Chapter Eleven #2
“What are you apologizing for.” As he leaned in for a kiss—and violated the sacred space—she immediately met his mouth. “This is nothing you have done.”
“Sometimes I pretend that our lives are normal. That the crown is on someone else’s head, these golden robes on someone else’s shoulders.”
“Me, too.” He stroked her beautiful face. “But where does the parsing end, you know? How much can you take away without changing who you are? Because you’re worth… everything to me.”
And so was their daughter.
“What are we going to do about Denne?” his mate whispered. “She doesn’t care about the Territory. She doesn’t really care about… anything.”
As the sad words drifted, he had to agree.
Their only young had never seemed tied to people or things.
Right after her transition, he’d hoped that her becoming involved down at Sal’s would be something to get her out of bed in the morning.
Instead, it was just a job that she did very well, and with a commitment that extended to her not missing any nights or skirting any responsibility. But there was no passion.
Not for the first time, he reflected that there was a special kind of hell reserved for parents who had to watch the light go out of their young’s eyes.
Or who had never seen it there to begin with.
Catra took another draw off the Dunkin’. “I don’t want Denne to be trapped. Not even if it’s the future of the s’Hisbe at stake.”
“What if she finds out she could have done something?” He offered his mate the cruller back, but she shook her head. “What about that.”
“Except it comes with a mating to a male she has no relationship to, at all. What if we tell her about it, show her the chart, and she does what she’s supposed to do because she’s like that.
She might not be interested in the Territory, but I’ve never questioned her love for us.
She’d be stuck with a hellren she doesn’t love for the rest of her life. ”
“What if it’s the only way to save all of us?”
“So we turn our daughter into a sacrificial lamb? How’s that any better?”
“Than death and destruction she feels responsible for? Of everybody and everything here?”
Fuck, he hated to think like this.
“I hate making this decision.” Catra nursed her coffee and looked around the glass dome, to the stars that blinked and twinkled in the night. “You know what, sometimes I feel like such a fraud sitting here. What kind of Queen am I?”
“You are an incredible leader,” he said before sweeping his arm around.
“You’ve transformed the s’Hisbe. After your mother’s death, you tore her palace with its torture chambers down, you redesigned this residence so that it flies under the radar of humans, you’ve made us safer.
” When she went to interrupt him, he shook his head and kept right on going.
“You revolutionized how our young are educated, gave them opportunities in the outside world they never had, made sure that there are new chances to bring money in, new ways to manage our security. For the first time in the s’Hisbe’s history, you’ve gone outside of the Territory and partnered with Wrath and the Black Dagger Brotherhood for all kinds of things.
Without you, and your vision, our traditions would have no chance of surviving in the modern world.
You have changed everything… for the better. ”
Then he pointed to the center circle. “And yet you’ve kept this observatory, and not only that, you’ve used it nightly.
You had a chance to stop the reading of the constellations, the stargazing, the astrological tradition that we have always had.
Except you didn’t. When the previous recorder of constellations died, you made t’On the Tretary.
You could have done away with the position—instead you chose a young male who’s going to live past the pair of us to fill the role and pass it on. ”
There was a long silence, and then she shook her head slowly.
“Astrology is the basis of our entire culture.” Her eyes shifted away from his. “If the citizenry thought I’d walked away from the constellations, there would have been a revolt. And that’s still true.”
Catra put the coffee aside and yanked at the golden tie at her throat.
As the knotting came undone, the robe split in two and she cast it off, the links tinkling and twinkling as it formed a twenty-four-karat snowbank around her.
With a lithe surge, she propelled herself off the floor, her blue jeans and loose t-shirt making him think of the version of her he knew privately, in their suite of rooms.
The female he held in his arms during the daylight hours. Who he made love to. Who he laughed with, and worried with, and lived his mortal life for.
And yet even in the casual clothing, there was a regal cast to her face, and an imperial thrust to her posture. There always was. His shellan wore her power internally—which meant no matter what she had on, everything was a royal robe.
As she paced away from him, he stayed where he was, tucking into the second cruller and working on his coffee.
Unfortunately, he didn’t taste the sweetness of the donut or the smoothness of the caffeine hit, but he didn’t want to waste them.
He was a chef at heart, and someone had made both.
The fact that it was a human paid by the hour and not some Michelin-starred snot didn’t matter to him.
Catra stopped and looked up, the ends of her black, curling hair reaching the small of her back. “What if she looks at the chart and is unduly influenced?”
iAm barked out a laugh. “Do you really think that’s possible? Denne’s more likely to tell the universe what to do than the other way around.”
But Catra was right. There was a sacrificial-lamb to this whole fucking thing.
As his beloved’s head lowered and she got to wandering again, she linked her hands behind her back and seemed to get engrossed by the smooth, polished floor.
Whenever she did this, he could see the tangible weight of the crown on her head even though the circlet wasn’t there, could feel the exhaustion that came with so much responsibility.
She had to think of two things here. Her subjects… and their daughter.
He wanted to help her, even as he knew this was a burden she carried on her own.
What he’d learned, over these many, many years, was that his presence was, miraculously, enough.
He knew this because she told him so—and because there had been countless times, especially in the beginning as her changes were chafing her older subjects, when she would ask him to be with her while she thought.
And so he would sit here just like this and be witness until she was ready to put whatever was going on into words.
It was times like these that he truly understood how weary the head that wears the crown could be.
It was a while before she halted, and as she let her head fall back anew to stare at the night sky through the glass dome, he wondered if she was aware that she’d planted her feet in the center of the white circle.
Only the Queen was allowed to be inside that sacred circumference, and he tried to imagine their daughter standing there.
He just couldn’t. He really couldn’t.
But denial was a real bitch, wasn’t it.
Eventually, Catra righted her head and glanced over at him. “The worst responsibilities are those you don’t fully carry yourself.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What are you afraid of.”
His Queen looked back up to the heavens.
When there was no reply, he got to his feet. “Catra. Talk to me.”
The exhale that left her had a defeat in it. “You know… sometimes I wish you didn’t read me so well.”
“Tell me,” he said roughly. “Everything on your mind.”
It was a long moment before she answered. “I didn’t see us in her chart, either way. Whether she saves the s’Hisbe by mating t’On or she refuses and the Territory is destroyed, we… are gone.”