19 #2
“I’ve seen the real you,” I tell him. “You don’t seem that much different without your lower glyph set. You’re less careless and apathetic, maybe. Less pleasure-obsessed. You haven’t been particularly angry or gloomy.”
He shakes his head. “That’s because I’ve been distracted by this journey. I’ve had things to occupy my mind—things that actually interest me.”
“So we’ll keep finding things to occupy your mind. Hobbies, pastimes—”
“It doesn’t work like that.” He runs a hand through his hair, venting a sigh edged with frustration.
“When I’m in the worst throes of the darkness, you could place all my favorite things in front of me, in their most appealing form, and I wouldn’t care about a single one of them.
The journey with you has been so intense that I’ve been able to stay afloat, above the dark.
But when you were—” He cuts himself off, closing his eyes briefly.
“After the bounty hunters, I felt myself sinking again. It became worse once we arrived here and I had nothing to do but prowl these rooms and watch over you. So… I did this.”
He strips off his socks to reveal his feet. There are six glyphs on his toes, three on each foot. Not a full set, but enough to make a difference.
“I painted them while you were unconscious,” he admits. “But I didn’t trigger them until this evening, after I saw the portraits.”
Suddenly, the way he behaved tonight makes so much more sense. The flirting, the carelessness, the apathy toward the Kaenans.
What about the moments we shared just now? How much of that was him, and how much was influenced by the glyph work he did on himself?
“It’s still me, even with these,” Vawn says.
I glance at him with a faint smile. “It’s like you can read my mind.”
“These glyphs aren’t the same ones I had before,” he says. “They’re milder, and I deactivated them in my room before I came in here. If that matters.”
“It does.”
Vawn’s fingers twitch like he’s about to reach for me, but he doesn’t.
He grabs the covers instead, clutching a handful.
“I don’t want you to misunderstand what I’m about to say.
I would never ask you to be some kind of cure for me.
That’s not possible. I believe this darkness lives in my mind and can never be fully eradicated.
But… you help me. Just by existing, being yourself, with all your saucy retorts and your anxious planning and your fierce determination—you help.
Even your complete lack of respect for me as your future sovereign…
that helps too. You’ve kept me sane through all this. ”
I can’t let him see how deeply those words affect me, so I force a doubtful chuckle. “Sane? You think you’ve behaved like a perfectly sane person this whole time?”
“Well… mostly sane.” He grins.
“You were determined to leave behind the person whose presence helps your mental state.” I purse my lips. “Doesn’t sound very sane to me.”
“Fair enough,” he says. “Now will you stop prying into my soul and let me paint your nails?”
“I will, on one condition.” I place my hand over his.
“Promise me you won’t activate those glyphs unless you really need them, and you’ll turn them off when you don’t.
And please, keep looking for a better way to manage this.
Just like physicians and herbalists are always working to develop better medications for illnesses, you can keep working to devise a better way to help yourself. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” He turns his hand palm up, weaving his fingers with mine. “I promise.”
“Good. Then I’ll let you do my nails—all except the two cracked ones and the one on my broken finger.”
“Poor little finger.” Vawn takes my wrist and places a light kiss on the splinted digit. Then he bounces off the bed. “I’ll go fetch my tools.”
While he crafts our new glyphs, he tells me stories about his childhood visits to Anyssir Castle.
Many of his earlier adventures with his siblings were the mischievous kind, and he tells them so dramatically and humorously that he has to keep pausing his work because I’m laughing so hard that I can’t hold my hand still.
He tells me about the first time he discovered his gift, during a routine aptitude test conducted by one of his tutors.
I remember taking a similar test in school, years before my time at the Academy.
In Belavrin, the Crown likes to identify artificients early so they can be trained properly and kept from using their glyph-craft until the time is right.
A poorly trained artificient can be as dangerous as a rabid unicorn.
In between his own tales, Vawn asks about my childhood.
I’m not nearly as good at storytelling, but he seems fascinated by my account of beating up bullies in my neighborhood and practicing my knife skills at the butcher’s shop on the corner.
I recount one of the pivotal moments in my life—an assassination attempt on the mayor of my hometown.
