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I felt warm. I felt happy.
I felt lightheaded, and the canvas walls of the tent had started to blur at the edges of my vision.
Cormac had been right when he said I would only have a short time before I’d have to rest. I wanted to stay awake, to look on Tristan’s face, to feel my wonder and his joy. But my eyes refused to stay open.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
“Hush,” Tristan said, stroking my cheek. “You won’t heal unless you sleep.” I gave in and let my eyes slide closed, and he kept talking, low and soothing. I clung to the murmur of his voice, even when it was joined by Cormac’s deeper tones.
“Tell me again this is normal,” Tristan said. His fingers rubbed over my skin, slow, steady, pulling a little. Worry tugged at the edges of his words the same way.
I wanted to comfort him, but I was just a spectator in my own life right now, it seemed.
“There’s nothing normal about any of this,” Cormac said, “but it’s to be expected.”
Tristan huffed quietly. “He’s rarely anything that’s expected.”
“He’ll give you all sorts of trouble, my friend.”
“I know,” Tristan said. He paused, and I felt the blanket move as he straightened it before taking my hand. “It’s glorious, isn’t it?”
I fell asleep to the sound of their low, mingled laughter.
--
Days passed before Cormac allowed me to cross into the Solace, days of sleeping and healing and Cormac scowling at me. When the time finally came, Grace refused to join us. She hugged me gently and kissed my brow, her hand lingering, straightening my hair.
“I have to keep trying,” she said. “The Queen, the Invisibles – someone must see reason.”
She’d been so young when our mother died. Few enough years that she could have been overcome by Father’s influence altogether, but Mother lived in her still. In kindness. Determination. Hope.
“I should stay with you,” I pressed, but she shook her head, and over her shoulder, Tristan’s eyebrows drew down. I’d tried again and again, but neither of them would hear me.
It wouldn’t have mattered if they had. “You’ll convalesce as far from those vipers you call countrymen as I can get you,” said Cormac from behind me, and that was that.
We crossed under cover of night, Tristan and I accompanied by Cormac and under the guard of two others. After the crossing, I felt drained, weaker even than when I’d first awakened. I was bundled up into a carriage where I leaned against Tristan, his arm round my shoulders and his breath against my ear soothing me into a doze.
I woke to the feel of the carriage pulling to a stop and the sound of horses whickering and stamping. My head spun, and I trembled through waves of resurging pain.
“Miles,” Tristan said, “we have to get out now.”
I let myself be cajoled out of the carriage, helped up a flight of stairs, and tucked into bed before I shut my eyes against the world.
--
I knew I’d been set back by the journey, at least when I was alert enough to know anything at all. Mostly I dozed, awakened, and ate whatever Tristan or Cormac spooned into my mouth. Then I slept again, Tristan’s body warm against mine in the darkness of night, his hands stroking my hair in the daylight, soothing against pain and nightmares. I stayed lost in a dream world, barely registering my surroundings, caught in a hazy cycle that I couldn’t will myself to break.
Until one day I finally did.
When I opened my eyes, I saw Tristan perched on a window seat across the room, sunlight illuminating his face as he gazed out on what lay beyond. The gauzy, late-afternoon halo made him glow in a way that sparked warmth deep down in my belly. A sound escaped my mouth, a soft sigh, a tiny oh of wonder, and he turned to me, a smile chasing the thoughtful look off his face. He pushed up and crossed the room in a few long strides, settling onto the bed next to me.
He touched my forehead, my hair, my shoulder, and I levered myself up on my elbows, managing to sit under my own power for the first time since we’d come to the Solace. Tristan adjusted the pillows and blankets around me. “Cormac told me you’d be more yourself today,” he said. “I wasn’t certain if I believed him.”
“Really?” My voice came out thin and thready, and I had to clear my throat. “I don’t think I’d dare disbelieve Cormac about anything.”
Tristan’s mouth quirked. “He has that effect on his patients,” he said, “but I’ve known him since we were children.”
“I can’t quite imagine that.”
“Hm.” He reached for a pitcher on the nightstand and poured me a glass of water, pressing it into my hands. “How are you feeling?”
I paused a moment to take stock. “Weak as a newborn babe,” I said. “But not dizzy, and I don’t hurt so much as I did.”
