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Nott didn't think she slept at all in that weirdly fancy room, though she curled up and pillowed her head on Caleb's thigh in the position that had grown familiar over the last several months. She was much too aware of Caleb needing to be watched over, and she tried not to think of what it felt like, the way she lay close to him, hand resting on the warmth of him through a layer of clothes, and listened to his breathing, waiting for the change that would mean he needed her in the night--not a cry or a whimper, not from Caleb. It wasn't ever that simple with Caleb.
But maybe it was, tonight. She startled to alertness, and though she didn't think she'd slept enough to dream, and hadn't really been thinking of anything, she knew exactly what she needed to do about the way Caleb was lying much too still. Frumpkin wasn't purring, which meant Caleb had either banished him or was holding too tightly to be easy on the cat; Nott lifted her head to see that it was the former, which was decidedly worse than the latter. It meant Caleb wasn't allowing himself to take any comfort at all.
Nott sat up, and saw Caleb's pale blue eyes open enough to fix on her. He lay still, not even breathing, as she scooted up to sit by his side and reached out to take his face in her hands. Caleb jolted a little at the gentle touch, his eyes flickering almost shut and opening again with a little more expression in them, and she realized that he'd been waiting for her to hurt him.
She hoped that he had thought it was a nightmare, though she knew that on this night, he would have done exactly the same if he was sure he was awake.
"Caleb," she said softly, resolutely not flinching from the ragged sound of her own voice, even though the sound of it was more painful tonight than it had been in a long time. "I need to tell you something. I can't tell you how I know it, but I need to tell you, and I need you to know I'm telling you the truth, because this is important."
Caleb nodded so slightly that she thought he was afraid of dislodging her touch, and she swept her thumbs across his cheekbones in reassurance.
"I know," Nott said, measuring out each word like a precious and volatile substance, drop by drop. "That you loved your parents very much, even when you believed they'd done something wrong."
Caleb's eyes closed, and his hand came up to curl around her wrist, but he didn't tug her touch away, didn't even hold on hard enough to hurt.
"I know that they loved you too," she went on, in the same deliberate way. "And I know that they knew you loved them, and I know you made sure that they never had to doubt it."
Caleb's eyes flashed open at that, sheened with tears and looking somewhere between hurt and angry, which was at least better than blank acceptance. "I killed--"
"I know," Nott cut in, because she didn't think it was good for him to be saying it, when he was only hurting himself with those words, the lie of them all jagged around the stone of truth at the center. "And I think I heard things in what you told us that you didn't hear while you were saying them, so I need to tell you what you told us. You need to understand."
That flash of resistance drained out of him, and Caleb opened his hand and patted her hand over his cheek, only a little patronizingly. "What do I need to understand, that I haven't already thought of a thousand times? Tell me."
"You've only thought of the same things, those thousand times," Nott pointed out. "I know you, Caleb, even if I didn't know this until tonight. I know that you absorb something and then you can repeat it to yourself ten thousand times and never once deviate from what you learned in the first place. That makes you good at spells, and good at remembering everything you've ever read, but I don't think it's good for this."
Caleb winced, and looked up at her with something that might almost have been hope, waiting for her to tell him there was a way out of this dark place where he'd been locked up alone for so long.
"You told us about the others--your friends. That you went with them, when they--"
"Killed their parents," Caleb filled in.
Nott nodded. "Eadwulf went first, and you waited for him. You didn't say how he did it."
Caleb closed his eyes. "I don't know, exactly. He was in there for a while, but there was no sound--no sound at all. I think he set a ward. When he came out his hands were clean, but the ends of his sleeves were damp, like he had to wash them."
Nott brushed her fingers over his temples until he opened his eyes. "So that was his choice," she said. "That was what he wanted to do--the way he wanted to do it. With his own hands, where no one could see or hear what he did. And Astrid, she wanted to look her parents in the eyes while she killed them, even though they didn't know it. She wanted to watch them."
A tear slipped from Caleb's eye, and his lips pressed hard together. He'd been at that meal, eaten that food, watched those people to their deaths. She wondered, irrelevantly, what he'd eaten that night, and if even the smell of those dishes would make him sick to this day. She thought so.
Nott wiped the tear away with her thumb, and said, "But then there was you, Caleb. You said you didn't question it--didn't break--until you'd done it, but you chose. Knowing what you thought you knew, believing what you believed, you chose how you would do it. You didn't want to see them, or hurt them directly. And you didn't want them to see you."
"Ja, even then I was a coward," Caleb murmured, and Nott gave him a sharp little shake, just enough to make him look at her again, listening with parted lips and wide eyes.
"Even then, you didn't want to do it," Nott pointed out sternly. "Because you loved them, and you knew they loved you. And you gave them a gift, Caleb--you gave them the most important gift anyone can give a mother, or a father."
Nott had to choose each word carefully now, because this was the heart of it, the part that she had to say and still could not bear to truly explain.
"They died," Nott said. "And that's terrible. And I'm sure it hurt, and I'm sure they were afraid."
"I heard," Caleb said, his eyes going vague, looking back through time to that night. "I heard my father calling my mother's name, I heard my mother praying. Then just--screams. Then only the fire."
"Yes," Nott said, because that much she couldn't take from him, couldn't change it or make it easier. "But I know, and I need you to know--even then, you gave them a gift, and if you'd asked them to choose, they would have chosen it above anything else. Because no matter how much it hurt, or how scared they were, they died knowing that their son, their Caleb, who they loved so very much, and who they knew loved them--" Caleb's eyes closed, and streams of tears slipped free. This time Nott let them go, wetting her hands and Caleb's cheeks.
"They knew that their boy, their precious, brilliant, wonderful boy, was safe and far away, and no matter what happened to them, he was going to be all right. You let them go on knowing that, and never doubt it, by the way you chose to do what you had to do. And they weren't wrong, Caleb. They weren't wrong, and the gift you gave them wasn't a lie, because you did love them, and you do love them. And you are safe now, and far away, still learning and growing--and you have others to look after you now, even if they can't. You have someone to love you."
Caleb squeezed his eyes shut tighter and tried to shake his head; Nott clamped down, holding him still and leaning in until her forehead touched his.
"I know this, Caleb. I know this to be true. They were glad despite it all, and if they are anywhere now, if they know all the truth, I know that they are still glad, that you are safe, and that you are loved."
His hands came up to her shoulders, gripping hard, and he drew in an audible, ragged breath.
Nott lifted her head far enough to see that he'd opened his eyes. "I know," she said softly, searching his gaze. "I know you can't really believe this now. I know you're not ready. And I can't tell you what makes me so sure. But even if you can't believe what I'm telling you yet, I need you to believe me. Can you do that?"
Caleb blinked rapidly, his lips working silently for a moment before he gave the tiniest nod, more felt under her hands than seen. After another few careful breaths, he whispered, barely audible even to her, "I--Yes. Yes, Nott, I believe in you. More than anything."
"Then that's enough for now," she whispered back. "Go to sleep, Caleb. You've had a long day."
She leaned in again and kissed his pale forehead, and even though nothing about it was right, and nothing about it was the same, there was just a moment when she remembered how it felt when it was. When she was.
And maybe that was why she'd had to say it, in the end. Maybe she'd needed to know not just that Caleb could find a way to forgive himself, but that he could believe that she would know this. That even Nott as he knew her, a goblin and thief, a drunkard and liar, could know something important about what it meant to be a mother, and to love a child, and to go on loving him and being loved by him even after she was gone.
Because the next morning, when the man at the library looked at the young halfling Nott was disguised as and asked her name, for the first time in a very long time she opened her mouth and said, "Veth."