Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
H alfway back they met Valentine coming from the camp.
‘Did you sort out your differences?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve seen the castle and the sleepers.’
‘I have. It’s sickening.’ He turned to Silas. ‘I don’t like you. I don’t think you’ve dealt with either me or Adelaide honourably, and for a speck of dust, I’d call you out.’
‘He’s lying,’ Silas said cheerfully. ‘He finds me as beguiling as anyone does.’
The thump in Kit’s heart was a traitorous witness to that.
‘Don’t confuse attraction with fondness,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘You don’t have to be fond of me to help me. Caul Gilling’s actions won’t just have implications for my world, but for yours, too. And who knows how many others that we have no knowledge of.’
‘What do you actually want me to do?’ Kit asked.
‘I want what I told you from the beginning.’ Silas cradled his hands in front of his heart. ‘I need help restoring my land to its former splendour. To do that I need to proclaim my birthright. I wish you to lead the assault on my uncle. Command my army.’
‘Your army?’
Silas waved his hand around imperiously in the general direction of the tents. ‘My loyal nobles and their subjects who have resisted my uncle’s manoeuvres.’
Kit stared at him, incredulous. The assorted men, women and creatures he’d seen looked nothing like an army and, if it came to it, he’d be hard pushed to tell which were nobility.
‘You want me to lead those people in an attack on a castle? To fight against your uncle’s army, including those he has plucked from my world?’
‘Yes. I know you are brave enough. Your reputation is not unfounded.’
Kit’s guts twisted at how little Silas knew.
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No. Your people aren’t soldiers, and even if they were, they’d be fighting unwilling humans. Innocent people will be slaughtered. You’re just as bad as he is.’
‘Believe me, I take no pleasure in it. I had hoped that he might abdicate and let me take my rightful place,’ Silas said. ‘I would have settled for that, but he refused. And deposing him into exile won’t work because he is strong and the land is too weak to resist, so it really is the only way.’
He put his hand on Kit’s shoulder. ‘Don’t hate me for involving you. I see your potential. It warms my heart. Join me.’
‘Even if they were an army, I’m not a leader or a soldier,’ Kit said.
‘But you have a medal,’ Silas said.
‘You’re a hero,’ Valentine added softly.
Kit put his hands to his face, feeling his cheeks heating. The roughness of his skin only served to illustrate their point. He couldn’t bear it. He shook his head. Again, Silas put a hand on his shoulder.
‘It seems daunting, but it won’t be. You were a hero in your war. I’ve heard the tales and though I have not seen the medal – iron being anathema to me, as you know – I understand the significance of what it bestows.’
‘It bestows nothing! Stop it,’ Kit shouted. He raked his hands through his hair and glared at Silas. ‘Stop talking about me as if I am a hero. I’m not. The whole thing?—’
‘What whole thing?’ Valentine asked. ‘Why don’t you tell us what happened? It’s going to consume you.’
She spoke so tenderly that sourness made Kit’s throat cramp. If she knew the circumstances, what would she say?
‘Maybe I should let it.’ The combination of guilt and grief and shame was threatening to explode inside him. He ground his nails into his palm and turned on his heel.
‘Where are you going?’ Silas demanded.
‘Away, for now,’ he said tightly. ‘Don’t follow me. I don’t want to see you.’
He walked blindly, not really caring which direction he went in.
Not a hero.
Shells descending.
“Don’t leave me, Kit.”
He sagged against a tree and put his hands to his face, giving a loud sob. Other, softer hands enclosed them and pulled them away.
Valentine had followed him.
‘You didn’t say that you don’t want to see me.’
‘I didn’t, did I,’ Kit said.
‘There are things I can offer you to heal the pain in your heart.’
‘I don’t want spells,’ he said, thinking again of Silas banishing her memories.
‘Come with me,’ Valentine said quietly. ‘I might be able to help without be-spelling you.’
Silas was now hurrying towards them, but Valentine held a hand up to him. ‘Go away. I’m taking Kit with me.’
Silas pouted. ‘Where?’
‘Somewhere he can find peace for a while.’ She took Kit by the hand and laced her fingers through his. ‘To see the unicorn.’
