Chapter Eighteen #4
“Yes,” he breathed. “And tell me a secret. Tell me one that would get you killed. It’s late, and no one else is listening. That’s a rare thing.”
I had so many secrets. Which to choose? Maybe if I started small, I could face a more frightening one later.
Somehow the night felt like a cloak we were hidden beneath.
Once it was removed, I would not be touching him so familiarly, as I had when we were children, when touching did not hold such reverence, such meaning. “I prefer being an animal to a human?”
He snorted. “I already knew that. And it wouldn’t send you to the Tomb.”
“When I first returned to court, I told you I was not to be trusted. I meant it.”
He hummed in agreement.
“I invited myself,” I admitted. “I heard of the tourney, and I didn’t believe the story of Hal’s death. I wrote a letter in your hand, and then had it delivered to myself so the servants would see it, if ever questioned.”
“If you’re going to reveal secrets, can they not be so dull, Mouse? I already knew that, too.”
I choked out: “You knew?”
“Who else would have invited you but yourself? I certainly didn’t want you there. At first,” he added.
I cursed and pulled my hand away, and he shot me a look so severe I resumed stroking his forehead without protest. He smiled contentedly, closed his eyes again.
“What about you? Tell me a secret, Lord Chancellor. Tell me one that would get you killed.”
“Hmm.” He sighed as my fingertips swept up to his cheekbones, drawing across the sharp planes of his face.
“The king wouldn’t like this one. If you were to have Venusborn powers, you’d understand that desire is layered like a sea.
In the shallows are hunger, thirst, wealth.
Basic requirements for comfort. I sense these floating at the top of most minds, at all hours.
Sometimes that’s all there is. But sometimes, desire stretches on for miles into the darkness, hidden in the depths for no one to see or touch.
That is what our soul craves more than anything in the world. ”
“And?”
He bit his lip. “Mine is not to serve the king or wield power at court. It is that I’ve always longed for children. To be a father. I told you. It is the most enduring bond a Venusborn can see.”
My hand fell to the pillow beside him.
His eyes had dulled. “When Prospero first told me, I’d come to him because I’d—” He cringed slightly. “Well, Hal was convinced I ought to be prepared.”
“Who was it?”
He smiled into the pillow. I could only see a crescent of his face. “Regrettably, Kitty Seton.” His smile widened at my scowl. “She was sixteen. Beautiful. I was—”
“Fourteen, yes. I remember.”
“I went to Prospero, seeking his counsel, asking for herbs to prevent pregnancy so I could give them to her. He laughed and asked, ‘Roland, why would you need those?’ I didn’t understand.
He sat me down and told me. It took me a long while to understand the significance of what he was saying.
I didn’t realize I wanted a family one day until he told me it was impossible.
Naturally, we all crave what we can never have. When did you know?”
“I suppose he told me when I was a girl. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know. He explained it to me as a balance to dynastic rule. If magicians could have children, magic would pass through bloodlines. There is no pattern to magic, he said, other than a lucky alignment at birth.”
“Ah, but isn’t being born to a king, into power, a matter of chance, too?”
“Yes, but as magicians, who we come from, or where, doesn’t matter.
We are blessed because the planets favor us, not because of who our fathers were.
If you could have a son, he’d have a famous name.
Perhaps your magic would be diluted in him, and his son, and his son, until there was only a trickle left.
You’d have half-magicians, and quarter-magicians, all diminished over time.
All struggling to retain the power you hold now. ”
He considered this. “I understand why fate dealt us this hand. We are special. Singular. Prospero called us star creatures. But I would give up all my specialness, all my magic, if it meant I would die with a family surrounding me, loving me.” Our noses were inches from each other as he whispered, “Wouldn’t you? ”
“I have always known I was meant to be alone, so I never let myself think about it. Those desires are the most dangerous. The impossible ones.”
Our eyes held as he nodded.
“You should sleep.”
“Can’t.”
“I’ll help you.” I brushed his hair behind his ears until his head dipped to rest against my shoulder.
The past rose up, and I sank into it. We were thirteen and nine, fourteen and ten.
Fifteen and eleven. On and on and on. Now we were twenty-six and twenty-two, and once again, as I had so many times before, I swept fatigue into his mind.
His lips parted, his jaw unclenched. I inhaled every even breath he exhaled. He inhaled mine.
It was impossible we were here, I told myself as I watched him sleep. As my own eyes drooped.
It was impossible.