16. The First Mother #5
“That was two questions. I owe you.” His voice ached.
I ached. My voice was a croak. “Do you still want her?”
He was quiet.
I thought I could be brave enough for a lot of things. I’d gone in to marry him expecting so much of the worst. Had I used up all my courage? Had all my mettle been spent?
“There was a lot wrong with me wanting her,” he said.
And it wasn’t rushed, like he felt through the words.
“And a lot wrong with the idea of her that I wanted. But neither of those people exist now. Not the person I thought she was. And not that try at myself, either.” He shook his head, just a little.
“…no. No, I don't.” He leaned his head against the wall again.
“I am sorry that my stupidity in falling for her has caused you harm. I was supposed to be the only one bearing that particular humiliation.”
That lump was hard in my throat. I tried to joke, couldn’t, “Well I humiliate you every time I take a step outside, so.”
His shadow turned to me. “I'm not humiliated by you.”
It was nice of him to say. “I've seen the way they stare at you when you're with me.”
“Yeah, I'm fun to make rumors about. A pretty woman on my arm adds to that. But I've always been easy to make rumors about. They just have more fuel to get lurid right now.”
“They think you chose me so you could push me around.”
“They’ve said worse.” I could hear the dry smirk in his voice. “There was a rumor I ate a baby once.”
“What!?”
“Yeah, we found the kid. He'd wandered off.”
“They act like you’re a monster!”
“You thought I was one. A week ago. How much have I done to dispel that?”
My whole chest hurt. And it felt, again, like I was arguing about all the wrong things, always pushing at him when I wanted to push everything else.
“Did I make you cry again? I didn’t mean to.”
“No,” I whispered, hunkered closer to my knees.
“Liar. You know I see better in the dark than you can.” His hand hovered near my face, like he’d wipe the coward tears away. He pulled back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is old to me. I forget it’s still new to you.”
Fires lit in gaps in the treetops, far below. Some kind of gathering, people in the square. A cold breeze passed, and the clouds moved off the moon.
“I still believe what I told you, by that fire,” he said.
I peeked up at him, and his eyes, now illuminated in the moonlight, were set on the world below.
“There is more than one kind of strength, one kind of honor. And people here value it. They just…they get afraid, and they forget. They hold onto old ways, instead of to the things those ways were meant to protect.” His gaze slid back to me.
“I knew you were strength, when I met you in that cell. When you spoke bravely with a hand on your throat. When you healed Balnoc after I’d threatened you.
And when I agreed to marry you, it was because I saw you as an equal, not a weakling.
” He looked back out over the trees. “I've never been embarrassed by you.”
I didn’t want to be the weakling he said I wasn’t.
I wanted to hold tight to whatever this was in my chest and not cry, as the ice around my heart broke in knife-sharp shards.
“I’m not helping you though,” I mumbled.
“The way I look. The way I rutting flinch. Everything about me confirms what they want to think about who you are.”
He shifted, leaned his weight forward against one upraised knee, and it brought his face into the moonlight, the terrible, brutal beauty of him.
“It doesn't warm my heart that my people think I've harmed you, or that I chose you for weakness. But…” He held his hand up to the light.
Dark lines bit into the palm, crossed his fingers.
“Their failure to see your value is that: their failure. Do you ken?” He lowered it.
“If you choose to stay, they'll realize that. They'll come to see you as I do.”
There was so much to say. There was nothing to say. “You have so much faith in them.”
“I’ve been someone other people took a chance on, while I was an awful ass. I’d be a pretty hypocrite not to believe in better people than me.”
I didn’t think there were better people than him, but I didn’t have the courage to say it. Not when it sounded so much like “I love you.”
I breathed. “Let me try to fix your cheek.”
He just barely pulled away. “You said the sleep magic strains your body. You’re still recovering.”
“You are taking the disadvantages of being married to me. Please, take the benefits.” My voice scraped out. I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry. He nodded.
I sang. I sang through the ache, and I sang through the pain in my chest that I worried would never go away.
I let myself forget about keeping tears from falling, about what I looked like to this man who could always see me when I tried to hide.
In that tongue that was only mine I sang hoping the cut healed, hoping he healed, hoping for any scrap of good I could do for this person who deserved so much better than he got.
I sang the immense and ridiculous grief of realizing I loved him, and the way I wasn’t sure that it would ever matter.
When I stopped, he touched his cheek where the slice had been. “Thank you,” he said.
“Did the pain…” I stopped myself. It wouldn’t help him to answer; it only helped me.
“Yeah. It’s gone.”
That was good. I did something for him, once. My throat hurt.
“You need to sleep,” he said. “We should get back.”
My stomach flopped, imagining the way down in the dark, imagining if this pale moonlight hid behind the cloud again, if I looked the wrong way and slipped, if—
“Or we could stay here,” I rushed out. He looked at me, and I mumbled, “It’s a long way back.
I’m tired and…and it’s not too cold.” Rowena’s dress wasn’t wildly warm, but it was warmer than falling a hundred feet.
But then I looked at him, and he had the fur cape over his shoulders, but his chest was still bare, and he would be cold, he’d—
“I guess it would be warm enough,” he said, “If we stayed close.” His voice was rough.