Kit had a hundred worries but they were all crowding his tongue and he couldn’t decide which was most pressing, so he simply walked at Valentine’s side in silence. They went into the thick forest and climbed upwards until they came to a level clearing.
‘Sit down and be quiet,’ Valentine whispered, indicating a slight mound where the grass was softer. Kit obeyed. The air smelled sweetly of recent nightfall, the scent of daylight flowers fading as they closed and the night plants took over. He wasn’t yet at peace, but the subtle releasing of his muscles suggested to Kit that the tension was ebbing.
When the unicorn arrived there should have been a thunderclap or a fanfare, but it simply ambled into the clearing, grazing on foliage. It was white and had a horn, but that was about as far as the resemblance went to the images he’d seen in books. Its hair was shaggier, and in stature it resembled a Welsh mountain pony rather than a majestic thoroughbred. The horn that grew out of its forehead was short and stubby – closer to a rhino’s horn in size and shape – but, like the deer in the park at Meadwell, it looked to be covered with a velvety layer. It looked like it had evolved a single antler rather than a pair, and now that Kit had seen it, it did make sense as a species.
‘It’s not what I was expecting,’ he whispered.
Valentine laughed softly. ‘That’s because you’ve seen medieval manuscripts. If you saw an elephant for the first time based on what you’d seen there, you’d probably say the same thing. She’s beautiful, isn’t she.’
She was.
‘Go and say hello to her,’ Valentine whispered, nudging him in the ribs and pointing to a thick patch of white blossoms. ‘They like sand clover.’
Kit picked a handful then took slow steps towards the unicorn with his hand outstretched. It whiffled then trotted over with interest in its intelligent brown eyes.
‘Be polite to her,’ Valentine called. ‘They’re very bright.’
Kit bowed his head and scattered the blossoms on the ground. The unicorn bent to eat them. Kit stood perfectly still, aware of each breath entering and leaving his body. When the unicorn had finished eating, it lifted its head and stared at Kit with calm interest. He held his hand out, and after a dozen lifetimes, the unicorn lowered her chin onto it. Kit’s heart swelled and he broke into a smile, exhaling softly, as he would with an unfamiliar horse. The unicorn’s ears twitched forwards and then she blew out, covering Kit’s hand and arm with warm, clover scented breath.
‘Hello, lady,’ he murmured. The unicorn whinnied then pressed her head heavily against him. He choked back a tear of happiness at the honour.
From the corner of his eye, Kit could see Valentine approaching. She reached out a hand and stroked the unicorn’s other ear.
‘Your heart aches so much. When will you believe that you are more than your face?’
She put her fingers to his temple and stroked gently down the side of his face to just above his ear. Her fingernails were short and practical, but nevertheless, he felt a quick trace of sharpness as they rubbed over the raised tendrils of his scar. It wasn’t seductive but the intimacy made him draw a breath. He trusted her. He’d seen the male side of her and the enchanted side, the vulnerability that she hid beneath her flippant and spiky exterior.
‘Everyone assumes I’m grieving for the loss of my face, but in truth I don’t give a damn about how I look,’ he told her. ‘I did at first, of course. You’d have to be inhuman not to be appalled at such a change. It’s how it happened that I can never be reconciled to.’
‘The inner scars are often greater than the outer scars,’ Valentine said. Her eyes flashed towards his. ‘You have so much pain. Tell the unicorn. She’ll listen. It’s one of the things they do.’
Kit looked back at the unicorn who was standing patiently, and gazed into her soulful eyes again. He stroked his hand down her neck. She twisted her head and butted against him, pushing the horn into his hand.
‘She senses your nobleness,’ Valentine said quietly.
He’d never been particularly religious, and the idea of a confessional was alien to him, but he suddenly felt the need for absolution, and to pour his agony out to the animal. He nodded and somehow the unicorn understood because she blew softly into Kit’s hand. Kit knelt beside her and stroked her jaw as he spoke.
‘I was awarded the Military Cross for sounding the alert and preventing a surprise attack from no man’s land. I’d spotted something was wrong on my way back from the latrines and made my way across open ground to alert the right people.’
