Content notes: This fic refers to canonical levels of messed-uppery such as incest and abuse, a large part of it sexual. A considerable number of views expressed by characters, including victim blaming, are not shared by the author.
Elodie/Kevan in the ending I'm jumping off canonically becomes mutual. That's a while in the future of this, but if you're squicked by a teenage girl involved with a man in his thirties and/or the other potential issues listed above you may want to close this tab.
Some of my canon interpretations and fill-in-the-blanks may be oddball. If asked, I'll do my best to explain.
Elodie cautiously broached the subject of marriage to Kevan, the Earl of Io, indicating that she was aware of his "circumstances" but they should not be allowed to continue. Briony thought the whole thing was a terrible idea, but agreed to help convince her uncle to leave his sister's house.
On his wedding day, Kevan spoke as little as possible, even to his new wife. She went to bed that night alone.
For the Girl Who Knows Everything
Corisande was three years older than him and Charmion arrived close on his heels a mere ten months after, but since before he could recall Kevan looked forward. Trailing after Corisande as fast as he could crawl and then walk, Charmion toddling behind them, like ducklings said the older bolder servants with indulgent smiles. It wasn't that he didn't love Charmion - near everyone loved Charmion - but it was Corisande he aspired to reach.
He realized eventually that those older than him would always be older. He kept chasing after them, as though he might leap over a fold in time and rush up alongside. He wanted so badly to be grown up. He's been grown up for over half his life now, but sometimes he wonders if he won't be entirely convinced of it until he's an old man on his deathbed.
Mother is pleased he'll be put away somewhere high up and decorative - he'll never be a power behind the throne, not with the Duchess of Ursul there and such a precocious girl-queen sitting on it, but one can't have everything. She's pleased now that all of her older children have positions of prestige she can openly name Kiran the heir to Lillah without a complete uproar. She's pleased, too, that if Queen Elodie must have discovered this entire sordid business at least the girl's taken it upon herself to discreetly put a stop to it. She doesn't say all this in their terse, obligatory conversations when she pays a visit to Mead, but Kevan can see the words in the gaps.
Briony and Ignatius are glad to see the back of him. Ignatius's chill courtesy has become that of a magnanimous victor. Briony is more nervous, but still pleased. Within weeks of the coronation, as the first of the letters from the capital started to arrive, she stopped avoiding him and started to wheedle, laying on praise with a trowel. Elodie is terribly clever, isn't she, she knows all sorts of things about magic, history, magical things in history. But as much as she knows she doesn't hide behind books, she's good at sports, almost as good as Adele - here she saw the look on his face and backtracked - and she can fight too, you know, with all that foreign king's magic he was no match for her with a sword. Briony told the story as though it hasn't been repeated by every troubadour in Nova.
Noll, who's old enough to know and too young to be trusted to know (he's as old as Briony was, when Kevan came back to Mead), returned from two months in Kigal and said that being king sounded like great fun and do I have to go back right away? Yes, it was nice with all my cousins, yes I like Aunt Charmion, but I like you even better, Mummy.
Corisande said that it might be for the best.
If it were anyone besides Corisande (if it were, would this be happening?) he knows he would have been furious. There's still little sparks of it in the roiling nauseating mess creeping out from the core of him (even she will leave him, even she can't stand him). He didn't spew the mess at her, but at tapestries and closed windows and dark corners and, once, at a hapless stableboy.
What he ended up saying to her, after he was out of shouting, after she got him alone and told him off for scaring the stableboy, was this: "How long did you not want... want this? How long?"
He doesn't know why this made her hold on to him so tightly. "Oh, Kevan, if I didn't want it I would have made it clear long ago."
But now... She doesn't need to say it for him to hear it. Now I don't want it. Not enough.
He can't rail at her for that. He knows now that, put to the test, neither does he. He knows now when he felt - really felt - something like the all-burning passion of ballads, and now that he looks back he knows exactly when the flames sputtered and died beneath the cloudburst.
He arrived days early for the last round of preparations and now he watches from a high window as the carriages from Mead arrive the night before. Briony and Noll tumble out and Briony nearly loses her elaborate hat. She runs through the gates with one hand pressing it to her head, Noll waving his arms behind her. She won't be leaving in this carriage. There's been another series of correspondence with Ursul, more arrangements made.
Ignatius, ever solicitous, helps down Corisande. She looks up at the palace with Ignatius's hand in the crook of her arm. He knows better than to think she can see him, can know where he is, is meeting his gaze, and it does no good to try to pretend. He flings the curtains to.
The queen has a suite of apartments freshly prepared for married life. She bombarded him with letters asking him for preferences, and questioned him further in person - here he saw her at her most disconcertingly girlish - but eventually withdrew in acknowledgment of his overwhelming indifference. They're a design dating back to before King Latimer, he knows that much, intended to accommodate husbands and wives who do not like each other; he's familiar with it from the ducal palace in Mead. In the morning as he leaves the guest chambers he's occupied until now the servants are already converging to start moving his luggage. Clothing, sundries Corisande gave him for birthdays and festivals because he'd never think of getting them himself, armor and favorite weapons.
Jael used to give him finely-crafted daggers for his birthday, and after he reached his full height moved on to swords; he has the dagger from his sixteenth, with an emerald in the hilt, and the sword from his twenty-fourth, with a ruby. He wears them when extravagance is called for, when he won't risk a crack in the emerald (Jael said yes, it was impractical, but its color had called to him - look, exactly the shade of your eyes - and that was that - you don't mind, do you? At least you can think of me while enduring those awful parties). Corisande asked him once if he meant to send some kind of message to Mother with them. He hadn't meant to, but now he does. He wears them today.
He used to keep letters from Mead and Kigal, with scrawled postscripts from nephews and nieces wishing their uncle well (Briony's tiny ink handprints, the mark left by a squashed chocolate Bram wanted to send him). He kept what Jael wrote him except for the last one, the one Mother got to before he could. She wouldn't even tell him what it said. It wasn't until he was halfway to Mead that he truly comprehended how in his furious haste he'd left them all behind, and all but two of Jael's blades. After that no other letters seemed so precious, not enough to take with him when he left Mead. He and Corisande never wrote one another anything longer than a half-page (Corisande: The mad bitch is rotting in the dungeons. I'll be home soon. Kevan: We have just crossed from Lampsi Island. Briony is safe, and we need to have a talk). They hadn't needed to, being so rarely apart.
Some (like Mother) would say that it's good they were discreet, good that there's no evidence of what went on between them. Thinking of that nothingness makes Kevan want to scream it to the skies. But because the sky would come down on Corisande and the rest of the family, he's silent. See, Mother, I can control myself.
He says the words in their places and from the inflection of the murmurs sweeping the crowd he's probably done it right. He gets on one knee, as rehearsed, so that she doesn't have to take to her toes to get the crown on his head. She's grown taller but not that much taller - it's been nearly two years since he first saw her on the throne, with a handspan of empty air between her feet and the floor (he remembers thinking that even that child ought to recognize the severity of the crime before her).
