Secret
I knew I loved her since the day I saw her hand.
"Micaaaaiah!" I was screaming in a way more like talking loudly than screaming, keeping most of the urgency inside my heart but I was running like I meant it, full-out down the cobbled streets.
A wagon passed between me and the swaying sheet of silver moving away from my reach. She was down the hill by the time it had passed and I followed fast, calling out again in my awkward way. I followed through the big stone arch at the top of the brick-laid, wide alley, between buildings tall enough to create shade all day, and behind the apothecary at the end in a short, narrow space between Daien's outer wall and the crates behind the shop. She was huddled behind a stack of empty wooden boxes, breathing hard and I stepped up to her warily, catching my breath.
"Micaiah… I'm sorry. What did I do?" She glanced up at me between strands of pale hair and then looked away again, forcing herself further into her nook, holding the hand that had started the whole thing out of my sight. I reached out and touched her shoulder without hesitation because we were the age where that wasn't humiliating, where having a mark was. At the contact she turned to me and I was not too young to realize she was remarkably beautiful with tears glistening as they trailed down her much grieved face.
All I'd done was ask what the mark was on the back of her hand.
"Sothe…" she whispered behind the potions shop at the back of the alley that's shaded all day, "can you keep a secret?" And I knew I loved her.
She needed me to.
Nothing has changed for us since that day among discarded herb crates and this among thrones and royal tapestries. Nothing has changed and that would be for the better except that I've never fallen in love with her. Except that I'm not in love with my wife. I love her with all I can offer love but I'm as far from in love as I can be, and if I've ever told a man that the two sentiments are one, I am both a liar and a rogue.
Because it's not working with only love, marriage doesn't work unless your souls complete each other as well as your minds and bodies do and compared to my queen, I don't have a soul.
I've lived my life happily in the shadows but ever since our hands were bound on the balcony before a crowd of people so deeply touched our parents would have been hard pressed to express more sincere joy, I've been shadowed by the brightest rising sun my days have shown me; I've been eclipsed by the Maiden of Dawn. I won't deny I have a place supporting her, she would wear thin without a place to turn and be human or heron or whatever she wants, but that role wears me endlessly down because I know she feels things I've only dreamed about when I hold her in my arms.
We slept together in a blessed wedding bed the night we took out oaths and she felt complete while I felt sick because I've called her my sister before.
(We don't have an heir).
She grips my hand when we take visitors in the throne room and she gets a boost of reassurance because I've never not squeezed back even though I've only felt skin flattening against muscle and bone.
I hold her close and warm as we kiss before retreating to our respective chambers and I know she's feeling butterfly wings caress her insides every single night. Every single night I feel absolutely nothing but a faint desire to breath through my mouth again.
I'm not in love at all, for four years I've smiled when my queen whispers, "I'm so in love with you," and only been able to tell her, "I love you, too," because I already lie enough.
And she's a saint, she heals with her hands and word, she's erected a nation where a castle was once crumbling, she's in love with her city, her people.
She's so in love.
And I'm 'the King'.
Lady Micaiah and the King.
Our Lady and the King.
Sothe and my Queen.
"Sothe," she's held my arm so many times, so many days, so many years, the same gentle way, "how are you? How was your day?"
"I'm glad to see you," I've answered her thus so many times, so many days, so many years, the same indirect way, "my Queen."
"You remember the general you served under during the Mad King's War?"
"Ike? He left four years ago, what of him?"
"He's returned and he's here for supper tonight, he'll leave in the morning before breakfasting."
"Good to hear," I smiled at her genuinely because I love the way she speaks, I love the way she opens our doors, I love who she is. "See you for supper."
I always make it out of the room before the guilt starts to gnaw. I wasn't looking forward to dining. I wasn't half ready to see something I couldn't have, I wasn't fractionally ready to enter the hall and sit at my end as she sat at hers while they sat side by side between us; Ike and his tactician. I'd forgotten that the mage journeyed with him, I'd forgotten what love looked like. The commander smiled as he rose and bowed, hailing,
"Good evening to the young parents of the ever growing Daien. Many thanks for the reception."