He kept his eyes on the unicorn’s dark lashed, intelligent eyes but his words were for Valentine. He could stop there and that would be enough. He would never dream of telling anyone in the real world but this was a dream. Or if he really was in a world where the sexes could couple as they chose in pairs or threes, and no one condemned their wantonness, it might be his only chance to unburden himself.
‘I wasn’t just coming back from a pee. The reason why I was awake and out was because I was having a fight.’
He laughed harshly and glanced at Valentine. She nodded her head and placed her hand on the unicorn’s withers.
‘Isn’t that absurd? A fight in the middle of a war. With a man. Who I loved.’
Kit pressed his lips together in a futile attempt to stop them trembling. He folded himself into a seated position and looked up at the unicorn.
‘His name was Andrew.’
He tasted the word. The first time he’d spoken it aloud since the formalities were done with. Once it had delighted him to whisper it, but now it brought only grief.
‘We met in the last week of 1917. He was an artillery observer for the battalion, transferred to us when the previous man––’ Kit’s belly filled with acid. ‘You don’t need to know the details. It’s not important and I barely knew him. When Andrew arrived, he lit my existence after I had been grovelling in blackness.’
A cautious smile. “We could always try that tango again. If you’d like to, that is.”
He smiled at the memory for the first time since waking up in the field hospital.
‘For three months, we were everything to each other. We spent hours talking in the darkness of the trenches, holding hands, huddled together to sleep – nothing uncommon in that, you understand, all the men used what warmth and support they could find simply to stay upright, but the snatched kisses were enough to get us court martialled if we’d been caught.’
‘Your world is unenlightened,’ Valentine murmured.
Kit swallowed, unable to disagree.
‘We used to talk of a future together. Not that we could ever have had one. It’s a criminal act in Great Britain and what we did would see us driven from polite society, if not actually sent to Holloway for hard labour. He wanted me to go back to Canada with him. Told me we could live in the Rockies in a cabin and no one would know what were to each other. I said we would deal with it when the world was at peace once more. I put off facing up to it because I’m a coward.’
His lip curled as he thought back to the frantic nights when he’d dared to believe that after hellish months in the trenches, he would find a way to untangle the mess of his life and his feelings.
‘So you parted because you could not be together,’ Valentine whispered.
“Don’t leave me, Kit. Please.”
Tears rose in Kit’s eyes, blurring his vision into smears of green.
‘I’ve wished that every night since. Andrew was with me the night of the attack. We were quarrelling. Andrew had always known I was going to marry Addie but he wanted me to put an end to it even though it hadn’t yet officially happened. He said I should write to her and break it off, but how could I do it in a letter rather than face-to-face.’
The unicorn rubbed her cheek against him. He swallowed and sniffed.
‘Of course you couldn’t. You’re too honourable.’ Valentine said. He didn’t dare look into her eyes. His tears were falling freely now.
‘He could be so bloody-minded at times. He absolutely refused to see it as anything other than a slight on him and we quarrelled. I said I was going to return to the dugout, but he caught me round the waist and kissed me again, and I couldn’t resist him. He begged me not to leave him. And then the shelling started. Only a couple of grenades tossed in our direction, but he saw the movement first. He pushed me down. Sheltered me with his body. I lost half my face, though I didn’t even feel it at the time, but it took his right arm and half of his torso––’
Kit sobbed and buried his face in his palms.
‘He died in your arms?’ Valentine asked.
He looked up at her bleakly, wondering how much more of the sorry tale he could bear to reveal. If he left it there, he’d still appear a hero, a notion that had been unendurable since he awoke to find himself praised.
‘No. He died alone and scared. Weeping and begging me to stay with him but I couldn’t. I needed to raise the alarm. He was half gone already, but he knew I was abandoning him.’
“Don’t leave me, Kit. Please don’t leave me.”
‘I left him and I’ll never be able to forgive myself for that.’
‘You saved more lives by doing so.’
Valentine put a hand on his arm, but he shrugged it off. He didn’t deserve compassion. Streams of tears coursed down his cheeks. Green and purple lights bloomed in the darkness when he opened his eyes.
‘No. I could have shouted from where I was to raise the alarm. Someone would have heard, but I couldn’t stand to watch him die.’ He put his head back and cried aloud.