It's like being underwater, where he's gone, underwater in a winter lake. Someplace deep inside where everything is suddenly cold and silent. He can never quite believe there can be something this cold hidden inside himself until he's there. His thoughts float around him. Sometimes in this place they swirl about like panicked fish and sometimes, like now, they're still stark shapes he can arrange as easily as a scatter of cards. Things pass in a blur, distorted by the slow movement of the water, by the layer of ice above.
Scattered sensation reaches him through holes in the ice. The King Dowager's face is very still. His wife crowned him just after she was crowned herself, in a double ceremony the week after Queen Ladesh died. Kevan watched from the upper gallery as Prince-Consort Joslyn was crowned on his feet and the former Princess Fidelia dropped her hands onto his shoulders and pulled him to her. Kevan remembers the sigh that went up. He might have been part of it. He might have been wishing that he could do such a thing in front of onlookers who would be admiring, not appalled. If there was anything he'd ever envied in Hyacinth it was that he could send out a fleet of gilt-edged invitations to a wedding in all but name to the old Lumen Duke and never care what anyone said.
Charmion and Severin smile. They were besotted ever since Charmion began school and negotiations were finished by her fifteenth birthday. As true as their love may be, she couldn't have picked a more strategically useful man to love than the heir to Kigal, and Mother was delighted. She wrote after the engagement was announced, telling him it was high time her big brother found someone to marry. He puzzled over her wording for a long and absurd while.
Kiran sits straight, eyes downcast, and Kevan can't see his hands but they're surely folded neat. Thaddeus sprawls, scowling. Adele smiles, leaning forward over the gallery rail. Whenever he visited Briony during the school term, she'd manage to at least wave to him from a window. She writes to him about her sports, and about raising puppies and catching frogs with the Young Lord Elath, about how well Kiran is doing and hints at how well Thaddeus isn't, and until not so long ago about how Briony, who she shares classes with, was hoping to come home for a while after term was over. He's still not sure if she knows, either. Adair, Lord Elath, is not smiling, but he leans as well, eyes large, clutching her hand. Adele didn't weep over his transfer to the custody of the Duke of Mazomba - she took it as an opportunity to pay frequent visits and journey back and forth across Nova with Mother's full approval.
To be honest, she wrote, I think Mother's a bit surprised, not that she'd ever admit it! I think she thought if the queen wanted an eastern alliance she'd look to one of our Dear Nephews (ha ha). Linley perhaps. She's in the same year as Charmion's son Linley, also. Linley, he hears, is like Kiran, straight-backed with posture lessons and bent-headed with reserve. I know he was sweet on her. Most of the boys were, true, but I think he'd have liked her even if it wouldn't have made him King-Consort. Gods forbid, though, he ever pursue!
Briony wraps her arms around herself, her fingers knotted up in crosses. Noll fidgets beside her. Ignatius is tranquil, eyes cast piously upward. Corisande's face disappears behind a handkerchief.
He manages not to look at Mother even when he stands and turns to the audience. The crown's an elaborate ceremonial one with a ridiculous amount of jewels set in a framework of near-pure gold. At least the others should be lighter. The small hand that rests over his, not quite taking it, has been rehearsed as well, to signify unity.
The musicians at the subsequent festivities tend to songs of glory and bravery instead of romance, which suits him. There's also a merciful lack of bawdy insinuations in the conversation fluttering around the refreshment tables. Elodie is barely sixteen and she has her uncle and three cousins. If she were to die leaving a living child it would mean years upon years of regency. It's not improper for the marriage to go unconsummated for a while. Kevan wonders how long into the future "a while" can spin out.
He's old enough to be her father - he remembers fidgeting at his desk at the boarding school, in the cluster of noble children seated at the front of the classroom, hemmed in on three sides by Brin, Lady Hellas, and Prince Laurent of Nova, and Joslyn, Lord Caloris (he remembers the daisies Brin kept on her desk in a glass vase, and the ink stains on Laurent's left hand because no one would force a prince to use his right, and Joslyn's pens in a row ready to lend to forgetful classmates. Kevan had never asked but he suspected a few had ended up on his desk regardless). He's older than Jael was, when Mother married him, and the gap of years is nearly as great.
Kevan doesn't know why thinking this, arranging the words before himself all in their order, makes his gorge rise as high as it does.
"You were ill-used," said Corisande once, one night when she was feeling reflective, and Kevan couldn't hold back his jagged laugh.
By the time he was ten he knew what ill use was. It was "lucky" pinches that twisted until he yelled. It was going out of the way to torment favorite nursemaids and then tutors, and all the servants' children Hyacinth caught him playing with until none of them wanted to come near him anymore. It was shutting him in some long-dead bride's dowry chest until his absence was noticed at dinner.
Corisande could stop Hyacinth, sometimes - she was much better at stopping him than Kevan. Her playmates were older, too, and while they were still younger and of lower rank than Hyacinth sometimes they were old and brave enough to stand up to him like she did. Kevan couldn't always be near her, though, no matter how much he wanted to. Mother would be angry whenever she found out the worse things, and Father would be as cross as he ever got with his eldest, but there wasn't much they did or said that Hyacinth cared about, nothing that could end it for good. He was family and there was no getting rid of family, no sending them to the dungeons or exiling them to Borealis or dismissing them without references. Father would say sometimes in comforting tones that Hyacinth was only jealous, but that made no sense to Kevan because he had nothing at all to be jealous of (Mother would say, cross with Father now, that Hyacinth had had years after the first of his siblings was born to see sense). And even if Kevan hadn't told them anything soon enough it would be don't be a baby, spare, don't be a tattletale, can't you take a joke?
It was a bad time when he was ten - by then Corisande was old enough to go to school and Hyacinth was old enough not to. Then Father didn't wake up one morning, and while Kevan wasn't glad for that he was glad it meant they all returned for good to Mother's estates in Lillah and left Hyacinth in Mead to be the new duke. After the proper mourning period, Mother brought home Jael.
Corisande was the second heir and Charmion was the darling; to Jael they were the smart Young Miss and the pretty Little Miss, that was how he called them, like an earnest peasant. Kevan didn't much like it when people made fun of his sisters, but it wasn't too much fun, not nearly as bad as making fun could be, and it meant it was him who was Jael's favorite. He wasn't the spare to Lord Mead now, he was the young man of the family, the one Jael could do grown-up things with and trust to keep grown-up secrets.
"You weren't grown," said Corisande. "Now that you are, can't you see that?"
"He never touched me," said Kevan, which wasn't strictly true. There had been plenty of ruffles of hair and claps on the back and almost-stifling embraces, more than he ever had from Father. She knew what he meant. "Not until I was."
"When you were fifteen."
