GT - Chapter Twenty-four THE END!

Then, of course, I met Walter. The poor fellow had never set foot outside his home county, and was the most unworldly of men. It made stalking and capturing him quite an entertaining endeavor, but that is another story entirely.

-Lady Chatterwick’s Journey

Her eyes were still green. Greener than they had been before she transformed? Perhaps. But what Maria noticed most was a new confidence in the set of her jaw, and how her shoulders were set and firm, as if she knew she could handle anything. And she was wearing clothes. The same clothes she had been wearing the day she fell from the apple tree, complete with slightly ragged boy’s pants and an oversized tunic.

Upon seeing Maria returned to her human form, her mother let out a cry of relief, and shifted back to the shape Maria knew so well. She clasped Maria tightly in her arms, but quickly drew back, casting a chastising look at her daughter. “Whatever are you wearing, darling? Were you wearing that? In the castle? What if someone had seen you?”

The Grimalkin snorted. She, too, had shifted, and when Maria caught a glimpse of them together in the mirror, there was no doubt they had to be related. As out of place as she had always felt among the gilded royal family, she was a younger, slightly more fine-boned copy of her grandmother. Who also wore pants.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Talia,” the Felis queen said, tucking a lock of short, gray-brown hair behind one ever-so-slightly pointed ear. “The girl was climbing trees. Only a fool climbs a tree in a skirt.” A look was exchanged between mother and daughter, and Maria’s mother flushed an angry, blotchy red. It was the closest Maria had ever seen her come to looking like a completely normal person.

Huffing, Queen Evelyn - Maria would never be able to think of her as Talia - turned, so her body was halfway between Griselda and Maria. “Still, she’s just a child. She’s only twelve, and she needs to be with her family.”

Maria blinked. The conversation had suddenly taken a hard turn into uncharted territory. What was her mother implying?

The Grimalkin folded her arms. “Nonsense. If anything, she’s years behind, thanks to your interference. She should have come to me as soon as she shifted, which should have been at least four years ago.”

The Queen tucked Maria behind her, glaring defiantly at her mother. “She only just shifted for the first time! She should have at least two years before she’s even ready for her proving quest!”

“What do you think she just did, Talia?” Griselda snapped. “If that wasn’t the Grimalkin’s Test, I don’t know what it was. In fact, it was far more difficult than the tests I set for either you or young Petunia. She passed, and it’s time for her to begin her training.”

Swallowing hard, Maria raised her hand, at first cautiously, and then with more certainty. It sounded as if they were discussing her future, after all, and in that case, shouldn’t they be asking her, instead of arguing with each other?

She stepped out from behind her mother. “I promised Tia I’d go to the Felis court with her, when she told them she could shift.”

Tia shot her a surprised, grateful glance, then grinned. The girl looked as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and Maria wasn’t surprised to find that she, herself, now felt a completely new kind of pressure bearing down on her.

“That’s right,” Tia agreed. “You wouldn’t want her to start out in her role as heir by breaking a promise, would you?” She was looking at Maria’s mother, who frowned and reluctantly shook her head. The grimalkin grinned triumphantly.

Maria turned to the older woman. “And,” she said firmly, “if I were to just vanish, my family would miss me, and I them. I think I should visit Bremerton and the Felis Court for a few months, but then I need to come home. I won’t be an adult until I’m eighteen, and you look like you’re in excellent health, Grandmother, so I should have plenty of time for training.”

Her Grandmother switched to a glare, but there was a hint of pride at the back of it as she clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “Sixteen. Felis take their Adult Journey at sixteen. After that, you’ll come to live with me, though,” her voice became magnanimous, as if she was offering a great concession, “you may visit your family once or twice a year, if you must.”

Queen Evelyn and the Grimalkin exchanged narrow-eyed looks, and Maria stepped between them again, forcing them both to look at her again. “Fine,” she said, though her voice quivered the tiniest bit. “That sounds fair. But right now, I want to see Father, and Malcolm, and Peter, and Lottie, and Eva, and…”

“Not me?” Another voice interjected, and suddenly the room was full of people, all laughing and crying and hugging Maria more than she thought she’d ever been hugged before in her life. The royal family came tumbling in through the door to the dressing room, and Jalinda, who was the one who had spoken, wrapped Maria in the warmest embrace she could ever remember receiving from her elder sister.