‘That’s the truth. That’s what makes me a coward, and of course, later I couldn’t admit why I’d been out there or why he had, so I lied and let everyone assume he was caught in the shelling when it started. I should have been the one who died not him.’
Valentine stroked his cheek; the one which bore the evidence of the night. He deserved the deformity. A grim memorial to the man he’d lost.
‘I’m so very glad you weren’t.’
‘I’m not brave. I’m not the person Silas needs to lead anything. It was pure chance I happened to be there. But I accepted the praise as if it had been intentional. The mentions in dispatches. The medal.’
He spat the final word, the distaste for it causing a bad taste in his mouth.
‘Every minute since, the truth has been trying to burst from my lips, but I kept it prisoner. I am a fraud.’
‘What could have been gained by telling the truth?’ Valentine said. ‘Your lover would have died with a reputation for what your world sees as a perversion – though why they insist on that is beyond me –but this way he did not.’
Kit shivered. He hadn’t thought of it in that way. He’d written to Andrew’s mother and sisters as a friend, telling her comforting lies about the instant death that had taken her son and how bravely he’d fought in those last moments. What good would the truth have done her?
He grimaced and wiped his arm roughly across his face, streaking the tears. The unicorn shook her head gently and snorted warm breath across Kit’s lap. He gazed at her, wondering what magic she exuded that could have drawn that confession from him and yet make the telling feel cathartic.
There was a rustling of leaves, then Valentine’s arms came around him from behind. As she leaned her body against his back, he caught the scent of mimosa and tilted his head back to catch it better. She kissed his cheek.
A twig snapped behind them. The unicorn stiffened then scrambled upright and galloped away. Kit turned to see what had disturbed it and saw Silas standing, half concealed in the bushes. Adelaide was at his side.
‘Silas, I told you to stay away!’ Valentine thundered, clambering to her feet and stamping towards him.
Adelaide’s face was pale. Kit started to get to his feet but she shook her head and the curl of her lip made him hesitate. ‘I heard what you said. You told me you would never have betrayed me, but you lied. I have felt dreadful about falling in love with Silas and now I discover you had a lover in France. A man! You disgust me!’
She gave a sob and ran back into the forest. Silas barely paused before dashing after her. Kit slumped back down, his guts too ripped up to have the energy to follow. He lay on his back on the moss and stared at the stars that dotted the sky. There were no constellations he recognised. It was the perfect symbol of how mixed up his life had become. He laughed.
Valentine settled on the ground beside him, lying on her stomach, arms beneath her chin. ‘I don’t understand why you’re laughing.’
‘Neither do I. Adelaide is furious with me and I never wanted her to learn about that side of myself. It’s not like your world where we come from.’
‘Why do you care? She left you for Silas and you’ve just told me you loved someone else anyway.’
Kit looked sidelong at her. She had such a simplistic view of the world. He was quite envious of it. He propped himself up on his elbows.
‘It’s possible to care for more than one person, in different ways. That’s what Andrew could never understand. He wanted to be everything to me and for me to be everything to him. I couldn’t give him that.’
He bit the inside of his lip so hard he tasted blood. ‘I’m not sure I could give it to Adelaide, either. I’m pretty certain now that she doesn’t care anyway.’
‘Which part of you do you give to yourself?’ Valentine asked him.
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
She prodded his shoulder with a finger but it felt friendly rather than confrontational. ‘Which part of you takes care of you? Which part puts your needs ahead of all? All you’ve told me and all I’ve seen of you tells me that you twist yourself in knots to please other people, but how many of them do the same for you?’
‘I…’ He floundered and lay back to look at the stars again.
‘You spend so much of your life wondering how to make yourself worthy, but do you ever stop to consider whether you do it for people who are worthy enough to deserve you? What do you want? Look me in the eye and tell me what will make you happy?’
‘Do I deserve to be after what I told you?’ he asked.
She flicked his ear. It stung and he jerked his head up.
‘Ow!’
‘I’ll do that every time you doubt it if that’s what it takes. Yes, you do deserve to be happy. Now, tell me what will make you happy.’
Kit looked at his fingernails. They were grubby and chipped. It was better to focus on them than look at Valentine and risk his eyes revealing the truth.