"Yes."
She looked dissatisfied but let the matter drop, that time.
She'd been married to Ignatius for weeks when it happened. She was still Lady Lillah, and Mother had lent her an old estate on the Cavalla to practice rule on a small scale. Kevan had been fifteen for two days and he'd gone on a hunting trip with Jael to celebrate, the two of them, no retinue, the way Jael had done things before he became a duke-consort. He wonders if Mother chose to kill him where she did as some kind of symbol, because that was where it happened and kept happening, or if it was just because Jael liked to hunt and it was an easy thing to stage.
They rehearsed the first dance so many times over the past few days it's more of a twenty-first dance. The guests won't expect a passionate sweep around the ballroom, but it would hardly be auspicious to tread on each other's toes. The long-suffering dancing masters of Lillah and Mead can rest on their laurels. From underneath the ice he can keep to the measured step-step-step, and her feet in their jeweled satin slippers are intact.
For the second dance she turns to her father, that's been planned, and he has the vague intention of taking the King Dowager's place among the spectators by the wall. He hasn't taken a step in that direction before Charmion seizes him. With no chance to brace himself her smaller size doesn't stop her from whirling him away, brightly begging Her Majesty's pardon for absconding with the bridegroom.
If the ice was any thinner he might have tensed in anticipated humiliation. He needn't have. Charmion, he remembers now, is exceptional at directing her partner without seeming to. This stood her in good stead, she confided once in a letter, in those days when Severin had two left feet and was still in search of a right. He step-step-steps to the rhythm of her chatter, through the circling colors. Look, she says, there's the Duke of Merva with his eldest, isn't she a dear. She hears whispers of a match with little Adair, who'll be a man soon - almost too soon, it seems, doesn't it? Duchess Lucille is slightly less against that proposal than most, Adair being a year younger than the Lady Merva, that much longer to wait. Everyone's in a marrying mood, it seems, even that amiable rake Armand of Mazomba is taking a serious look around, maybe his time with a ward has settled him, and of course there's the matter of succession. There's Bryce, her third, dancing with the heiress to a county in northern Maree - she knows the girl's mother, an avid gardener and a distant cousin to the Countess of such-and-such in Lillah and the Earl of this-and-that in Kigal. She says that in return for Noll's visit she'll be proposing sending some of hers to Mead. Noll's age-mate Hale, certainly, and Astrid, perhaps Remus as well? Corisande will probably agree, he thinks, no reason now for her not to, but he stays quiet.
"You'll be a wonderful father when the time comes, I know," she says. "I remember how good you were with the little ones in Lillah."
Deep underwater he blinks. He'd never thought of it that way. He's certainly no good with them now.
The music for the second dance slides to a close. Before he can even consider retreat Corisande is in front of him, taking his hand out of Charmion's and into her own, murmuring pleasantries that Charmion returns, and a step, another step, a third -
They haven't danced together since they were children, when he and his sisters took private instruction. The dancing master in Lillah had his own children, apprentices of the appropriate age. In Mead, Charmion or Corisande would partner him and the other would summon a serving boy - they soon gathered a set of favorites who could keep up with them, a harem Father had joked, with light feet and sweet tempers and increasingly handsome faces. When he thinks of those boys - he doesn't like to think of those boys. Lothar, Stavros, Cathair... he's surprised at himself for remembering. It's good manners to know even the names of servants, but even when he tried as a child he was never as diligent as Corisande or as affable as Charmion. He knows he remembered them enough to realize, when he was getting settled again in the palace at Mead, that not a one of them remained.
... said he'd gone for a soldier, when he never would!...
By then Corisande, now well practiced, danced only at functions, and only with her husband. They never agreed on it in so many words - that was simply how it was. Leave it to Ignatius. What could Kevan do but stomp about - and perhaps hold her as tight as Ignatius, tighter than a brother ought to hold a sister, and let his passions run high as they often do, and forget himself entirely when the music rose and so reveal all, or enough to ruin all.
Corisande leads them unobtrusively, the bend of her arms holding them at precisely the proper distance for a brother and sister, chaste but not awkward. Another of the display dances, slow and methodical with numerous turns, designed to show off finery. That's when he knows whatever was between them is truly finished.
Deep in winter water, all the warmer emotions quenched, cool relief washes over him. She's not ruined. He didn't ruin her.
"I'm never going to marry," he told Jael when he was sixteen. He'd thought it was the grandest pledge he could make to prove how hotly he burned, how deep his love ran. When Jael laughed at it he was as angry as he could ever be with him. Jael stopped laughing, stroked his hair and said he was a sweet boy to say such things. Kevan stopped being angry then but he didn't exactly feel better because that proved again he might be a man grown but Jael could always always call him a boy.
It wasn't that grand, in retrospect, because what would he be giving up? The boarding school he went to gathered together most of the prospects in spitting distance of his age and he didn't care so much for any of them. When he was twelve he and Lady Hellas had kissed, in the spirit of inquiry, and she'd said it was disgusting and he'd said so was she and they hadn't spoken for weeks.
Corisande and Charmion had both gone by then. That was the way of things. Corisande would be coming back one day to be a duchess but by then, he knew, Mother fully expected he would be gone in turn. She'd told him his prospects for a match were quite good if he applied himself. He was in third in line for Mead; Hyacinth was not that much older, but given his propensities any children Kevan might have stood a good chance at the duchy if Corisande and hers passed it up in favor of Lillah. And if Corisande or her child chose Mead, well, then there would be Lillah.
It would be a thriving family tree like they drew in the illuminated parchments full of genealogy, transplanted long ago from Yeveh and spreading its branches through Nova. But down among its roots it still sometimes felt terribly alone. Corisande had always been there and he didn't remember a time when Charmion hadn't been. As natural as their absence was it still struck him as unnatural. Kiran and Thaddeus had a long way to grow yet and once they did, as much as he loved them, he knew they couldn't fill the empty space in the same way. That was all before being faced with the still-lonelier climb up and out along another branch.
Kevan told himself: if he was never going to marry, there was still Charmion. She'd just announced the birth of her first, a healthy boy she'd named Bram, and was cheerfully anticipating more. He wouldn't be letting down Mother so badly.
There's this to be said for being King-Consort: no one tells you to eat properly, or stop drinking so much, or excuse yourself before deserting your guests. Not to your face.
When Kevan drifts up the stairs into the new apartments she's already impressed herself upon the shared sitting room in her alternately crisp and cheery fashions. There are gaps in the bookshelves, and what must be those books (with names like Customs of the Malini Islanders and Rapprochement Across the River Galbern and The Doomshadow: A New History) are stacked alongside various papers on one of the finely carved desks. On the same desk sits a row of inkwells, another row of pens, and a little gilt rack of hair ribbons sorted by color (Corisande ordered one like that made for Briony, once, to console her about her first holidays away from Mead. Briony had looked at it and then at him and was decidedly unconsoled). The informal wedding gifts from the likes of her Mervan cousins have been similarly organized on a sideboard. An easel holds a half-finished sketch in black lead of the arrangement on the desk. The inner walls are dominated by two framed maps, one of Nova and one of the known world. Floral water hangs in the air, unobtrusive but unmistakable.