He cocked an eyebrow as though he knew that could easily mean I was still in agony. “Anything else?”
“I’m hungry.”
“That,” he said, “is a very good sign.” He stood and pointed a stern finger at me. “Stay here.”
“As if I’ve a choice?”
He shrugged, looking unrepentant, and moved to the door.
“Wait,” I said, and he paused, turning to look back at me. I’d spent days unable to care, but now my head was starting to fill with questions. I began with the most rudimentary. “Where are we, exactly?”
“This is my home,” Tristan answered. He glanced out the window, his gaze seeming to catch and stick for a moment before he focused back on me. “Our home,” he continued, “if you’d like.”
His tone remained light, but he clenched one hand tight on the doorjamb before shaking it loose again. My breath stuttered right along with his heart.
He left the room, and I closed my eyes, steadying myself to the rhythm of his footsteps descending the staircase. When the sound faded, I looked around, really noticing for the first time. Had I done so before, I’d have known without asking that this room, at least, could belong to no one but Tristan. It was filled with too many blankets and too many pillows, the floor covered in bright-colored but mismatched rugs.
But the furniture was fine, carved wood well-polished, metal accents shining bright, unblemished. The windows boasted panes larger and clearer than I’d seen in the finest homes in Kingston. Detailed embroidery covered the tall, pleated curtains. I thought of Tristan’s fifty years and of the agelessness of the Amaranthines. How long had this home stood before Tristan was even born?
Tired and in need of sustenance, my mind refused to consider the answer.
In time, Tristan returned with the first thing resembling real food I’d seen since the asylum, and he sat with me, patiently answering what I managed to ask him when my mouth wasn’t full. But I didn’t ask what concerned me most.
Our home. An entire world in a single word.
--
Grace arrived to visit the next morning. The crossing seemed to have no adverse affect on her well-being, and she radiated happiness to see me out of bed and sitting on the window seat. She settled herself in the chair of a nearby desk.
“You look well,” she said, “if a bit oddly-clothed.”
I blushed. I was still adjusting to the tunic and leggings instead of a proper suit and trousers. “I’m a bit at the mercy of local custom.”
She twitched her heavy skirts. “Actually, I’m quite envious.”
“I’m sure you could find someone to adorn you like the Amaranthine ladies.”
She laughed. “In time, perhaps.” Her smile faded with her words. “Miles —”
“What’s happening, Grace?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Oh, there’s a great deal of talk, but it makes no difference. Diplomacy appears to be a quite a lengthy process.”
“Nothing over the negotiating table is better than nothing over guns and swords,” I offered.
“Yes.” She sighed. “But I don’t know what to do.”
She spoke at length, and I listened as carefully as I could, recovering as I still was. Her words were peppered with Tristans and Aifes and other names I didn’t yet know, and I wondered at her ease speaking of and with beings she would have dismissed as myth mere weeks ago.
In our whole lives, she’d never doubted that she could walk into a room and be a part of whatever was happening, to be worthy. Myth and legend seemed to be no exception. I’d no answers, no real advice to give; all I could offer, she already had.
As she’d said, nothing.
She’d stopped speaking. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, “You’re still not well. I shouldn’t be telling you all this.”
“Grace, I’d go crazy if you didn’t. I’m only sorry I’m not able to help.”
She nodded.
“Keep going,” I said.
I’d meant for her to keep speaking, but the words sounded different once they hung between us. Keep going. Don’t give up. Aeland, her people, our home (our home) —they were worth it.
“I know,” she said. “I will.”
--
“Why,” I demanded of Cormac once he’d swept my sister out of the room and on her way, “is she able to cross here and look as though she’s just been out to tea, when I was practically unconscious afterwards?”
He stood with arms folded and one eyebrow raised, looking at me as though I were an idiot. He was probably right, but I didn’t care right now. I sat there on my window perch and folded my arms and raised my eyebrow right back at him.
“Tristan says you’ve no real training,” he said, “in using your powers. In understanding what’s happening when you do.”
“Well, I was an utter failure at Storm Singing as a child.” It had felt like trying to smash my head through a brick wall.
“Which would have been a surprise to no one who had even a rudimentary understanding of magical theory.”
