Chapter 93
The gateway shimmers as I step through into one of Quin’s truths.
On a pent breath, I enter the familiar, sunny woods of the royal belt.
It’s warm, birds are tweeting and summer blooms pink around tree trunks.
I come to the edge of a small clearing cresting a hill: the woods spread below, and beyond, the grand luminarium glows, straddling the walled royal city and casting its light over the capital.
Some of the most heart-pounding encounters of my life have happened in these spaces.
Movement catches my eye across the clearing. A horse and its rider canter along the craggy edges of the viewpoint. My breath snags on the sight of Quin, carefully dismounting, landing on his good leg. He’s reaching for the cane strapped onto his horse when a loud crash startles the animal.
Quin tries to catch the reins, but the panicked horse shies off into the woods.
Quin hobbles to the cliff edge and leans against a tree with a heavy breath that I can almost feel from here.
Another crash. My chest hiccups, half on a laugh, half on a cry as I see my seventeen-year-old self scrambling down a bushy embankment into the clearing.
I rush up the hill to Quin, who has stilled upon recognising the agent of the chaos.
I remember this.
But I never saw Quin here. This was the day I met—
I get right in front of him but he stares through me, towards Chaos Me who plucks twigs from his cloak, calling out “Move!” as he veers toward this beautiful young man. But Chaos Me didn’t see Quin’s face then like I do here. Chaos Me saw a face veiled with magic.
I sag to my knees, overwhelmed. It was you. It is always you.
My heart throbs wildly as I watch the rest of the memory. Quin and Chaos Me. Quin and Chaos.
Chaos doesn’t even slow down as he nears Quin—in fact, he speeds up, waving a hand: come; come quick. When Quin doesn’t move, Chaos starts jogging. “Redcloaks. Hide, quick.”
Quin, still shocked at seeing Chaos, merely blinks.
Chaos, the fool, only sees a man—frowning slightly, like he’s unaware of the danger of being caught here. Chaos, the fool, grabs Quin’s arm and tugs him away from the clearing, to ‘safety.’
I shake my head.
I see the flash of agonising pain that Quin tries to hold back behind gritted teeth. He snags hold of a buttressed oak but still stumbles over the roots.
Chaos, without the slightest sense of self-preservation, leans into Quin and breathes him in deeply.
Quin jerks, and pain flares.
I notice his fingers trembling on the tree as they trade lines.
Let me read your pulse.
No. Steel-flat. Leave it.
I swallow. He doesn’t want you to know, Chaos; doesn’t want you to see him weak and in pain; doesn’t want your reaction to him to be pity.
When Quin finally hobbles away from Chaos, I follow after Quin on a sigh.
He limps from trunk to trunk until he’s out of sight, then uses magic to hoist himself into the air.
He doesn’t ride the wind long—around a few trees he finds his horse drinking at the river and gratefully settles upon its back.
He picks up the reins, stares at them, and suddenly laughs; laughs so hard birds flap into the air and squirrels scamper.
He presses the leather against his forehead and massages with a groan.
“Even when I don’t seek you out, you find me. ”
With a heart-warming chuckle, he starts to make his way through the woods.
He’s too fast. The scene is blurring around him and I struggle to keep up.
When he pauses a moment, navigating a fork in the forest path, I grab hold of his arm and hoist myself into the saddle behind him.
He carries on unaffected—he is a memory, after all—but I slip my arms around his waist and breathe against his soft cloak all the way into the capital.
He dismounts, slides out his cane, and snaps his way quickly into Pavilion Library, leaving his mount in the care of an aklo.
I shadow him through the library and outside again to the garden of pavilions.
A slightly younger Skriniaris Evander occupies one, piles of books open before him but no cat in sight.
“Your highness.” Evander bows and eyes Quin shrewdly. “You’ve come to tell me something.”
“That Caelus Amuletos. I bumped into him again. No—rather, he bumped into me.”
“Will you settle on a laugh or a scowl, your highness?”
Quin’s scowl turns into another laugh before he forces himself to school it again.
“It was surprising?” Skriniaris Evander asks. “Perhaps enjoyable?”
“It was . . . interesting. Frustrating.” Quin plunks himself onto a chair and tips his head towards the pavilion roof. “I should try harder to avoid him.”
Evander pauses, shuts the book in front of him, and looks intently at Quin. “Why? You’ve followed him for years. You’re fascinated by him.”
Quin closes his eyes. “I can’t be.”
“Can’t you?”
“Name a single king who has had a genuine lasting friendship.”
Skriniaris Evander taps a pondering finger over his mouth and then leans in to share a secret. “You’re not king yet.”
I gape at him and sidle around the table until I’m close enough to bop his nose. “Seriously, that’s your answer?”
I turn to Quin and wish he could somehow see me. I want to say he can have genuine relationships, that he will. That we will. But . . . in the end, don’t we only have stolen moments? In the end, isn’t this just one of them?
The memory begins to fade, and I gaze sadly at Quin before heading back through his beautifully recreated memory to the woods where the next door waits.