She hasn't left a mark on the section set aside for him (with this identified, he doesn't approach the one set aside for her). The servants added his things so neatly it looks as untouched as one of the wrapped gifts. The outer room was not exactly fussy, but these are even less so, uncomplicated lines and simple designs. No flowers here beside what managed to waft in from the outer chambers before he closed and locked the door. It smells like... it smells like his rooms in Mead, he realizes, exactly the same, some combination of herbs that he might not have liked but that didn't eventually come to annoy him like the ones before it (they'd used the same scents when he was a child, Corisande assured him of that, but somehow back then he hadn't been so bothered). He surfaces and jolts his knuckles on the wall. She knew that. She probably asked Briony, but however she knew she knows. She knows everything, a know-it-all, like she knew about Hyacinth to tell that mad bitch that justice was already done.
A knock at the outer door. It's too firm and sure to be the queen's maid. "Good night," he manages not to shout. She doesn't knock again.
He shucks the finery onto the floor of the bedchamber. The bed proves too soft and too large. So, for some reason, is the nightshirt he's worn for months without a problem. He dresses again, simple clothes to wear riding alone or training, and lies down on the chaise. He rises twice to test the lock before lying down again for good. He'll have to change once more in the morning, for a breakfast with family only. Then they, too, will leave - his sisters, his brothers and brothers-in-law, his nephews and nieces, Mother - and he'll be alone in the palace with the girl who knows everything.
It's our secret. They wouldn't understand. They'd turn on us in a heartbeat.
They'd say, oh, for example, that the Duchess of Lillah's son is as shameless a creature as his mad brother. Worse, perhaps, because at least that one lay with a fellow duke, not his own mother's jumped-up consort. Can even the Little Miss's pretty face and winning ways keep Little Lord Kigal betrothed, with a brother like that? The Young Miss has a lucky catch in old Duke Paulus's boy, maybe he'll be understanding, considering, but I understand his father gave him the boot so perhaps not. As for Kiran and the baby -
Stop it. Stop it! I understand! I do!
You're scared, aren't you. You ought to be scared. It's frightening stuff and it's the truth. So remember, be quiet. Quiet. Quiet.
He couldn't be quiet, this way. Jael knew that. He liked to make him cry out deep in the forest, and Kevan suspected that when they could be overheard he liked clamping a hand over his mouth or gagging him some other way. Kevan didn't like it when Jael was in moods like this with the sharp playfulness, the harsh laughter, the seeming indifference as to whether screams and moans came from pleasure or pain. He wanted to whine like a child (don't be such a child, Kevan, and when he said this it was worse than it ever was when Hyacinth said it): it hurt, it was too much, he didn't want to prove how strong he was.
It was while it was happening that Jael said those things. Afterward he was always gentle, always apologetic, and if Kevan had been so weak as to start weeping he'd dry what was left of his tears. It was just that - just that Jael wanted and needed until sometimes, when it finally did happen, he got carried away. Sometimes Kevan worked to keep the wanting and needing from building up that high. He'd carve out every secret time he dared, plead to go hunting until Mother said at this rate there'd be nothing left in the forest but insects and birds, until Jael laughed and said he was insatiable. He tried his best but that wasn't always enough (and sometimes when it wasn't enough Jael would grin at him with too many teeth and call him an insatiable little slut and it didn't sound entirely like joking).
Six years before he'd heard the whispers as barely a week after her fifteenth birthday - even faster than Charmion had - the Duchess of Elath proceeded down the aisle, large blue eyes fixed straight ahead, nearly tripping over her gown with its train almost longer than she was tall, throttling her bunch of white roses. Two years later when she died in childbed the rumors and lies, stirred, swirled up again. Surely those were lies. Absolutely ridiculous lies, too, some of them, like the imbeciles who couldn't do sums supposing that Jael and not old Earl Fabian had fathered the new little duke. Jael had so many enemies who hated him for nothing more than his birth, and had to invent reasons to feel justified (and if those enemies knew about this they'd tear him to pieces so shh, shh, shhh). He couldn't have done something like that. But on nights like this as he watched his feet flex and twitch in midair, Jael's hands wrapped around his ankles (they didn't reach as far around as they once had), his mind wandered down treacherous paths.
If he had only remembered to lock his door (or if only - another treacherous thought - Jael had, Jael was the one who closed it behind him while Kevan was still blinking sleep from his eyes), or if he and Thaddeus hadn't once been as fond of each other as they were, so that Thaddeus would come to him in the night when he couldn't sleep, or thought of something that he didn't want to wait to ask, and didn't want to bother Mummy. Thaddeus never said exactly what he was doing there on that night, but he could guess the shape of it (one paltry thing he can be grateful for is that Adele wasn't there; she has never had trouble sleeping). Thaddeus was light-footed then, slipping into rooms without even trying to sneak and laughing when he saw he'd surprised someone. Ever since, whenever Kevan happens to see him walk (away, glaring over his shoulder) he puts all his weight in each step.
That night they only knew he was there when he leaped onto Jael. The surprise of it made Jael collapse under even what little weight Thaddeus had then, and their weight combined came down atop Kevan's raised legs, forcing them around his ears at an angle that tore another muffled cry from him through the handkerchief in his mouth.
Thaddeus screamed in answer. "Daddy, no! Stop it stop it stop it!"
Jael rose, tried to dress and explain in low murmurs and hold Thaddeus all at once. Thaddeus thrashed at him with small fists, wriggled from his grip and fled. Jael, cursing, hurried after him. Kevan made himself get up and limp to the gaping door. There was no sign of them in the corridor, when he looked. Once he closed the door and belatedly turned the lock his legs gave out; he crawled back to the bed.
His nightshirt had rucked up beneath his arms and he held it there as he cleaned the mess with the damp handkerchief. All seed looked the same and the servants, if they noticed the remains before this, would have thought he'd been amusing himself. But he was bleeding, too, he saw the rust-colored smears. That was harder to explain. He rarely bled at home, even on screaming hurting nights, because Jael knew how hard it was to explain. One could only have so many bloody noses. He couldn't think of a good place to get rid of it fast so he stuffed it between his aching legs to catch what blood might still come out.
Mother knocked. When he didn't answer she used a key. Kevan lay in bed with his nightshirt back down to his knees and the covers up to his chin, eyes shut, trying not to grimace at the ache along the back of his legs. When he was a child he'd known better than to try lying to her about even a pilfered chocolate. He'd fooled her about this for years, even if he hadn't thought of it as fooling her, but for this one small thing he couldn't manage it.