The offhand and unconscious insult to my father and the other mages who’d tried to coax and bludgeon anything useful from me in those lessons made me want to laugh. Bitterly, and for a long time. “All right. We’ve established I’m ignorant. That goes nowhere towards answering my question.”
“Should I begin with the physical trauma of all of that energy passing through you so quickly? Perhaps not. After all, what’s a shredded organ here or there, really?”
I blinked.
“Or we could discuss the sheer stupidity of draining yourself completely.”
“There didn’t seem to be many options at the time.”
He ignored me. “Now imagine that trip through the gate. It’s easy, even for someone not properly magical. A mere walk down the street. Takes almost nothing from you, no energy at all. Except you walked down that street as though you’d shattered every bone in your lower body and had only just stood up from surgery.”
“Oh.” I turned away to look out the window.
“No one could come back from what you did unscathed,” he said, “but most wouldn’t have come back at all.”
There was respect in his softly spoken words. But when he said unscathed, I heard unchanged, and I didn’t want to face that yet. I gazed out the window at the world beyond. A world of white walls and tall columns, of open courtyards and clustered buildings climbing the hills beside them. Columns. Fountains. Intricate carvings and wild gardens and pavement worn from use but gleaming still.
Like the house, it felt old even in the freshness of its beauty. Strong. Permanent. Transcendent.
Cormac’s footsteps crossed the floor and out of the room to thud down the stairs.
The Solace was nothing like my beloved Kingston, but still, it called to me. It would call to anyone who breathed, who felt, who yet lived.
Our home.
I could call it home. I could still call Kingston, call Aeland home. Perhaps. And yet I felt ill at ease. Exhaustion and unfamiliarity could account for some of that feeling, surely. But I knew it was more than that.
For the first time in a fortnight, I thought of old Gerald, so full of hope, but in the end dragged down by the weight of a life and an anger that wasn’t his own. Of Bill, desperately staving off madness, whose honesty about the darkness inside him had helped me to see the truth and set him free. Of Grace, casting loose all she’d believed and joining me in doing what was right.
Of Tristan, willing to live – or to die – by my side.
Most wouldn’t have come back at all.
Somehow I had, through the skill and the devotion of the people around me. Through Tristan’s willing sacrifice. Through his people’s protection. I had hope, and I had the promise of a future. What I’d yet to puzzle out was why.
Footsteps sounded again on the stairs and on the landing, and I turned to see Cormac re-enter the room. I’d known Tristan was out, returning Grace to the gate and speaking to people I’d yet to meet, but I still felt some surprise at seeing Cormac again so soon.
He carried a book in his hands.
He passed it to me without comment, and I opened the cover and flipped through the first few worn and time-yellowed pages. It lay heavy in my lap as I traced over hand-lettered words. Theory and Practice of the Healing Arts.
“That will at least keep you sitting in one place,” he said, “and will put you to sleep often enough to make me happy.”
I laughed softly, shaking my head. What a wonder.
“No magic,” he warned me. It must have been the hundredth time. Right now I found I didn’t care.
“Thank you.”
He nodded and walked away.
--
When Tristan finally returned, I sat cross-legged on the bed, squinting at Cormac’s text and pondering energy flows, healing links, and, unavoidably, the nature of home. He settled in front of me, knees touching mine. The question in his eyes matched the one I could sense in his heart, and he could surely feel my uncertainty the same way I could feel his concern. He waited, still and silent, for me to speak.
I set the book aside. “Tristan.” I tapped my fingers together. “When you said this could be our home—”
“I didn’t mean — I’d never hold you, Miles. You will always have a place here, but I know you’ve other obligations. We can decide together.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not that.”
“What, then?”
“You’re so certain. Of yourself. Of me.” And he was. He knew. He’d no doubt in him at all.
The worry melted off his face. “I knew the moment I met you.” He paused and laid a hand on my knee. “My soul cried out for yours.”
My heart skipped several beats.
“You knew, too,” he added, low and urgent. Like he was speaking it into truth.
He didn’t have to, though. It was already true. I had known. I had tried to run, to hide, to protect myself, but without question I had known. “None of which explains why,” I said. “Or how. Tristan, I’m just —” I clenched my fists, pressing them together. “I’m human.”
