Chapter Thirteen #2
Ned didn’t turn to look at him. “Your brother said that you were having a farewell party.” He fiddled with the gold band on his ring finger. “Didn’t tell me when it was. Just that you were leaving. I thought you might’ve already left.”
Or did you hope so? Delauney thought. He didn’t say it. Instead, he stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “Move over, Ned.”
Ned scooted over to give Delauney space on the step. Delauney sat next to him.
“I figured that you giving me the ship was a message,” Ned told him, still avoiding his gaze. “That you were done with me. I don’t blame you for it.”
“No,” Delauney said, shocked. “The king was just doing me a favor, because I’m going to Gerakia. You thought I was done with you? Aren’t you done with me?”
Ned sighed. “I never told Peter about Lennox. I never told you that they were related. I thought we could all keep going without anyone being the wiser, because Lennox meant so much to Peter. But then Peter... the things he was willing to do for him...”
“How is Peter?” Delauney asked. Ned kept twisting his ring around in circles, his expression grim.
“Turns out not knowing that your favorite uncle was a monster is worse than knowing it.”
“Was?” Delauney asked.
“Can’t be much of a monster now,” Ned said shortly. “Sabre de Valois had a word with him, I hear. His title’s been passed down to one of his bastards. They used to be a street cleaner. Now they’re a lord, and Lennox has been turned out of his house. He came to ours, but Peter refused him.”
Delauney raised his brows. “Really?”
“He was shaking like a leaf the whole time,” Ned said.
“He was braver than me. I couldn’t even think about looking at you, after everything.
” He turned his face aside. “The girls... the girls miss you, Laney. The girls love you. It kills them, you know, to think it’s over like this. To think you hate them.”
“I don’t hate you, Ned,” Delauney said. Ned covered his face with a hand. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, you won’t die if you show an emotion. Come here.”
Ned turned to embrace Delauney tightly, shaking almost as badly as Peter.
Delauney could still feel the grief of Ned’s absence, but he also felt as though something had shifted in their friendship, something that could be good, one day.
Their sudden distance had happened because Ned had been too wrapped up in keeping the peace to tell the truth.
Now that the peace had been broken, the truth was slowly sinking its way in.
“I don’t know how to fix it,” Ned said.
“I think you are,” Delauney said, holding him back.
They didn’t leave the doorstep for nearly an hour. Ned didn’t ask to come inside. They just spoke there, quietly, building something different in the rubble of what they once had.
Finally, Ned stood, his eyes red and his smile small and wan.
“I have to go,” he said. “I rode all night to get here, and Peter will... Peter will worry.”
“Do you think he might want to speak to Wes at some point?” Delauney asked.
“By letter, possibly.” Ned shoved his hands in his pockets. “Will Wes disapprove if I write you, now and then?”
Delauney didn’t need to ask. “He knows that I need you, Ned.”
“Even after what Peter’s done?” Ned asked.
“He said that you thought of me as family,” Delauney said.
“I do,” Ned said, his voice hoarse and low.
Delauney held out a hand. “Brothers, then. We’ll work it out, Ned. Trust me.”
Ned clasped Delauney’s arm. “I need you, too,” he said. “More than you know.”
Ned released him before Delauney could respond. He strode off to his horse, which was waiting placidly on a hitch by the street, and stopped to rub his eyes on his arm before he climbed into the saddle.
Wes was leaning against the wall by the door when Delauney stepped back inside.
“How did it go?” His expression was guarded, as though he wasn’t sure whether to look sympathetic or encouraging.
“Well,” Delauney said. “I think. I’m not sure.”
“I might understand how you feel,” Wes said. He pulled Delauney into a gentle embrace. “But it’s a start, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Delauney said, sinking into the comforting warmth of Wes’ touch. “It’s a start.”
Gerakia, Four Months Later
“The heavens are closed!”
Doctor Monroe stood on the lower landing of the largest observatory in Iperios, holding a box full of bottles in both hands.
He was a good two heads shorter than Wes, with red-brown skin, a flowered cap over his curly black hair, and the robes of someone who’d earned more degrees than should have been physically possible.
He set the box down at the door to the observatory and clapped his hands.
“That means everyone goes home!” he shouted.
“Do you think he’ll notice if we hide behind the supply shelves?
” Delauney whispered. Three months of study at the Aviary hadn’t done much to change his sense of fashion.
Even after working all day in the observatory, Delauney wore an embroidered shirt with crystal buttons and fussy polished shoes.
His hair was disheveled, though, and he had a smudge on his cuff from when he’d accidentally dipped it into an inkwell two weeks before.
“I don’t think so,” Wes whispered. He was dressed a little more finely than he was used to, thanks to Delauney’s influence and his generous pension, but neither of them stood out among the other students in the Aviary.
He’d expected most of them to be young, but it seemed that Gerakia accepted students from all walks of life, from grandmothers to teenagers on leave from merchant caravans.
Some professors even traveled with those caravans, offering lessons in the towns they passed.
Wes had grown so used to seeing people wandering around the campus that he no longer knew who was a student or who was a visitor.
Louise had been shocked to find Wes dressed in silks and finery when she’d visited a few months before, towing a gaggle of children after her.
She’d supposedly taken them from a guild of thieves, but they acted more like students, chattering excitedly about the courses at the college and stopping to look into every lecture hall.
Ferrin was still tied to the throne, but he’d sent several letters already.
Ned hadn’t visited yet, but he’d sent a letter with Alain, who’d appeared with one of their other colony members to deliver a gift they’d all made for Wes.
It was a cloak that supposedly protected the wearer from scrying spells, but Wes hadn’t found the courage to put it on yet.
He kept it on the wall like a tapestry instead, where the enchanted beads and delicate lacework looked like dozens of tiny eyes peering out from an ancient, unknowable creature.
It would have disturbed Wes half a year ago, but now, it was almost charming.
Alain and their colony member had wept openly when Wes had given them a box of paints in exchange.
Delauney had spent the better part of a week responding to Ned.
Wes suspected that it would be a while before Peter would apologize for his part in the events of Leo’s engagement party, but he found himself largely indifferent to the man.
He was pitiable and wrong in equal measures, and with the work they had at the observatory, Wes didn’t have time to hold grudges.
Resentment no longer felt worth the trouble.
“I know you’re both up there,” Monroe shouted, as Giovanni, another professor and one of Monroe’s submissives, stopped to murmur in his ear.
Wes and Delauney sighed and stepped away from the notes they’d been annotating.
Monroe started rifling through the contents of his box.
“Enthusiasm is nice, but sleep is better. Students make mistakes. Tired students make more.”