Chapter 18 #4
“You cannot save everyone, Aurora,” he said, turning his head to give her a scathing look.
“I could save him.” She narrowed her eyes.
Theron sighed, putting his head in his hands, his back to her.
“Do you remember what I told you about defying Fate? We are not gods. We cannot control Fate. And not every tragedy is our responsibility to avert or ameliorate. Trying to do so will drive you mad.”
“Are you truly angry we saved that boy?” she asked, confused.
He turned then, kneeling on the bed.
“No, I’m relieved. Awed. Grateful. I had no idea you could save someone like that—and that’s the point. You said the boy could be saved, but you didn’t know for certain.”
“I had to try.” She fisted her hands in the sheets, ire rising.
“But you gave his parents hope where there was none. My magic was recoiling from the boy the moment his mother brought him to me. By rights, he should be dead. You cannot…give someone that kind of hope. What if it had failed? His parents’ grief would be all the greater, and when grief turns to rage, it would have been you they blamed—your name they whispered to Vengeance and Death.
They could have…do you not know they could have paid someone to curse you?
Not every cleric is worthy of their divine magic, Aurora.
Never do something like that if you’re not absolutely certain of the outcome. ” His brow furrowed with concern.
“It wasn’t false hope.”
“It was, Aurora. I saw it in your eyes.”
“It wasn’t! I didn’t know for sure if it would work, that’s true, but I’d done it once before.”
“When?” he asked, crossing his arms.
“When you…in the vivarium. Hyllus healed you while I stopped your time.”
“That…it doesn’t change my warning. It’s also not safe for you to reveal more than your powers as an oracle. If Flora finds out—” He threw up his hands, exasperated.
“You’re being completely unfair! You’re treating me like I’ve done something wrong when I saved him. You can’t possibly understand what it’s like when your magic is more curse than blessing!” She pointed angrily at him.
His hands balled into fists and he all but growled before he stood, pacing like an animal trapped behind the bars of a cage.
“I understand exactly what it’s like! You think I’m warning you out of what, pettiness?
Misguided anger?” he scoffed. “What do you think happens to a boy with sadistic tutors and the power to heal themselves, hmm? I’m also intimately familiar with the consequences of failing to save someone you swore to keep alive.
If my own parents could curse my name and pray to Vengeance and Death to take me and return the son they truly loved, what do you think a stranger, a mother whose child you promised to save, would pray for? ”
Aurora gasped. Great Goddesses, she’d known he’d failed to save his own brother, knew there had been scars there, but never imagined they’d been carved by his own parents.
“Theron…”
He shook his head, waving away her concern. No, he was more interested in lecturing her. She’d been a fool to have any pity for him.
“Your ambition, however well-meaning, will outstrip the limits of your magic eventually. You already pushed yourself too far today. Do you know what I had to heal inside you? What you broke and battered inside your own body, the damage you did to give hope to a complete stranger? You’ve had all of three lessons in magic and suddenly you think you can practise safely!
At least before you merely risked exhaustion.
Now, you seem to have enough control to use it and none of the experience to tell you when to stop.
You have no idea how dangerous that is!” He loomed over her, pointing at her.
If only she could bite that imperious finger of his.
She’d had no idea her magic could hurt her at all. But that wasn’t a failure on her part—it was on him. He’d appointed himself her tutor at the eleventh hour and then…then he’d gone and become a bastard.
“Then teach me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You want me to give you more tools to potentially harm yourself and others? You’re not even in your right mind!”
And with that, all her sympathy fled. She turned from him and lay down, giving him her back.
“Don’t even think about sleeping next to me. You can sleep on the floor, Your Majesty.”
“Aurora,” he sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Your apologies mean nothing as long as you believe that ridiculous lie.”
“Aurora, please—”
“No! I’m not the one who surrounded himself with worshippers of Lies!”
“Dia wasn’t—”
“Except that she was!”
“I’m not debating this with you,” he growled.
Of course he wasn’t. How perfectly authoritarian of him.