"Kevan. What happened."
He ventured a blink, a yawn. She stared at him. He shut his eyes because he didn't know how long he could stare back. "Nothing, Mother." Too hoarse, he knew, too ragged. He kept his eyes shut so he didn't see her know. "Nothing happened."
Corisande told him he screamed in the night, tried to make vehement arguments with a sleep-muddled tongue. He never remembered this, it was always too deep a sleep, but sometimes when he woke afterward she was brushing dampness from his face.
If he screams loud enough to wake the queen, night after night, maybe she'll lose patience and divorce him. And then... and then what? There's no returning to Mead, let alone Lillah. Kigal is full enough already and then he might have to find out how much Charmion knows - after all, she lived under the same roof as it for more than ten months. Or there's the old castle at Io, maintained by a skeleton staff headed by a steward who's happiest when lords and ladies aren't coming in making a mess and he can balance the books in peace; they understand one another very well at a distance. No one in the family had liked the castle when he was a child. Corisande and Charmion were adept at finding pretenses to stay the night at one of the neighboring inns that sprang up in a veritable fairy ring to accommodate distinguished guests taking the waters at the mineral springs. The county of Io reverted to Father from an extinct cadet branch, and since they expected to leave Mead to Hyacinth and Lillah to Corisande they decided he ought to have it, to have something (Hyacinth pinched him and whispered about throwing scraps to the spare). He could go there and stay there and the steward would just have to do his gods-be-damned job. If he had to, he could do that.
If he had to. He doesn't have to, exactly the opposite. He's agreed to this for the good of the family and he won't shirk his duty.
The Duchess of Elath sits on the queen's throne. Her feet dangle. How he knows this he doesn't know, because the train of her white wedding gown hides her feet and collapses in a puddle of lace and silk roses.
"Cathair?" he calls. "Lothar? Stavros?" He knows very well that this makes no sense.
It makes even less sense that Thaddeus, in a ten-year-old's voice, echoes him. "Cathair? Lothar? Stavros? Mummy?" Thaddeus calls then. "Daddy?"
"What happened?" calls Kiran, and as always it's hard to remember he's only a year older than Thaddeus. "Where's Father? Did he... did he hurt Duchess Cayleigh like they said?"
Kiran hadn't said this, not all together.
"Because of you," says Thaddeus, standing before him, and this Thaddeus's too-old eyes are even harder than they were when he was really ten and watching Kevan pack his bags - that was the expression, packing one's bags, but he had taken just the one bag, a small one, filled with what remained of the pocket money he sent for now and again from Io, because he knew slightly better than to make the journey to Mead with nothing but the clothes on his back and the blades at his side. As he had then, Kevan turns his face away. This time there are no boots to lace, no cloak to pin, no distraction at all from what Thaddeus says next. "I heard them - Daddy and Mummy - I heard them yelling - it was you - it was you - it was you! It should've been you!"
"Nobody has to die," says Cayleigh of Elath. It's not her voice. He's not sure if he ever heard her speak. Her father didn't send her to school and neither of them went to many parties despite Mother's best efforts. He's heard her son sometimes, high and piping from behind Adele. It's not his voice either. It's Elodie's. It's Elodie's voice again, older, delicate as lace, when she next speaks. It's her voice but she didn't say this, at the same time he hears it he can almost see her handwriting with the letters of her pleasantries breaking apart and rearranging into the words she meant. "You see, I fear we are faced with a situation that cannot be viable in the long term."
"What are you on about?" he hears himself say. He looks back; Thaddeus is gone. "Who told you? It was Briony, wasn't it?" It was a mistake, he knew it, for Corisande to be so frank with her. But Corisande pointed out in her sensible way that they couldn't very well go on keeping her at arm's length until she became the next Duchess of Mead and came home to rule a land she no longer recognized. "How did you know? How did you know?"
It was just as Jael had said even if she didn't say it in the same words. Discovery and scandal and disgrace. Perhaps worse because it could damage not only the family (even Mother, and he was surprised by the idea there was anything more he could do that might hurt Mother) but all of Nova, carrion birds from the likes of Tombula and Talasse ready to take advantage of shaken foundations in the eastern duchies. All that hadn't happened, not yet, but it could and she didn't want it to, so she said that meant they ought to stop.
Jael never said they ought to stop. Whenever it seemed to him Kevan was too frightened by that kind of talk, he'd assure him what they had was worth all the dangers. Kevan was that precious to him, that special, that irresistible (never before or since has Kevan ever felt so wanted). Surely, surely, Kevan felt just a little of the same?
Elodie says, "Let me first emphasize that nothing is contingent on your acceptance of what I will suggest. Exposure would be no help to any of us, and any solution of your own devising would be welcomed. But I hope that you will find our proposal equitable."
He knows better than to think she finds him irresistible.
Corisande says, "I can't very well throw out my own brother."
Ignatius says, "Well, I must say, while I can't very well condemn family loyalty, I admit I find your idea of hospitality decidedly peculiar."
They do their best to have their hissing arguments away from him, as though he's a child like Briony and Noll. He feels like a child, eavesdropping outside the study.
He hears crockery rattle. As this is the study, it makes no sense. Ah, he realizes, it's a dream, and throws together and mangles pieces of facts accordingly. A long time ago, when Ignatius was inclined to be friendly toward his curious new brother-in-law, he said that things shook and flew when his father the Lumen was angry, and occasionally he would gesture and the sugar bowl or the gravy boat would slide down the table into his hand. When Hyacinth and Duke Paulus proved to be more yearmates than lifemates, he made Jael laugh by describing how he imagined Hyacinth bolting toward the gates being pelted by tableware.
Eventually the incongruous crockery settles and Ignatius crumbles. Retreats, apologizes with increasing insincerity. Corisande always accepts his apologies because she can't very well throw out someone who depends on her. Where can he go? His sister won't have him. He has Io, Ignatius has said, does he not? If he wants Io, Kevan wants to say, he can have it, hot springs and all. But no, it can't be so simple, there are rules.
"My lord? Someone's been killed, a stone's throw from here."
"My lord...? If'n it's not too much trouble... only, I've seen him in town, I think, or like enough to be his brother... whoever it is we've got to know who to... would you mind saying for sure if it's... if it's your lord stepfather?"
To those men who stumbled on Jael's wandering horse and then on Jael sprawled like a broken doll, men artless enough to still call Jael their lord, he must look an absolute imbecile - gaping as he does for as long as he does before muttering yes and spurring his own horse around and away.
When Mother sees he knows, she looks sorry. Not for that, of course not - no, sorry she hadn't anticipated he'd be out riding in the forest, there to see him this last time. As if, if she could just get Jael quietly buried and out of sight it would all disappear beneath the earth with him. The secrets, and the whispers, and Thaddeus's wide eyes, and the part of her eldest son that's a shameless slut who seduced his own stepfather.