“I knew it would be you,” Jelly whispered into Maria’s ear as she pulled away. Her smile was a little tight and painful, but had honest pleasure in it as she backed up so the little ones had room to latch onto their big sister.

“I’m sowwy I tol’ on you, Mawy!” Jonas sniffled. “I’m awful sowwy! I just wan’ed anover dessert!” The little boy buried his face in the worn fabric of Maria’s pants, and she crouched to reassure him that she wasn’t angry.

When the reunion died down, and they moved to the main area of Queen Evelyn’s chambers, Maria found herself sitting on a delicate chaise lounge with Evangeline and Jonas piled around her like puppies - or perhaps kittens. Her mother and father were seated side by side on a couch covered in golden needlework.

The king looked more nervous than Maria could ever remember seeing him, as he stared at his mother-in-law, who sat alone on a fragile chair, one leg crossed over the other as she sipped a cup of tea. “Ah,” King Magnus cleared his throat, his hand gripping one of his wife’s, “we’re so glad to see you, ah, Griselda.”

The Grimalkin raised a brow at him over the rim of her teacup before finishing the sip she was taking and setting the porcelain cup precisely in the center of her saucer. “If you enjoy my visits so much, perhaps you shouldn’t have sent all my messengers back so rudely, Magnus.”

Queen Evelyn’s lips flattened. “That was my doing, and you know it, Mother. If you wouldn’t insist upon sneaking spies into my palace, I wouldn’t have had to impose a no-cats rule.” She sent a look at Tia, who looked away as she continued shoving cookies into her mouth.

“Oh!” Maria said, involuntarily. She flushed as all eyes turned to her, and reluctantly continued. “I’d forgotten that Tia said any cats who were caught in the palace were never seen again.” She gave the last words the same ominous overtone her cousin had, and Tia ducked her head, looking embarrassed.

The queen flushed. “Mother kept sending the Grimalkin’s Wanderers in here. They were everywhere. So I decided to pretend I was allergic to cats, and use that as an excuse to have them all shipped back out to the countryside. They were never hurt, of course, just sent back where they belong.” She glared at the Grimalkin, who looked unabashed.

“These humans are terrible guards. I was just making sure you were safe.” The woman said calmly, dabbing at her lips with a damask napkin.

“You were stalking my children, especially my daughters, to see if they could shift. Why, once poor Jelly turned six, they took to constantly closing her into places with exits just large enough for a cat. She was having nightmares!” Evelyn looked furious, and Jalinda, who was standing nearby, nibbling daintily at a cream puff, winced slightly.

This time the Grimalkin had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. “They did that themselves. I certainly never told them to try to force her to shift.”

“You didn’t tell them not to, either!”

Seeing that yet another argument was about to break out between her usually unflappable mother and her irrepressible grandmother, Maria stepped in. “I’m glad that we won’t need to do that any more, right, Grandmother? Because now you know I’m a Felis, and I’ll be coming to visit you soon.”

Both women stopped, mouths already open and ready to continue their bickering. Two mouths closed with a snap, and Maria hid her smile behind her own cup of tea. While she knew some of her current power came from the fact that everyone had been worried about her, she was still enjoying it probably more than she should.

King Magnus stretched out a hand and laid it on Maria’s arm as she lowered her cup. He smiled warmly at her, and she felt a bit of tension lurking between her shoulder blades relax. “Very wise, my dear,” he said, and she allowed the smile she’d been hiding to escape.

She looked around at her family. Eva and Jonas were asleep beside her, while Peter and Lottie, the eleven year old twins, were sniping at each other in the corner, arguing over which of them had eaten an extra lemon tart. Noel was poking at a cracker covered in mousse, looking dubious, while Michel and Malcolm, the oldest boys, debated the benefits of paper versus leather for some project they were working on. Jalinda sat, perfectly balanced on the edge of her chair, her skirts laid out just so, as she caught the edge of the sunbeam in which their mother had carefully arranged herself.

Then there was her new family. The Grimalkin’s face was serious, even grim, but satisfaction lurked around the edges of her sapphire eyes as she looked at her daughter’s family. Beside her, Tia sat, looking quite cheerful as she tried at least one of the myriad treats recently provided by the royal kitchen.

Yes, things were going to be very different from now on, but they would be her kind of different, and that was what really mattered.