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When he admires me for the first time, the kid's eyes are blue.
Blue like the sapphires I'm made of.
I'm an unexpected gift, but not an unwelcome one, if the wonder on his soft face means something.
There’s a man by his side, a jeweled hand laid with seeming affection on the kid’s shoulder. His eyes, however, are cold like water, and, like so, they reflect without being.
Do you like them?, he asks, and his voice is deep like the sea, calm and alluring only on the surface.
The eyes of the kid sparkle more than diamonds. They’re beautiful, he whispers.
The kid doesn’t know the kind of dangers the depths of the sea hide. Or maybe, I’d think if I could, while the man leans over him and the smile on the kid’s lips slips from his blue eyes, he does know.
And he chose to ignore them, in the hopes that they would not drown him.
He held out something to Laurent, the gesture peremptory and full of repugnance.
‘I don’t want it. It makes me think of you.’
Blue, limpid, twin sapphires dangled from his fingers. It was the earring he’d worn to the banquet. And that he’d lost, spectacularly, in a bet. Nicaise held it away from himself as though it was made of something fetid.
Laurent took it without saying anything. He tucked it carefully into a fold of his riding clothes.
Alone in a devastated room, a young man admires me in the quiet candlelight and his eyes are blue, too.
Fatigue and sadness are painted in his dazed gaze. I would ask him if he thinks of my pouting boy, if I could talk.
The man tightens his grip around me and shivers. It would hurt me, if I could feel pain. But I don't, and the only pain in this cold and empty room it’s his.
Forgive me, he says, with tears dripping from his lips. He calls the name of my pouting boy, his voice shaking, again and again, like a prayer.
I would comfort him, if I could. But I’m just an object, without a mouth nor feelings, a mocking reminder of what has been and will never be again. So I keep silent, and silence is the only comfort the man receives.
He thought of Nicaise in oversized bedclothes in the hallway, caught up in something too big for him. And dead now, of course.
‘You can’t believe this? The lies of a physician and a boy whore?’
Guion’s voice was jarring in the silence. Damen looked to the Council, where the oldest of the Councillors, Herode, was looking up from the papers.
‘Nicaise had more nobility in him than you,’ said Herode. ‘He was more loyal to the Crown than the Council, in the end.’
We won, whispers the man with blue eyes.
We won, he says once again, and the marble walls around him glow in the sunlight and make the gold in his hair shine. There’s no joy in his voice.
I would wonder, if I could, if he can see my pouting boy smiling at him, with tears in his eyes and silent thanks on his lips.
The blue-eyed man doesn’t cry, he never does, maybe because he doesn’t have any more tears to shed.
A hand, big and warm, slips into his, slowly, quietly, as if asking for permission to partake in his sorrow. The man it belongs to doesn’t have blue eyes, but his warm gaze has a kindness to it far more precious than any sparkling jewel.
The man doesn’t speak, and neither does the blue-eyed one.
And this time, maybe because it is shared, the comforting silence isn’t as heavy as it used to be.