She has never said this to him, in so many words. He knows it, though. He feels it, in the air between them. Giving it voice would only risk it being overheard.
"Let go of me!"
Ignatius keeps Kevan's arms pinioned when none of the guardsmen would dare and whispers the same way he does over his children's scraped knees about how the criminal should live, for the moment, long enough to face the queen's justice - ah, well, the princess's justice, at any rate. Kevan wants to hit him once he tears free. It would be the first time they've actually fought. Was it you? he wants to shout once he can get a good look into his simpering face, to see how it changes once found out. Is this your catspaw? If you couldn't have her to yourself did you want her gone?
Corisande separates them before he can do either. Her hands tremble. She doesn't blindly trust, certainly not, but she knows her servants, some of them since she was a girl, and had never expected anything from this direction. Ignatius assures her that most of them are still loyal - wasn't it one of them who caught the traitor lacing a tureen of her favorite soup with what must surely be poison?
By the time the riders return with the apothecary Corisande sent for, Ignatius has let go and Kevan has realized it couldn't have been him. If nothing else how could he have kept Noll from having any? If Ignatius ever had murder on his mind it wouldn't be toward his own children (that's one of the tacks he takes in the arguments, this is their home as much as his). In any case the bound woman sneers at him, not in the least grateful that he prevented Kevan from dashing out her brains on the stones.
"Nasty stuff, this," says the apothecary, showing them the crystals that form on a spoon after she drips in her own concoction. Without such a reagent the poison dissolves without a trace, only to be found if you look for it. With no reason to look for it, by the time the first agonies began it would be almost certainly too late. Its symptoms are distinctive and well known among physicians, and onset is quick, so it's no use to murderers who want a death to look natural. It's clear the madwoman hadn't cared. Her primary goal was Corisande, as evidenced by the dish she chose, but she would've been delighted if Noll died as well, or Ignatius ("Or you," says Corisande, pale, her fingers tightening on his. Or him). Devils, she calls them, and demons, and the spawn thereof, and a witch's son to boot.
Corisande is the only one who objects when he wants to go to Lampsi for the appeal to Princess Elodie, and then only a little. Ignatius thinks it's a fine idea - Corisande has her own responsibilities to see to and shouldn't let them be disrupted by an unfortunate case of insanity, and they can certainly rely on Kevan to argue the case with the appropriate vehemence. He's always been glad to have Kevan visit Briony at school; whatever else he might think of him he knows Kevan would never hurt her, and every moment he's with Briony is a moment he isn't with Corisande. Kevan knew this, back then, but didn't care because after all he liked to see Briony, who'd used to call him her very favoritest uncle and clamor for him to show her how to hold a sword because those stuffy old tutors said she was too little (it wasn't enough though, was it? It's never been enough).
So far, so true. It all goes askew at court when the princess lifts her hand, beckoning, and Hyacinth steps from behind one of the red velvet hangings. Hyacinth is young, too young, years younger than Kevan is now, and dressed in his wedding garments, just as he was the last time Kevan ever had to see him (the coffin stayed shut at the obligatory funeral, covered with a wreath of his namesake flowers; it had been a long way from the tower window to the ground).
And Hyacinth - Hyacinth smiles at him the wrong way. The way Jael used to smile at him. As though they're sharing secrets, as though they're co-conspirators. As though - as though - as though -
His eyes fly open in the dark. His breaths come hard and he swipes a forearm over the cold sweat on his brow. As he paces himself out he comes back to the bed. It's still large but somehow the softness is no longer swallowing. Mother had some swallowing-soft in Lillah, in guest chambers, for visitors who preferred them. Jael didn't like to sleep in them but sometimes he liked to take Kevan on them. Jael liked the other way of quieting him this offered, putting him on his knees and pressing his face down and down and down.
Kevan lies on his back, feet together, and tries to think nothing.
Night's fallen. Kevan has been fifteen for three days. They tie their horses outside the old hunting lodge Mother insisted they use, Jael's nostalgia notwithstanding. It's small as the ducal lodges go, accommodating only a handful of staff, but without even this handful there's enough dark empty space between the stone walls to make Kevan uneasy. He draws a little closer to Jael.
That afternoon Kevan's horse panicked and threw him into the underbrush. Jael says that if he likes, they can turn the unreliable creature into stew for the servants once they get back. Kevan says no because he's not been hurt enough to have to go home, it's just bruises. Just bruises, he tells Jael as he presses more wine on him, it hardly hurts at all, and he thinks he does a good job at hiding the secret pleasure at Jael knowing it's a lie.
Then in its place he's embarrassed by how soon it is, how little of the Hellas red he has, before his head starts to drop and his body lists to the side. He didn't drink as much at the birthday party Mother made him have, because Mother told Corisande to make sure he wouldn't. Jael moves from across from him to beside him and Kevan falls against him because this is something he can do, with Jael, even now that he's not a child.
Jael puts a hand beneath his chin, and curls fingers that are still large to him around his jaw. Jael presses a chaste kiss to his forehead, as if he's giving sweet dreams to quiet little Kiran.
(No little Thaddeus, not yet, Mother is expectant but the expected thing hasn't yet arrived, won't for another month, they've decided on Thaddeus for a boy and Adele for a girl, Jael told him this and swore him to secrecy. He's still keeping this secret, small and warm)
Then Jael kisses him on the mouth, and he opens beneath it before he has time to think it strange.
- this shouldn't be happening why is this happening -
- he can't breathe. He can't turn his head. He can't so much as twitch a finger. He can't he can't he can't -
If the bed was a hand's width narrower he would have tumbled to the floor when, all at once, he could move. He remembers now waking with Corisande's arm draped over him, around his chest or waist, drawing him to her, and realizes all over again how strong his sister must be. He turns his head to the side and draws one choking breath after another past the nothing in his throat until it dissipates into an ordinary sort of nothing. He doesn't understand what holds him curled as though he's been stabbed in the gut. Was that dream, the last he remembered, one that had him screaming Corisande awake? How could it be?
He untangles himself from the bedspread. He stands and goes to the window full of dawn-gray light and quickly regrets it. In Mead he could've rushed down to the stables and gone riding out the gates through the cotton fields until his heart beat itself out and slowed again. Lampsi, for all its tall ships and markets of exotics, is a wretched rabbit warren in comparison.
He has four rooms to himself. The first, outer chamber is a study of sorts, with his armor on a stand, a table and chairs for dining in particular private, an empty bookcase. One of the pair of carved desks in the sitting room must be meant to be his, and there's another, plainer one here. The bedchamber and an indoor bath are connected to this through a dressing room in which he has not, thus far, done any dressing. Here someone has laid out the clothes for the morning on yet another chaise; he's counted six thus far. He wonders if it will be like this every day or if it's just these important occasions she doesn't trust him with. At least it hasn't been anything outrageous, so far. He'd half-feared she would pile it on like a child with a doll. It's hard for him to tell, sometimes, whether she'll play the young girl or the young queen.