Soren followed suit, offering a timid smile and I felt a pang as our eyes met because I knew my seat belonged to him, my crown should have rested upon the mark marring his brow because it was his father's.
"Greetings, Vanguard and company, many thanks for attending our humble nation while much grander ones surround us. We pray the time is merrily spent."
And I returned the ghost of a smile that gave my wordless mouth a task.
I haven't tasted food for ages, unless the splendors of the earth have grown to taste of deceit, betrayal, and shame, but this night I tasted what our visitors remarked upon because I was tasting it with feeling borrowed from our guests. Every word they spoke, every contraction and flex of every muscle they moved, every breath their lungs took in, everything they did on every level was wholly for the other.
I drank a hearty laugh that made a soft-spoken heart forget itself and skip a beat, I relished the extension of a slender hand that a warrior's eyes followed without watching, I consumed booted feet unashamedly latched at the ankle beneath the table.
They were in love, so in love.
And when my Queen smiled with soft excitement at only me, my body was more empty than a dead man's because the calm, humored one I returned was exactly the image of what it was supposed to be with none of the emotions I now felt to be mocking.
The first pang deepened and intensified.
My adoring fraternity for her screamed at me for not telling all the times she'd given me the chance because I knew she couldn't believe that we weren't in love after loving each other for years. After dinner she asked, as she always asked,
"Sothe, is there anything you want to talk about?"
And once, early on, a month into our reign perhaps, I'd told her,
"I feel like you're growing apart from me," and she'd smiled and said so sincerely,
"I'm right here, we're closer than ever." And I'd persisted,
"I don't feel like I'm being a proper husband to you, I feel I'm not supporting you as I should."
And I swear to every goddess I know that she considered my words with the gravity I'd imparted them. But we never found a solution.
"Trust me, Sothe, you are," she had told me, with such earnesty that I'd stopped trying to explain and I never attempted again. Until this night of the visit when I opened my mouth and almost asked her if she had noticed how much more in love our guests were than we.
"I hope you dream well, my Queen, " I answered and with that sealed my fate. I would step back for the woman I loved. There is only one way to break a marriage with honor and I was not afraid.
Even now I am not afraid, as the time grows nearer. I can hear Ike in the guest room beside me and the softer voice of Soren as a dull noise I don't need to hear words of to understand. I rest against the open window casement and listen to them laugh as contented souls do, and without seeing them I witness a true embrace in the reflections of the moon.
The wind is light tonight and I will be glad to go with it, as a whisper can. I'm not afraid in the least because everything is at peace and I am a willing part of everything. I know my choice is right.
The only pain I will feel is regret that she and I could not love in the same way, that I was ever a brother while she became my wife. I watch, with detached fascination, my feet perch on the windowsill and I pull my best-used knife from my belt before discarding the leather.
I close my eyes and watch Soren at their window and Ike cross the room to hold his better half.
My hand has moved of its own accord and I share their warmth (though mine is partially blood while theirs is wholly deep affection). I pull the blade from my stomach and drop it before me into space.
If I had been a better brother, I could have told her that our two sentiments were not one but perhaps I saved her a troubled heart. Now, as it is, our half happy marriage is honorably broken, a proper husband will come forward (and there will be heirs). She will understand when the watch finds me that I loved her very, very much and I wanted her to be in love with someone, not simply in love but with a soul that rivals her fervor, someone suited to a life in her blinding light.
And I've held mine since the day in a shaded alley behind a herb shop, so now, as I let go of the window's edges and let gravity claim its prize, I ask if she can keep hers of a man too unremarkable to share the passions of a sunrise, of a husband too endeared to leave her in a less permanent manner, of a brother too soft spoken to warn his sister of their misdeeds, of a boy who speaks for the first time since he knew she was most beautiful in tears,
"Micaiah… can you keep a secret?"