Here's my most over-revised chapter so far, because I'm just going to keep going if I don't get this up. I'm following a scenario I already used in "Second Best" (which I wrote two very different versions of), with a few angles I hadn't thought about then, but this isn't necessarily meant to be in full continuity. While I was at it, I worked in a reference to probably the best Greek mythology novel ever that really worked.
As the Ice Queen spoke, an inset image showed a map alternating with scenes of devastation. "The Luwen Incident began as a routine exchange between mobile artillery units that both reported the other had crossed the border," she said. "At some point, an officially abandoned munitions warehouse exploded. Records described it as on the outskirts of Luwen, but by then it was within a substantial suburb. The blast was estimated as equivalent to 20 to 30 tons of high explosives, comparable to the smallest known nuclear weapons. Almost all casualties were the result of the explosion or associated, and often misidentified, falling debris. By the way, what was Ostania's largest bomber at the time?"
"Oh I got this one!" Yuri said, with a hint of his own voice creeping in. He closed his eyes as he recited: "The Blackbell Griffin, 15 tons maximum takeoff weight, including the plane of course. But the approved combat weight was only 12 point 5. And it wasn't really available for another year…"
Loid only gritted his teeth. "There were 6,400 people in Luwen on the day the war started," he said. "If all the people who said they planted the explosives for Westalis or Ostania or Hugaria or the Centralian royal family or the Lord of Lemuria had been there, there would have been more of them than us."
"And the people who say they were in Luwen would outnumber the armed forces of Ostania and Westalis combined," Fiona said. "But you were there; even Handler's sure of that. You said you saw the blast. You said you and your friends had played in the warehouse it came from. So did you see bombs falling? Did you see any planes? That would be interesting, since three antiaircraft batteries never fired a shot!"
Loid sighed and spoke a name that drew a startled stare from Fiona. The Prince also looked up with interest. "Yes, I know that name," he said. "It… was… an accident. The army placed demolition charges in the likeliest path of an Ostanian attack. Whatever they planned from there, the warehouse exploded on its own. Things full of explosives need very little assistance to explode. Both sides knew that within hours, as I'm sure you're ready to prove, but chose to blame each other rather than halt the plans they had already put in motion… or admit how badly those plans were already failing."
"Of course I know that," Fiona hissed. "Everyone who knows anything knows that now. When you told me the story, I asked you if you thought Westalis had done it. You said no. You said Ostania dropped the bombs. I believed you, because it was you. But you already knew then, didn't you?" She slapped him across the face.
For a few long moments, they stared at each other. "I told you the story to see if you could understand it for yourself," Loid said. "I knew as soon as you asked the question, that you could not. You still wanted to see right and wrong, even if we were in the wrong. I knew it would be useless to try to tell you more."
"That was your town, Twilight," she said. She pushed her hair back. "It was your friends. It was your family. It was everyone you knew. They blew them all up. They planned to do it. Not his people, ours. Who cares if they meant to do it then? Don't you even care?" When he gave no further answer, she curled up in the Prince's lap. "I can't believe I ever thought I wanted you."
"It will be all right," the Prince said, stroking her long mane. "You are my woman." He looked at Loid in unmistakable satisfaction.
"Yes!" Loid shouted. "That is why she married you, not me!"
"Don't let him confuse you with his mind games," Fiona said. "He opposed our love…"
"I opposed Handler having you lie to him by using my identity as honeytrap bait," Loid said, "and she was lying when she said you could be assigned as my wife if you had his child!"
"Well, of course it sounds bad if you put it that way," Handler said. She looked at Fiona. "Honestly? I only let it go forward because there was already a betting pool if you would do it."
"Well, I never lied to the only man I ever loved," Fiona said. "I mean, I did try. But it never worked."
The Prince moved to put an arm around the girl. "Aw, we all laugh about it now!" he said in Twilight's voice.
Willow flinched away. "Daddy, don't touch!" she shouted. She looked back at Loid with a quivering lip. "So… Daddy's my real father?"
"What you are wondering is whether you ever believed otherwise," Loid said. "Trust me, it is normal." He looked to Fiona. She only hid the half of her face that her hair did not cover.
"Then," Willow said, "why did they make me outside of mother?"
"That is difficult to explain," Loid said. "I can see why your parents wanted to wait. I can tell you why my wife and I conceived our son artificially. We could not be sure if she would be able to conceive a child without observing the earliest stages of development in a controlled environment. Then there are things we do not enjoy the way other men and women do. She had the further difficulty that she had only experienced close physical contact with her half-brother, who is your father. Finally, she has exceptional abilities that require great self-control. On certain occasions, she has injured me, by no fault of her own, which only magnified the anxieties she already had." The girl's face flushed, but she trembled in fear.
Loid looked to Fiona again. "I told you the lesson that mattered then," he said. "It was what my mother said to me: You cannot always tell the truth, especially to the ones you love. So if you must lie to them, tell the lie that will lead them to the greater truth."
"And I told you then what she could do with the dog!" she screamed back.
Loid sighed and looked back to Willow. "Your mother lied to you, but she told you part of the truth," he said. "Here is the whole. I rejected her as a partner on a mission that would have required a woman to live with me as my wife. I thought it would be a kindness if she did not know that. The reasons for my decision were not wrong, but I wronged her. Everything you just had to hear followed from that. To that extent, I am responsible for your birth. If there had been no better way, I would have raised you as my own. Just remember, if anything had been different, you would never have been born."
"Oh, Mommy!" Willow said.
She threw herself into her mother's lap, and the Prince enfolded them both. They both looked up when he spoke. "`Life is a masque, till lovers we meet face to face,'" he said in his own voice, and Willow joined in as he recited a familiar verse, "`when we have faces.'"
Loid looked intently at the Prince. "You understand," he said. "Even as you are, you understand her, and me. Come back to us, Yuri. Nightfall, if you will not listen to him, listen to me. Whatever you felt for me, you chose to marry Yuri, even over me. You told me then that you understood what I have told your daughter. You said that if you could choose, there was nothing you would trade for the love and the happiness you found when you saw her face. Your love is not gone. This man still loves you as much as you love him, and he is trying to make you happy. But if you can't be happy with him in the world you built, do not blame me!"
"Of course he makes me happy, you self-important fraud!" Nightfall screamed, louder than before. "He makes me the happiest woman in the world! But I never had a choice! None of us ever had a choice!"
And the Prince carried the mother and daughter from the room as they wept.