If you have any particular items that you would like to wear at the ceremony, could you describe them? That way I can be certain to accommodate them in the planning. He had answered that question, tersely as he could. And he'd worn Jael's sword, and Jael's dagger. She hasn't told him not to wear the dagger this morning, so he does. But maybe she knew he'd do that, too, because of the brooches set with green stones pinning shut the cuffs of the crisp white shirt draped over the side of the chaise.
The larger brooch at the collar is a circle of enameled green, a smaller circle of greenish-blue inside it, sliced in two by a stalk of goldenrod. It's the old crest of Io; the blue circle, he remembers, represents the springs. He bears it when he goes there, on a cloak or a shield or at least a heavy signet ring, as if to justify his presence. All other times, when called on to do so, he's used the Lillan horse, Mead's cornucopia of flowers, or a combination thereof. Ah, it's another kind of separation, for him to wear a symbol he doesn't share with Mother and Corisande.
Not hers, though, he finds himself thinking, not the royal star, or her personal arms, but his. What does that mean, if anything?
"Good morning," she calls as he opens the door. He manages to summon a noise of acknowledgment in his closed mouth.
She sits at her desk, an unfolded letter in her hand. She too is already dressed. She's turned her head toward him and jewels glint among her curls. She smiles and gestures. "Corisande sent these last night. She says you must have forgotten them, in all the fuss."
The wedding gifts on the sideboard are stacked still higher than last night, the larger ones finding their way onto the floor. Next to them now are two sizable wooden boxes, tied with red ribbon. The smaller one is carved with flowering vines. It looks like the still-smaller one Corisande keeps in her study, to contain correspondence that requires reply. The larger is well-built but plain, its varnished sides unmarked except for a long scratch across the lid from when he knocked it over and it -
He tears away the ribbon, casts aside the lid, snatches up the water-stained letter on top. There it is. The only seal in the broken wax is a thumbprint. It came from a Lillan kitchen boy who went on leave to see his family and was paid a lassi ("A whole lassi!") to deliver it to Kevan upon his return. There's no writing on the outside but inside it's Jael's hand. Inside, he reads again, Jael was no longer cautious, Jael no longer kept the secret on ink and paper. Jael wrote Remember that I love you more than I can ever say. At its end, Jael instructed him to keep watch for his next letter. He hadn't kept enough of a watch. He'd been riding in the forest that day, but not in the right places, or at the right time.
A peculiar thing to read in front of one's wife the morning after one's wedding. He knows that much of how things ought to be. But he can't let go of it, not yet. He plunges the other hand into the box and comes out with more - Corisande and Charmion's handwriting on these, dating back more than eight years. Yes. They're the ones he left in the box atop the chest of drawers in his room in Lillah. How did Corisande get hold of them? The simplest answer seems the most impossible, at least at first. Well, Mother has always approved of Corisande, astute and composed. She must have been even more disgusted to know that he got Corisande involved.
But Corisande's all right. She has to be all right. And if anyone could bring these out of Lillah, with or without Mother's knowledge, it would be his sisters.
Jael's letter has crumpled in his hand. He smoothes it best as he can, folds it up, puts it back inside with the rest of the letters, finds the lid and returns it. He gives the contents of the other box a more cursory check - yes, the ones he left in Mead. He dashes his sleeve over his face (use a handkerchief, Kevan, you look like a ill-mannered child. And you, Thaddeus - And Thaddeus declared stoutly, But I am a child!).
Elodie has returned her attention to her own papers, but the moment after he looks to her she looks back. He notices now that the light over her desk has no candle or lantern to go with it. He doesn't flinch, this time. He's told himself: Queen Fidelia was a Lumen, and Queen Ladesh, and so on and on. It was only that they hardly ever showed it. Old Duke Paulus, too, seemed much like any other man aside from being the kind of man who would pledge himself to Hyacinth.
Elodie gives him another smile as she says that he looks well this morning, she hopes he finds his clothes well-chosen, shall we take a look at the gifts after breakfast? By the by, the following weekend she plans to go riding in Caloris. She'll be spending a night at her father's castle but most of the two days will be out of doors. She's hardly an expert horsewoman but would he care to accompany her? The smile widens with real-looking delight at his affirmative grunt. Until it's time to go to breakfast she keeps talking about Caloris and foreign trade and how many people might become Lumen if they only had a chance at it. He has nothing better to do than listen.
Mother apologizes on Thaddeus's behalf for his absence. He is unwell this morning, and will be resting until their departure. Behind Mother, Adele cups her hand and mouths "Hangover!" Kevan glances to the side in time to see the flicker of Elodie suppressing a giggle before she assumes an appropriately solemn expression and offers to send one of her physicians, or at the least an herbalist. Meanwhile servants quietly remove a place setting and chair at the massive round table draped in white damask, and adjust the rest accordingly.
The advantage to a round dining table, he remembers this much from etiquette lessons, is that it alleviates some of the quibbles over precedence. Seating remains a logical puzzle he has fortunately never been required to solve. He only need observe the results. The King Dowager sits at Elodie's right hand, Kevan at her left, and the Duchess of Ursul at his own left. In between her and Ignatius sit Corisande, Briony, and the limpid-eyed Lumen priestess who's the Duchess's all-but-wife. On Elodie's side the King Dowager is followed by her two uncles, her one aunt, and her eldest cousin - the younger two have been relegated to the children's table with Noll and four of Charmion's. Adair of Elath sits between Adele and the Duke of Mazomba. Mother sits nearly across from them, flanked by Kiran and, thanks to Thaddeus's absence, Charmion's son Linley. A pair of lowered dark heads - Linley's as black and Kiran's as brown as their fathers. Jael never lowered his head to anyone, never -
" - like you, Lottie," Elodie's saying. "You're the granddaughter of a queen of Nova, so you're the granddaughter of a Lumen. You stand as good a chance as Briony. And of course, Uncle, that means you stand an even better chance -"
Kevan isn't sure why the King Dowager's fingers have gone tight on his silverware, or why the Countess of Nix tenses and relaxes all in one moment. The Duke of Merva demurs that he is far too old to learn such things even if he were capable. The Duchess of Ursul says that long-lived ancestors of hers have left the ducal crystal to heirs in their forties and fifties. Mother asks about the risks with a tone almost but not quite caustic - something has caught her notice and now she's challenging Elodie to prove it as promising as it seems.
He remembers Corisande saying as she described yet another gala for the Good Lady he hadn't gone to that while she agreed the princess didn't cut her mother's imposing figure, up close she was engaging, a born charmer. Yes, she agreed, Her Highness was clearly a bright girl, and full of ideas even if those ideas were, sometimes, a little odd. That ingenious bookmaking machine, for instance - the first thing she did with it was bring out a set of quartos extolling the virtues of properly-used magic, of all things. That was nearly two years, a rogue Lumen brought down in front of the court, and an invasion from the west ago.
