Chapter 38 The Lie
The next morning, a servant in a footman's uniform knocks on Marton's door to let us know we've been summoned to breakfast with the king.
Behind him comes a team of maids and valets holding clothes for each of us.
I briefly return to my own unused room to let the maids work through the snarls of my hair and button me into a satin gown.
The shoes are a pair of matching slippers, nowhere near as uncomfortable as the heeled contraptions popular among the women of Philostia.
The dress has no corset, only a bit of padding for shape, and one of the maids braids the top half of my hair into a coronet while another carefully runs an oiled comb through my loose curls.
I gaze at myself in the looking glass, observing the end effect.
There is a clean, elegantly dressed young woman looking back at me, her yellow eyes and olive skin offset not unpleasantly by the dove gray fabric of her dress.
It is the least monstrous I have ever looked, which is a terrible kind of irony considering I might be more of a monster than I ever realized.
I meet Marton and Vakhrin in the hall.
Vakhrin's nod of greeting is subdued, but Marton takes a moment to blink, wide-eyed, as he takes in my appearance.
"Wow."
My face is hot as I force an uncaring shrug.
"It's just a dress."
"In one piece, for once," snorts Vakh.
Marton ignores us both.
He offers me his arm like he's a gentleman and I'm a lady.
When I take it, hesitant and awkward, he leans down to tell me, "You look beautiful.
"
I am still blushing when we make our way into the East Parlor where breakfast is being served.
This room is smaller than the audience chambers, but still overly large considering only five of us are eating together.
Along one wall, tall windows let in morning light and offer an expansive view of the gardens and courtyard.
Already seated at the dining table are Cherry and the king.
He sits at the table's head with Cherry on his right.
The king smiles to see us and beckons us closer, inviting me to sit in the chair to his left.
I take the seat, pulled out by the footman, and try not to bungle the maneuver as he pushes the chair back in.
It is a dance of manners I am unfamiliar with.
I observe Cherry closely, but there is no sign of her being hurt or upset.
She wears a flowing ivory gown, a tiara of gold petals intricately woven into her hair.
Her blue eyes are bright, skin glowing beautifully.
She looks perfectly at home in the grand room, at the table covered by a lilywhite cloth and set with flowers and expensive china.
She looks like a princess.
As if the last nine years had been but a blip in the timeline of her life and now she is back where she always belonged.
I suppose that is the truth of it.
"Well, now you're all settled in," says the king, "you must tell me about your journey to get here.
Was it snowing as you left the Old Castle? "
Mine and Cherry's eyes meet across the table. He does not know we have been gone from the tower for months. He thinks we just left it, perhaps the week or two ago it would have taken us to travel here from there.
I am relieved when, by silent council, Cherry and I come to an agreement to pretend he is correct.
We make small talk through the breakfast, speaking of the cold wind off the mountains and the beautiful countryside in autumn, buttering scones and stirring tea in our fine clothes as if it is all perfectly normal.
"You must tell me, though," the king says at one point, turning to my side of the table and casting a politely curious look at Marton, "how you came to be traveling with an heir to the Philostian throne."
I choke on my tea.
"A what?" says Cherry, her incredulous bark sounding comfortingly like the Cherry I know and not at all like the removed, regal girl I have been sitting at the table with.
The king tips his head, giving Marton a bewildered smile. "You did not tell them?"
I look to Marton and find him staring down at the tablecloth, flushed crimson to the roots of his hair. He stares hard, blinking a few times before looking up to meet my eyes. His cringe is apologetic.
"You're noble." It's hard to say if I feel more shocked or horrified. Can it possibly be true? Have I been kissing an heir to a kingdom? Did he lie to me about it?
"No," says Marton at once. "Well." He fidgets.
"Yes. Technically. My parents are nobles in Philostia's royal line.
But I am..." he thinks for a moment, "twenty-sixth in line to inherit, at last count, and that is only if no more babies have been born since last I was home, which was years ago because my family practically disowned me when I enrolled at the Academy.
" He addresses most of this to me, and the last part entirely.
"I told you about my relationship with my parents, that it has always been distant.
It has been years now since we spoke. I will never be head of a noble house and I will certainly never be king. "
The word king strikes me like a blow. Marton is someone who could, ostensibly, be king. He is not average and small like me. He is like Cherry. Someone who, no matter how close I get, will always be unreachable in the end. Untouchable, for all that you can reach out and touch them.