“Yes.” He shrugged, as if that truth were nothing, a gesture that began at his shoulders and ran all the way to the upturned palms of his hands. “You are also extraordinary.”
My throat tightened. I couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. Tristan had never needed the power he wielded to enchant me or render me helpless.
“You shine, Miles,” he said, touching my face.
“Few have ever thought so.”
“More fools them.” His fingers stroked down my jaw and dropped away. He took my still-closed hands in his and gently worked them open, turning them face up and settling them to rest on my knees. Warm tingling chased up my arms as he swayed forward and touched the thin skin of my wrists with his fingertips.
“Be still,” he whispered. Then he let his magic bleed into me, the barest trickle, and I had to shut my eyes.
“And what will Cormac say?” I asked hoarsely.
“I’m allowed,” Tristan replied, and from behind my eyelids I imagined the arch look, the half-smile and cocked eyebrow he surely sported. “Within reason. But you are not.”
No, I was not. I’d been informed, enjoined, threatened by Cormac over and again. But nothing stopped me from feeling, and so I breathed slowly and let myself do so. To feel safety. Surety. Humor. Heat. Adoration.
I knew Tristan could sense them all, echoes of what I could feel from him, twining together between us. He hummed a little and I drifted, letting the sensations build higher, deeper until I thought I should fly apart if I did not reach for him with my own magic.
“Enough,” I breathed, pulling back enough to grasp his fingers in mine. I opened my eyes and gazed into his. Everything around us seemed soft at the edges. “You’ve worked quite hard to keep me alive, remember? Don’t kill me with temptation.”
He laughed, a quiet, breathy sound, and shook his head. “No. Of course not.”
I wanted to make him laugh again. Wanted to see his smile, to feel his happiness bubbling, to know I was what caused it to be. To have it never end.
“Don’t doubt me,” he said. “Don’t doubt this. I won’t leave you. I will not regret my choice. I will have joy in every moment we have together. I insist on that.”
“Presumptuous of you.”
“Yes it is.” He drew my hands to his lips, kissed my knuckles and stroked my skin with his thumbs. “Miles. If we should be so blessed that we are both still here when you are grey and tired, I will still insist on joy. Even to the very end.”
“And what will happen then?”
“It’s not like in your stories,” he said. “Nothing so simple. You will —” He broke off and sighed. “You will go on. And I shall …”
“And you shall?” I prompted.
He shrugged again, a smaller, more careless gesture than before. “I suppose I will grieve. Deeply, and for a long time. My people understand what it is to lose forever. Lamentation is only love in another form.”
I ached even to think of it.
“It’s already done, you know. You can’t save me from it. If you’d —” He looked away. “If Cormac hadn’t been able to save you, I would still have grieved. For every moment we could have had, for everything we could have been.”
Tristan turned back to me, open-hearted, hiding nothing from me, and it pierced me through. I wanted to push him back, to bear him down onto the bed and climb on top of him, to kiss him and undress him and feel all of him again.
“Curse Cormac and his stupid rules,” I said after a long, slow breath.
“He’s been laughing at me, you know.”
“Cormac?”
“Hm. His self-centered, world-weary friend, laid low by love. I think laughing was the only way he could get over the shock.”
“You’re not those things.”
“By all means, see the best in me when you can.”
He was those things, a little. But it was my place to guard him now, somehow. “I see you,” I said, “as you are.” And it was true. I did. Or I was learning to.
“As I am,” he said. “Possessive, lately, and feeling prone to hysteria.”
“I’ll try not to come quite so close to dying. At least for a while.”
“See that you don’t.”
Still, I couldn’t quite shake it. The enormity of his world. What he was giving up for me. “It’s quite a choice you’re making.”
“I would choose you again,” he said. “I will choose you again. Over and over, until you stop wondering whether next time I will.”
The fatigue was stealing over me once more. I could have tried to hide it, but linked as we were, there was no point. Tristan tugged at me, shifting me over, bundling me back under the blankets. He climbed in after me and I leaned into him.
“Sleep, love. We can argue more when you’re rested.”
“I will keep you on your somewhat divine toes,” I yawned. “Once I can stay awake long enough.”
“Please do, Miles. Please do.”
.
There's something in the way I wanna cry
That makes me think we'll make it out alive
Walk me Home, Pink