“You know the most ridiculous thing about all of this? Of all people, Orithyia thinks you can be salvaged. For some reason, she thinks you’ll come to believe me.
But you know what I think? I think even if you do, it’s already too late.
There’s nothing you can do that will ever make me forgive you for treating me like this. ”
He didn’t say anything after that, merely grabbed a few pillows and dutifully kept his distance.
And the king kept that distance and his silence for the next four days.
He didn’t even demand she sit with him on his loper, or dine with him, or entertain any of their hosts along the way.
Though they travelled together, though they slept in the same rooms, they were perfect strangers.
Aurora could almost believe that she had become accustomed to the icy pain in her chest whenever her eyes chanced to meet his, or her gaze was drawn to him as he dispensed aid to all the villages they passed.
She had more important things to focus on, she would tell herself whenever she felt her resolve weaken.
Like training her magic. If he wouldn’t teach her, then she had to teach herself.
And she was making progress, even without him.
Aurora didn’t need his tutelage, his attentions, or anything else from him.
If she felt lonely in the middle of the night, she would chant to herself over and over again that she would defy her wretched vision.
She chanted it to herself once more as they neared their next destination, another noble’s house just past the lively market currently taking place in the town plaza.
Farmers, craftspeople, traders, and all sorts packed into the place, a stoa providing a covered walkway where people haggled, jostled and joked.
Inside the confines of her palanquin, she unrolled a scroll tallying taxes paid over the course of the year prior.
Aurora took her precious scroll, containing knowledge a cleric like her would have killed for, and tore it down the centre, then tore more pieces off.
Had any of her fellow academics witnessed such a sight, they would have beaten her bloody, screaming curses down on her whole family.
But then, none of them had time magic.
As the much-abused scroll lay about her in tatters, Aurora concentrated on the feel of her magic inside her. Beside her, she had her ancient artefact—the calendar. She took it and turned one of the golden bands around it, each notch denoting a day.
Pushing something forward in time had been easy compared to backwards.
Forwards felt like skipping in a rickety cart as a loper dragged you as fast as it could run, all racing heartbeats and rushing blood.
Stopping felt like sinking your teeth into something, a stillness that was more predatory than peaceful.
Backwards had almost eluded her entirely until she’d fiddled with her artefact out of sheer boredom.
She’d already learned what each band represented, and with the help of a few treatises on ancient calendars she’d snagged from the library in Altanus, even managed to figure out how the dating system worked in relationship to her present time.
She’d been keeping it set to her current date, but it was only when she was playing with it, setting it to previous dates, that her magic reacted strangely.
She’d chased that feeling, eventually forcing her magic to act as she replicated the feeling by turning back the calendar.
Backwards felt…wrong. Like wading through a slurry of mud as it tried to drag you under and pull you apart.
It took twice as much energy as the other two and fought her every step of the way—and she hadn’t been able to do it with anything living.
But with inanimate objects it was different.
Turning their time back was something she was capable of.
Aurora had wondered briefly if it had been her own magic that had sent her to the past, or the ancient artefact itself. Given her new experiments, she still wasn’t certain. She’d didn’t remember much after falling.
As she focused on the feeling once more, her scroll knit back together, good as new.
Aurora smiled, covering her lips so no one would it.
Secret cache, here I come. Just thinking of all the wondrous things she would be able to restore in her own time brought her what little joy she had these days.
A pleasant distraction she’d needed, given the stilted, icy atmosphere that permeated their march towards the mountains.
“Your Highness, His Majesty will be pausing here to purchase supplies. Would you like to tour the market, or would you prefer to rest at the lord’s manor?”
On her own? With complete strangers who all wore the same frozen smile?
Definitely not. Her reputation as the mad oracle wife of the king had spread far and wide.
The nobles all seemed to eye her with the same wariness one might a rabid dog.
One more bit of unpleasantness she could lay at her husband’s feet.
“The market, I think,” Aurora replied.
As the attendants helped her out of the palanquin, the merchants called to her, greeting her more exuberantly than any noble had dared. Aurora bit back a smile. She supposed a mad princess was just as flush with coin as a sane one.