82. There Is Always Another Jar
there is always another jar
—SEVAHN.
In a realm far from here—
The crystal goes dark, though I’ve continued staring at it for two hours.
I built that curse for over three thousand years.
And it ended in clovers.
The boys are scattered across the manor.
The triplets are sneaking into each other’s rooms, stealing the kitten from each other and pretending they have not seen it.
Ilvaen is fast asleep under his bed in the west wing.
Ryn and Vaelu are wrestling in their den.
Evhael is cocooned beside the kitchen hearth, wrapped in every blanket the household owns, sleeping off the cold the astral path left in his bones—someone left a fresh pot of tea steeping at his elbow, and no one will admit to it.
Kaelvan is walking the halls with his taper, relighting every lamp the drafts have stolen.
Elari and Eiran are making puppets in the den. And ?rvahn… is standing in my doorway.
I felt him arrive, and I felt him stop and stand in the corridor outside this room for twenty-six minutes without knocking.
My son. My enormous, gentle son, who once carried a wounded elk two miles because he did not like the way it was breathing—standing in the hallway in his own home, working up the courage to walk through the door… because he thinks I am going to be angry.
“You’re letting the cold in,” I murmur.
He flinches.
Gods, I hate that. I have spent the last three hundred years trying to get that out of him, and it is still right there, put there by men who were supposed to protect him.
“I lost him,” he whispers.
“Come in.”
“Father—”
“?rvahn.” I set the crystal down. “Come in and shut the door.”
He ducks under the frame. He’s outgrown three doorways in this house, and I have widened every one of them, yet he still ducks out of that terrible reflexive apology his body makes for simply existing.
He stands in the middle of my study with his paws hanging at his sides. His fur is matted with blood, and there is a burn across one shoulder in the shape of bars.
“They just had to choose a cage, did they not?”
“It’s okay, Father, really. It was almost like the exposure therapy we’ve tried before.” His paw comes up to rest over the wound. “And there was something about his magic that felt almost… apologetic.”
“Sit down so we can clean those wounds.”
“I had him,” he says. “In the maze, I had him, and he—” His jaw tenses. “He turned it around on me.”
“I know.”
“I let him.”
“It’s over, ?rvahn.” I grab a basin of warm water and a clean cloth from the side table. “I got you some more honey; you were running low. It’s in the cupboard when we’re finished.”
He stops.
“... What?” His honey-brown eyes widen, blinking at me as though I have started speaking another language.
“Honey. In the cupboard.” I gesture with two fingers.
“Second shelf. Behind your raspberry tea. You have been in the forest for a full day, and you did not eat anything before you left. Now you are standing in my study bleeding on a rug I am rather fond of. So I would like you to sit down so I can get you patched up.”
“But I failed. It was the first time you sent me on a mission, and I failed.”
“You did.”
“I messed things up. The bond is sealed, everything you’ve—”
“?rvahn.”
I cross the room, and he braces. The same way he did the night I found him chained in that pit with his muzzle wired shut. He had flattened himself against the stone and waited to be struck—or worse.
“Sit down,” I say quietly, brushing my thumb once across the fur beneath his eye. “I will grab the honey.”
He lowers himself onto the floor next to the fire.
“You’re not angry?” he asks eventually.
“No.”
“You should be angry.”
“Mm.” I hand him the jar. “Eat.”
He eats it the way he always has, with his claws, hunched over it, watching me the entire time as though I might change my mind and take it back.
I never have.
I never will.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“Do not be.”
“I was supposed to—”
“You were supposed to herd a beast away from his mate,” I say, “and instead you got caged, and you were relieved about it, and now you are lying in my study eating honey and apologizing to me.”
I look at him.
“Which part of that would you like me to punish you for?”
He lowers his ears another inch.
When he’s finally asleep in front of the fire, snoring like a collapsing barn, I go back to my desk and sit down. I wave my hand over the crystal, and I watch it again.
There is a moment I keep returning to. Not the bond sealing, or the scythe passing through Eden. It’s not even Therael crossing that boundary on a burning foot, though I confess I watched that twice.
It’s after.
It’s the way they all came out of the trees—the bunny, the human, the stitched one, the Horsemen, and the antlered beast with the baby on his chest—and they fell into each other. Not one of them had to be invited.
They just came.
And they stood in that clearing and wept while they held each other, and not once did it occur to a single one of them that they might not be welcome there.
I watch it over and over again.
They’ve always had each other, and they’ve always shown up for each other, crossing burning boundaries and sacrificing pieces of themselves, and they never once stopped to wonder whether someone was out there in the dark who hadn’t been called.
?rvahn shifts in his sleep, mumbling something about the honey.
I sit in the dark for a long time.
Two seals in under two years.
I can take their memories. I can take their tongues, their wings, their names, their bodies, their lifetimes. I have made men believe they were monsters, too dangerous to be held—
And then somebody holds them anyway, and nine thousand years of architecture falls down like a house of cards.
I take off my glasses, set them on the desk, and press the heels of both hands against my eyes until the dark goes white. I exhale as silently as I can because my son is asleep six feet away and he worries.
And then I put them back on. I have lost two. I will not lose the rest. The curse on the reaper failed because I underestimated the empath. Humans have not always been so… forgiving.
That’s a flaw in design, and a flaw in the design is not a defeat.
It is information.
I have spent nine thousand years learning what they love. I know what they would burn for, who they would run to, and what they’d cut off their own backs to protect. I have been very patient, and I am not finished.
Ten left.
And the next one—
The next one is not a man who needs holding. The next one is a man who will not let anybody near him.
I pick up the crystal and turn it slowly. Somewhere in a house full of covered mirrors, a stitched giant sits alone in the dark and refuses to speak to his wife.
“Well, hello, little thread,” I murmur.
?rvahn turns to his other side. And in the cupboard, behind the raspberry tea, there is another jar. There is always another jar.