‘Time, maybe. Will that mend a broken heart? I don’t know if mine will ever be completely mended.’
The skin around the nail on his ring finger was rough where he’d worried it with his teeth. He couldn’t stop looking at it.
‘Look at me,’ Valentine commanded. When he didn’t, she took him by the face and dragged his head around. ‘What do you want?’
Her eyes were ringed with feathery lashes that he wanted to run his lips over. There was no judgement or pity in her eyes, only desire. More than there had been when they’d shared the bed, more than when they’d kissed.
‘I want you,’ Kit murmured. ‘I think that will make me happy.’
Valentine smiled. ‘That’s the answer I wanted to hear.’
She wiggled her foot in between his and drew her leg up, running her bare toes up his calf. It was divinely erotic but he froze.
‘We can stop,’ Valentine said.
‘I don’t want to stop. Only, I’ve never actually made love with anyone. Not Andrew. Not Adelaide,’ he admitted.
‘I suspected as much,’ she said. She straddled him and tugged him up into a seated position.
‘Fortunately, I have, and by all accounts, I’m very good.’
She giggled and tugged his shirt from his waistband. He ran his hand over her tunic, felt the small mound of her left breast and gave it a tentative squeeze.
Valentine craned her head up to look at him.
‘Was that wrong?’ he asked.
‘Not at all. I just wondered if you want me to be Valentin?’
He paused, hand still on her breast. ‘Why would I want that?’
‘Because of the man you loved.’
‘I’ve loved women, too,’ Kit said, pulling her close and trying to articulate his feelings. ‘It isn’t simply about bodies. I loved Andrew because of who he was, not because he was a man. I care for Adelaide not simply because she is a woman, but because of what makes her … her.’
He pushed Adelaide from his mind. This was no time to be thinking of her. He leaned forward, pulling Valentine closer and brushed his lips against her collarbone. He caught the scent of mimosa, and he groaned.
The desire was rising in unbearable waves and he was finding it hard to contain himself.
‘I want you because you are you ,’ he whispered hoarsely.
Valentine put her hands to his waist, pushing them beneath his shirt and up to his chest, letting her fingertips dance lightly across his skin.
‘Then you may have me,’ she purred. She kissed him on the lips, but before he could properly respond she moved her mouth onto his jaw and then up to his ear. When she bit it gently it felt as if he’d discovered a previously unknown artery that ran between the lobe and his groin. He gave a strangled gasp and rolled them both over so that he was on top.
‘What if someone sees us,’ he murmured.
‘They won’t, unless we want them to.’ Valentine waved her hand, muttered some words and drew a veil of night over the clearing.
* * *
Afterwards, they lay beneath a pile of discarded clothes. Kit understood why his trenchmates had called the climax the ‘little death’, because it felt like suspension between life and the afterlife, rendering his limbs languid and his mind like sponge. They didn’t speak, but perhaps there were no words needed for what they’d done. He was exhausted, both mentally and physically but the heaviness inside him felt lessened.
The unicorn returned when the sky was starting to grow light at the edge. She stood over them, looking curious and blew warm breath on Kit’s feet.
‘Thank you,’ Kit whispered. The intelligent eyes widened and she bowed her head then trotted away, moonlight falling on her flanks and turning them silver.
Valentine squeezed his hand.
‘Thank you too,’ Kit said.
She laughed. ‘What an odd thing to say.’
It had been his first time, but for her there had been countless times and most of them under duress from what he gathered. It made her gift all the more significant. How could he possibly refuse to help her?
‘I don’t like Silas but I am going to offer my service,’ he told her.
‘Thank you.’
His fingers brushed against the bracelet and he tensed as it nudged something at the edge of his mind. Something useful. He almost had it, but Valentine kissed him. Something felt different and it took him a moment to realise he was feeling the scratch of stubble against his jaw and Kit realised with a start that she was now Valentin.
Valentin pulled away from the kiss and his eyes met Kit’s. He raised his brows in a question. Kit swallowed and gave him a smile. Valentin’s hand shifted against Kit’s thigh and the resulting waves of pleasure left no room for thoughts of any kind.