It happened during a festival, and my family witnessed the whole thing—including the skill and courage of the mayor’s bodyguards, who not only foiled the attempt but captured the assassins.
“That’s why you wanted to become a guard.” Vawn inspects his work and blows across my fingertips to dry the varnish.
“Yes.”
“And the work at the Pink Lycan—how did you become involved in that?”
“A friend of my roommate’s. I told her I was going to have to drop out of the Academy because I had no more tuition money, and she asked her friend to introduce me there.”
Vawn releases my hand and takes my left foot into his lap. “Are you sure you don’t want a podalic set?”
“I’m sure.”
He sighs dramatically. “Very well. But to make up for my disappointment, I’d like to hear about your first time.”
“First time getting a glyph set?” I frown, confused, and then I remember who I’m talking to. “You mean the first time I ever had sex.”
He smirks. “You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine. Amuse me, while I do my fingernails.”
By the end of the next hour, I have my usual shield glyph back, along with strength on both thumbs, then accuracy, agility, luck, and paralysis.
Vawn has shield glyphs on both thumbs, along with vibration, strength, stealth, and his own version of a paralysis glyph, an experiment of sorts.
A few of his fingernails are still too damaged for glyphs to take properly.
Vawn puts his tools away, but he seems in no hurry to leave my room. He stretches out on the other side of the bed, and I don’t have the heart to tell him to leave—not after he mentioned that I help him just by existing.
No one has ever felt that way about me. I know my mother and father were glad of my existence and loved me dearly.
But it’s a different kind of delight to know that I make Vawn’s life better.
I thought it might be the opposite—that I rather irritated him.
Maybe I do, sometimes, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s exactly what he needs.
He falls asleep not long after helping himself to half the bed, so I turn down the lamp and settle in beside him.
I said I wouldn’t fuck him again, and I didn’t exactly break my word. He didn’t put his cock inside me. It’s pure semantics, but I allow myself the differentiation, and I also permit myself to scoot very close to him before I relax my body and drift into sleep.
A distant knocking wakes me. Hard, frantic knocking, coming from the adjoining chamber—Vawn’s room.
“Your Highness! Please open the door!”
Vawn stirs, bleary-eyed, and croaks, “What’s happening?”
“Stay there.” I grab one of my knives from the nightstand and slip into the next room, where I call through the door, “Who is it?”
“It’s General Tana Centune. There’s been an attack, an attempt to breach the castle. Lord and Lady Kaenan asked me to rouse the prince and bring him to their safe room.”
Why is she knocking on the door? Where are the guards who were posted in the hall? Maybe they were called away to defend other parts of the castle… but it seems unlikely that all of them would abandon their posts.
“I will pass along the message to the prince,” I call.
For a moment I think the general has left, and then she says, “I need you to open the door and let me see that the prince is safe.”
“He’s fine. He’s in here with me.”
“I’m quite well, General,” calls Vawn.
“Nevertheless, I should lay eyes on you, your Highness. You understand, of course. For the purposes of safety and security, I must see you.”
“The fuck she must,” I mutter, pushing Vawn farther from the door. “I don’t like this.”
The general’s voice rises from beyond the door, sharper this time. “Your Highness! Please! Open the door!”
“Something is wrong with her,” I whisper to Vawn. “Either she’s a traitor, or she’s under duress from someone who is, and they’re forcing her to make these demands. I knew that party was a bad fucking idea. Go hide in your closet. I’m getting Severin in case we need to run.”
“I’d rather not go out a window again,” Vawn whispers back. “And what about the Lord and Lady? I won’t leave without knowing they’re safe.”
“We’ll figure it out. Hide.” I rush back into my room and throw open the glass-topped carpet case.
When I pull Severin out, he shakes himself and swivels toward the window. “It’s still dark outside. Are we making another midnight escape?”
“Possibly. I’m going to open the window a crack and let you slip out. See if you spot any wyverns or other carpets in the area. Let me know if anyone is attacking the castle.”
The second I throw back the curtains, a giant wyvern sweeps past the window. Huge arrows arch toward it, shot by the castle guards on the parapets.
Before I can draw the curtains shut again, the wyvern’s rider spots the glow of the carpet behind me. He hauls at the bridle of his beast, pulling it around and heading straight for us.