25. Valerian
Valerian
I have lived a very long time, and I have loved exactly once, and it terrifies me in a way three centuries in a book never managed.
The first night on the road to the stronghold, when the others are asleep, she comes and sits beside me at the watch fire, because she’s learned my quiet the way I’ve learned hers, and she doesn’t fill it with chatter the way she does with Azaan.
She just sits, her shoulder against mine, and lets me be silent until I’m ready not to be.
“You’re going to burn yourself out,” she says at last, softly. “Holding my soul in the realm, last time, it nearly killed you. If it goes wrong tomorrow, you’ll do it again, and I don’t think you’ve got another one of those in you, Val.”
“I have as many as it takes.”
“That’s not an answer, it’s a threat to your own life.”
“For you,” I say, “they’re the same thing.”
She’s quiet. The fire snaps. Then she takes my hand, turns it over, traces the old scars on my palm where a warlock’s magic marks him, three centuries of blood-workings written into the skin.
“Tell me about blood magic,” she says. “Properly. Not the battlefield version. The real thing. I want to understand what you actually are, because you never talk about yourself, you’re always three moves ahead planning everyone else’s survival and never your own.”
So I tell her. I tell her about the old craft, that blood is memory and blood is bond, that a warlock doesn’t cast spells so much as spend himself, a drop at a time, that everything I do costs me something and I’ve spent three centuries learning exactly how much I can afford to lose.
I tell her that the reason I could hold her soul in the realm is that her blood is in mine now, from the bond, that she’s written into me the way my workings are written into my hands.
I tell her things I’ve never told another living creature, because she asked, and because she’s the only person in three centuries I’ve ever wanted to be known by.
“So when you say you’ve got as many of those in you as it takes,” she says slowly, “you mean you’d spend all of yourself. Every drop.”
“Yes.”
“Val.” Her eyes are wet in the firelight. “I don’t want you to. Do you understand? I’ve claimed nothing yet, I’m not even a proper Queen, but I’m claiming this: your life is not mine to spend. Not even to save me. Promise me you’ll find another way before you burn yourself out for me.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Then promise me you’ll try.”
I look at her, this bookseller who wandered into my dead realm and made it worth saving, and I find I can refuse her nothing, even the truth.
“I’ll try,” I say. “That’s the most I’ve got. I’ll try to find a way that keeps us both.”
“That’ll do.” And then she kisses me, and three centuries of me goes up like dry paper.
I take her slowly, because I’ve always liked to watch her come apart before I let myself have her, and tonight I watch for a long time, learning her again by firelight, unhurried, greedy in the patient way that’s mine.
When I finally slide into her she gasps my name, my real name, not arse-face, not Master, just Valerian, and it undoes me more than any working ever has.
I move deep and slow, her legs round me, her hands in my hair, and I pour myself into her the way I pour myself into everything I love, completely.
She comes apart under me and takes me with her, and the realm glows warm around us.
After, she lies against my chest and traces the scars on my palm again, and I feel more at peace than I have in three hundred years.
“You called me Valerian,” I murmur.
“It’s your name.”
“You never call me my name.”
“Yeah, well.” I feel her smile against my skin. “Some occasions call for it. Don’t get used to it, arse-face.”
I laugh, which I do so rarely it surprises us both. And I hold her, and I think about tomorrow, the fortress, the dead woman she has to wear, and the promise I made to try to find a way that keeps us both.
I intend to keep it. I’ve spent three centuries learning exactly how much of myself I can afford to lose. Tomorrow I’ll find out if I learned wrong.