Elodie asks them to recall those fortuitous earthquakes on the Tombulan border. Asks them to imagine if such natural defenses could be summoned as needed, instead of hoping for the mercy of the gods. Ignatius blinks. Mother raises an eyebrow. The Duchess of Ursul smiles, very slightly. Briony looks on, fascinated.
The talk of Lumen eventually comes to a standstill with promises to speak of it in detail later, in private. From earlier this morning Kevan can guess some of it. Talk of how every single crystal wielded against the Doomshadow still exists, somewhere, surely more accessible than the older legendary troves around Kathre Lake.
He suspects that when she laughingly assured her uncle that he was not as old as all that, she meant it for him.
Imagine. Him, a Lumen. Had he been one, the contents of every china cabinet in Lillah would have been rendered to powder.
At fourteen, Adair's voice is not quite as piping. "It's nice to see you and everyone, Mom-Arisse."
That leads to another topic, half-settled bargains presented and finalized. Adair's majority is not far off, and in a matter of weeks he'll leave Mazomba and move back to Elath for good. Kiran and Adele and a contingent of bodyguards will be spending the next months there to help him get settled.
"Thaddeus too?" says Adair, guileless.
"Perhaps," says Mother. A deal here, a deal there, an inconvenient son just so, and according to Corisande it could be she's forgiven Elodie for shipping the boy off to Mazomba in the first place.
He means to thank Corisande for the letters but he holds back waiting for an open moment that never arrives. Corisande and Ignatius want to take a last outing around Lampsi with their children, before Briony goes to Ursul with the Duchess and her lifemate. A round of quick goodbyes, Corisande's hand flitting on his shoulder as she wishes him all the best, and they're gone almost before he can get his mouth open. He goes over that a few times, reproaching himself - too slow to react, too boneheaded. He did say goodbye. There's that. And he'll see them again, he's very nearly certain of that. If nothing else he doubts he'll be able to avoid the next palace ball for the Good Lady.
The rest of the younger children rise from their table, descend upon Adair and their older siblings, and rush off to the gardens, their parents in tow, Adele waving after them. Adele herself would like to play a set or two of tennis. If it's not too much trouble, Kiran would like to observe at the Queen's Hospital - is it true that there's a set of healers there who specialize in setting right the minds of lunatics? The look Mother gives him then is uncharacteristically sharp, for the sort of looks she gives to Kiran. She softens at the bewildered look Kiran gives her in return, and she tells Elodie she has (we have, she says, actually, the "we" of the royalty of the east) been considering funding a similar institution in Lillah. Elodie smiles and agrees that more such can only be more help. Then Elodie is getting up and showing Adele to the tennis courts, Kiran just behind them, and somehow he ends up trailing in their wake like an overgrown and misbegotten duckling, carefully not looking behind them where Mother and the King Dowager remain seated at the table.
They begin playing with mixed doubles, but as it has always been Kiran spends too long contemplating trajectories to react to the ball in time and every time Kevan manages to connect it flies out of bounds. It's still nearly an hour before the courier would've told the hospital to expect Kiran so they take to one of the benches to the side and watch Elodie and Adele dart back and forth.
Apropos of nothing he says, "It should have been you."
Adele wrote now and then how he turned heads at school (the other day I caught little Princess Elodie blushing! she proclaimed from the dignified perspective of thirteen); no one says it now but when Kiran was eleven they were already saying the best of Jael's and Mother's looks combined in him. He's always been clever, an excellent student, and would be an excellent administrator in turn. Maybe some queens wouldn't like a consort who aspired to be more than ornamental, but after the way she talked at Kevan this morning he doubts Elodie is one of them. Kiran would be recommended over him in every respect but one, and that thing - that thing - shouldn't matter in the slightest to anyone with the least bit of sense. Somehow it has, though, because how else, why else...?
For lack of anything else to do with it Kevan's hand lies beside him on the bench, upturned, fingers curled. He feels Kiran's fingers find his, brush against them, then move down to his palm and into a clasp. "No," says Kiran, soft-spoken as always, as he does this. "I'm fine. More than fine. You know about Mother's plan for that, right?"
"I know." Nobody's calling him Lord Lillah yet but they will be, however reluctantly, before the month is out. Kevan catches gossip that he himself is secretly seething about losing his place to a younger child and a commoner's son at that, but that's one thing he's never been angry about because Kiran is as much or more Mother's son as he is and it's not as though he ever expected or wanted the duchy to come his way.
"And we know."
As a reply it doesn't make much sense. There's a weight to it, though, the same weight that has Kiran's hand tightening on his best as it can, and that makes him turn his head. Kiran's head is raised, as well, and they're of a height now; their eyes are level. When he looks directly into Kiran's eyes, the clear brown of them, they pierce like Mother's. He almost pulls his hand away at that thought, but makes himself still.
"Adele and I. We've known for a while. Mother wanted..." Kiran swallows. "Mother wanted to be absolutely sure. He didn't, by the way. Father, I mean. Not to the three of us."
Of course not. Of course not. They were his blood. They were his children. He'd loved them but not in that way, he couldn't have, couldn't, what in the name of the gods would make Mother imagine such a thing? No. It was only him. Only him, and he'd never called him Father no matter how much, sometimes, he'd been tempted to -
Kiran opens his hand and lets Kevan's fall only to put out both arms, put them around him. He turns as much as he can while still seated on the bench. His first impulses are to melt, to yield, to put his own arms forward and tighten his grip. It's the very strength of these impulses that spurs on the next ones - to shove, to yank away (secret quiet tear us apart) and caught between them he goes stiff as a corpse. No. No, that's ludicrous. He's perfectly capable of touching someone without lying with them and in any case nothing of the sort would happen out here under the sun with their sister and his - his wife only feet away. And no, he can't clutch Kiran like a drowning man. Whatever he knows he's still so young. Younger, and will always be. Even Corisande, older wiser Corisande, could only go under with him.
And for his next feat, will he drag Queen Elodie of Nova beneath the waves?
Kiran senses something amiss and hurriedly breaks the embrace, but when he draws away now he's holding both of Kevan's hands. "I'm sorry," he says. For what, Kevan thinks. "We all hope you'll be happy here. More than anything."
His voice comes out wrong, somehow both too sharp and too soft, when he says, "Thaddeus too?"
Kiran gives him a firm nod. "Thaddeus too."
Even if it's a lie (must be, must be, how could he ever, how could it ever ever ever, with the hate in his eyes, with the ground scorched and salted barren as Borealis tundra), he doesn't want to call him out. Not here, and now.
Adele and Elodie are laughing. On the weekend he will go riding in Caloris. He is not, he thinks, particularly unhappy. There's a start. And perhaps, just perhaps, a girl who knows everything will know how to keep afloat.