of that now. Changing the subject, she said to Rhae, with mock-indignation, “If there wasn’t any love potion in Egg’s drink, then why did you whisper in my ear that there was, you naughty, naughty girl?”
This love potion is very potent, the wood’s witch told me. Anyone who drinks even a single drop of it will fall helplessly and heedlessly in love. Now Egg will surely marry me, not you, Dae, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Rhae had made a great show of whispering those words to Daella, with her hands cupped around her mouth, just as Egg was taking the first sip of his drink. It was an overloud whisper, as whispers went, and Egg had caught enough of the words to understand the gist of what Rhae was saying.
“I whispered it so Egg could hear it, of course. So Egg would think that he had overheard a secret that he was never meant to know,” replied Rhae, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. “Didn’t he look very funny, spitting out his drink? There was water coming out of his nose, too. You should draw him looking like that, Dae. You’re so good at drawing a person’s likeness. You can draw the picture, and I will put in the words. It will be his special nameday gift, from his beloved sisters.”
“Aren’t you being very unkind to Egg?” Daella admonished her sister. Her two youngest siblings were usually inseparable – playing, running, hiding, whispering, arguing, debating, planning and plotting together – especially after Aemon left for the Citadel and Egg lost the company of the brother closest to him, closest in age, and in everything else.
This sudden hostility between Egg and Rhae was surprising, to say the least.
Rhae crossed her arms, pouting, looking very much the way Egg had looked after spitting out his drink. “He deserves it,” Rhae insisted, “after what he said to me yesterday.”
“What did Egg say to you yesterday?”
“He said he never, ever wants to marry, because he’s going to join the Kingsguard and live only to serve and defend the king. But if Father commands him to marry one of his sisters, the way Uncle Rhaegel is going to make Cousin Aelor marry Cousin Aelora, then he would rather marry you than me, he said. I would be the most irritating wife in the world, he said. He had the gall to say that I would annoy him every day and every night with my constant chattering. Me, annoy him! He would annoy me a hundred times more if we were married. He’s a much worse chatterbox than I am! Don’t you think so, Dae?”
Daella could not suppress her laughter. “You’re both … well, you’re both … you’re both equally voluble with your words.”
Rhae frowned.
“But there’s nothing wrong with that,” Daella hastily added. Hesitating, choosing her words carefully, she asked, “Do you want to marry Egg, Rhae? Would it please you if Father commands it?”
Rhae snorted. “Of course not!”
“You love him, though. Egg, I mean. He annoys you sometimes, but you love him.”
Rhae nodded, before saying, “I love you too, Dae, very much, but I don’t want to marry you. Or Aemon. Or Daeron.”
Aerion’s absence from Rhae’s list of the siblings she loved was not surprising to Daella. Aemon and Egg were usually the targets of Aerion’s cruelty, but his sisters were not immune from it either.
“Father would never command us to marry our brothers,” said Rhae, with a confidence that Daella did not share. “He knows that his lady mother would have disliked it very much indeed.”
“Uncle Rhaegel is Grandmother Mariah’s son too,” Daella pointed out. “That has not stopped him from betrothing his twins to each other.“
“Well, Uncle Rhaegel is not Father.”