And, an unkind little voice resounds in my mind like a vibrating gong, he lied to you, he lied to you, he lied to you.
"I didn't," Marton says, and I realize I have made the accusation aloud. "I wouldn't."
"Marton Hastings," Cherry says, with dawning realization. "You are the Marton Hastings next in line to be Viscount of Grenache, in the south country. That Marton Hastings, of Philostia, not a scholar but a lord."
Now Marton's face drains of all color.
I realize Cherry never heard Marton's last name before, a name which I learned when I visited the Academy with him.
If Cherry had been there, or, probably, if she had heard his talk of coming from a rich family, she would have known at once who he was.
Not me, though. The ignorant peasant girl who he didn't have to bother being honest with.
Suddenly, Cherry's eyes go perfectly wide, her lips parting and a hand coming up to catch the tiny gasping breath she draws.
"Ten years ago, when I was but a child, I remember hearing of an arranged engagement to be made between a young Philostian lord and a noble girl of my acquaintance, to be carried out when they were older.
I remember her boasting how she would be Viscountess Hastings one day.
" Her gaze goes to me, mirroring the shock and horror I feel.
"Tarah, he's not just noble. He's engaged. "
There is a ringing in my ears. A pounding in my head like I have been running for miles and miles and miles.
I want nothing more than to shift and fly fast and far away from here, but my fear for my friends, instinctive and solid, keeps me rooted to the earth and my human form as certainly as a tether.
Echoing in my head now is just one word.
Engaged, engaged, engaged.
I fled the table soon after the revelation, only staying to listen to Cherry verbally fillet Marton for a philanderer and a liar.
"The thing you gave to the knight at the gate to pay our fine for trespassing in the Royal Wood," Cherry had flung at Marton like an accusation at one point.
"I saw how it caught the light. A gemstone of some kind.
Tell the truth now, was it an engagement ring?
For her?"
By her, she did not mean me.
Marton was shamefaced as he looked away.
"It was not for her," he admitted eventually.
"But it was...it was an engagement gift from her.
Her birthstone, set into a ring."
That was the part where I had run from the room, feeling sick and prickly with horror.
An engagement gift he had carried around in his pocket, possibly for years, keeping up with it at every turn of our journey, never parting with it despite how often we were bereft of money and supplies.
Something he kept up with even when we lost weapons and clothes and goods of all kinds on our travels.
It was something he had treasured.
And it was a secret he had kept.
That was the part I kept returning to.
In all the time I had known Marton, I had thought of him as an open book.
When he had an emotion, he expressed it.
When he had an opinion, he aired it. When he had a concern, he wanted to maturely discuss it.
His traumas and his trouble and his hopes and fears.
He had shared them all with me as if it were not strange, to share oneself so freely.
Now I don't know what has been truth and what has been lie.
What has been real Marton and what has been a fa?ade he wore for my benefit.
He wanted dragons and magic and adventure, and he used me to get it.
I pace the halls of the palace, hardly attending to my surroundings as I wander from wing to wing, my mind in an uproar.
It is as I am turning over my past interactions with Marton for the fifteenth time, considering them from every angle, that a memory occurs to me.
In the memory I am standing across from Marton in his room at the Academy as he says, "Everywhere I have gone, I have been a wrong thing. Never quite matching the tone of the minds and hearts around me."
"I might know something about that," I say lightly, trying to take some of the abstracted distance from his eyes.
A smile comes over his face, and his gaze finds mine. "Yes, I know." He laughs. "I told you it would sound ridiculous. Poor me, right? The rich boy who could buy any future he wanted, and still found a way to be disappointed with it."
"That's not what I was thinking at all." I look down at the desk, at all the things there. His scholarly knickknacks and baubles. I think about riches. About value.
Maybe neither of us are being fair to him.
I thought he had given up one good thing after another, chasing some starry-eyed daydream.
That I was the consolation prize—the slightly magical thing he latched onto because it was as close as he could get to what he wanted.
The same way he left his parents to come to the Academy, he left the Academy to find me.
And how long until he realizes that I am not exactly what he is looking for either?
But...maybe magic is not really what he's been after all this time.
Everywhere I have gone, I have been a wrong thing. Never quite matching the tone of the minds and hearts around me.
And didn't I feel that way for thirteen years of my life? Never quite being the daughter my mother needed or wanted. Never being someone the other children in my village could play with. Never being someone the villagers could trust.
But with Cherry I found something...different.
I became more truly a monster than ever, doing what I thought I had to do to keep her safe.
But I also found friendship and acceptance for the first time.
All the years I spent with her, I thought she must secretly hate me.
That she only put up with me because she had to.
But when we left our tower, when we found out the truth about our life there, she still wanted me. She still loved me. She never thought I was a monster. To her I was...a protector.
And Marton has never had a friend like that. A friend who knew every jagged and strange corner of his heart and still wanted him. A friend who understood him. Accepted him.
And isn't that what he's really been looking for?
"Did you still feel that way," I ask softly, "Like a wrong thing—when you were with Vakhrin and Cherry and me?"
"I have never felt wrong around you."
I exhale a breath I didn't know I was holding, smiling.
"Do you know...I think it is the same for me?
That is just how I have always thought of the way that other humans—and recently even other protectorkin—reacted to me.
I thought of it as them being able to sense the wrongness of me.
But you— You never seemed to feel it. You have never cringed away from me, or mistrusted me.
You just...came in with your heart wide open.
" I am whispering by the end, full of awe at the memory.
"It—it never occurred to me to feel differently."
"I can see that, now." I have to laugh, though the sound comes out strained. I can't quite bring myself to look at him. "You're like that with everyone, aren't you? Ready to share your whole self if they'll let you."
"I...suppose? I don't know. They don't usually let me.
" His voice goes wry as if he's trying to make a joke.
And then, on the tails of that memory, comes another.
In this memory, Marton is looking down at me beside the waters of lake, stars reflecting off the dark disc of the water and insects singing among the reeds by the bank.
Marton swallows. He takes my hand, his grip on my fingers tightening, avoiding my injured palm.
"Nerris said that to defeat a basilisk, you have to believe the truth no matter what.
And—well, in order to believe the truth you have to know it.
To hear it. And there are parts of the truth you haven't heard from me.
"
My hand prickles with sweat in his grip.
"What are you saying? What haven't you—?
"
He cuts me off before I can finish the question, blurting the words, "I love you. "
And then...
"You don't have to say it back, Tarah.
That's not why I told you. I want you to know it.
So that if the king makes you see or hear something that causes you to doubt it, you will have any easier time believing otherwise.
And I hope you had reasons to believe I love you, even before I said the words.
"
I stare at him.
Golden hair silver in the moonlight. Eyes glowing with emotion.
He is still holding onto my hands.
Of course I have reason to believe that he loves me.
He has never looked at me with anything but admiration.
He has always been kind. Has always been interested in me.
He has never left me or insulted me or mocked me, no matter how many terrible sides of myself I showed him.
I find I can know he loves me in an intellectual sense.
But what I can't understand is—
"Why?
"
Marton sighs, shakes his head.
Turning from me, he tips his head back against the exterior cave wall, smiling up at the sky. "Does there have to be a reason?"
That is not the answer I am expecting.
My confusion must show, because Marton casts a glance at me an revises.
"There are reasons. I know I had plenty of reasons to begin.
I looked at you and found you beautiful.
I spoke to you and found you clever and kind and brave.
I was enchanted by your magic. Drawn in by your vulnerability, occasional though it is.
Amazed by your selflessness, your drive to help others.
And I have also been horrified by your capacity for self-hatred, hurt by your lashing out, worried for you, sad over you, confused by you.
"My point is.
..there were reasons to begin to love you, when I began.
But I think I am beyond them now. I just love you, Tarah, and it's not for any one reason or set of reasons.
It's not in spite of anything or because of anything.
It's—it just is. I love you. Does there have to be a reason?
Can't I just love you?"
It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
I scoff at him.
He grins at me.
Tipping his face down to mine, he bites me on the tip of the nose.
"I love you," he whispers.
When the memory ends, I am gasping. My skin prickles with sweat.
My vision doubles, reality warping.
Something is not right.
Something is not right because Marton loves me and he is honest.
All the way through, he is honest and kind and good.
He had one chance, before we faced the king, to tell me any truths he had been keeping to himself and he decided to tell me that he loves me.
Just in case the king made me doubt it.
I think of Marton noble, Marton engaged, Marton keeping secrets that could hurt me, Marton lying, Marton with a ring in his pocket.
Marton looking down at me with fondness in his eyes, saying he is waiting for permission to kiss me.
Marton with shame in his eyes, skin pale, saying, It was an engagement gift from her.
Something is not right.
Something is not ri—
Something in my head snaps.