by Imogen Sera
Mira had spent a quiet day in Amling and returned to the house shortly before dinner. She stayed in the little bakery until it became busy and she felt guilty for taking up one of the few tables, so she’d bundled herself up and faced the elements again. She’d stumbled across a small bookshop nearby and wandered inside, absurdly nervous about looking for anything for herself.
She’d perused the children’s book section and found a few stories that she intended to buy. It was humiliating, barely being able to read something meant for a young child. It was also frustrating that her reading was improving, slowly, but her writing had seen no improvement after she’d mastered the letters.
She’d decided to be brave and ask the shopkeeper if there was anything to practice learning to write, and the old man had smiled kindly at her and asked how old her children were.
“It’s not for a child,” she’d replied stiffly, and he’d looked sympathetic. She hated it, but he’d been kind and helpful and found some journals for her.
She’d had a lunch that was similar to her breakfast: leisurely, lovely, lonely. After that she’d just walked, down streets and alleys and even across a massive park, where winged beings were swooping through the skies above.
When her face was thoroughly numb, she’d decided to return to the house, weary but pleased with her day.
She didn’t expect to see Tarquin there, since it had been nearly a week since she’d seen him for longer than a minute or two. She certainly didn’t expect to find him in her bedroom, as she’d come to think of it since he’d mysteriously arranged lodging elsewhere.
He was sprawled across the bed, though, fast asleep, and her first instinct was to turn and leave. She was halfway back out the door when she heard her name, and she swore at herself for entering so noisily.
She whirled around and dropped her bag of books with a thud. He was sitting up in bed, watching her. “What?” she asked flatly.
“You got a letter,” he said, gesturing to the small desk in the corner. “Where were you?”
She was sure the loathing that was rolling off of her in waves showed plainly on her face, so she just looked at him for a minute. “Augustus is in town,” she said. “He wants to see you.”
He blinked at that, but seemed to dismiss it. “I’m sorry Mira,” he said, “I didn’t—”
She interrupted him with a laugh. “I’m really not in the fucking mood to be apologized to.”
“Okay,” he said quietly. “It was a mistake. That day. I shouldn’t have… been that way with you.”
She sighed and looked at him for a long time, her happiness from her day thoroughly washed away. “I really thought we were past this part, Tarquin.”
“What part?” he asked, rising from the bed defensively. “I have a past. Of course I do. It’s not like you weren’t running around Dragongrove fucking anyone who would look twice at you. You practically begged me to the first time you saw me.”
She stepped back, anger coiling in her gut. “The self loathing part. I don’t give a fuck that you have a past— I was just delusional to be hopeful that your future wouldn’t always be consumed with it.” Her voice lowered.
She was almost surprised when he didn’t look angry, and instead just looked… tired. “She was my mate, Mira. I’ll never be over her.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said, trying to be patient but failing. “I don’t want you to be over her— you shouldn’t be over her. But you don’t need to live your entire life feeling guilty anytime you’re remotely happy just because she’s not here.”
“You act like you’re so sure I’m happy when I’m with you, but—”
“Oh, fuck off with that,” she hissed. “I’m not stupid, Tarquin, we were both happy that day. Do you have any idea how cheap it makes me feel when spending time with me is something you’re ashamed of? When I’d just had a day that was maybe the best day I’ve ever had, and you regret it? I appreciate that you love her, I appreciate that you miss her, but I don’t appreciate the fact that my feelings matter less than the imaginary feelings of a dead woman.” She paused when she felt her voice wavering.
He was just staring at her, and his inaction made her angry— so angry that he wouldn’t just grab her and kiss her and apologize to her.
“I didn’t kill Aurelia, Tarquin. I’m sorry that you’ve been running from it for eight years and I just happen to be here when you finally have to confront it, but it’s not my fault.”
“You don’t understand,” he started.
“I understand that I don’t understand, thanks,” she spat, “you’ve told me a million fucking times. That’s all you’ll ever tell me. But I know more than you think, Tarquin. I’ve talked to everyone that I could about her. And they tell me she was perfect, and she was lovely, and she was sweet, and most of all that she loved you. So would you please stop making yourself miserable on her behalf and try living your life since that’s what she would want for you?”
His eyes narrowed. “You have no idea what she would want.”
“I do know,” Mira groaned in exasperation as she jammed her finger to her chest, “because I love you too, and despite that, if I were somehow able to bring her back to life I would do it without a second thought. I want you to be happy. I don’t care if you’re happy with me or happy alone or happy with someone else, but I don’t want you to hate yourself anytime you feel anything remotely resembling happiness. Stop saving up all of your daily moments of not missing her to confess to her later. She doesn’t care, Tarquin, she’s dead.”
He had stilled, looking down at her with an expression she couldn’t place. “You love me?”
She flushed. “That’s not the fucking point, Tarquin,” she said, then turned and stalked to the door. “And just for the record, the first time I ever fucked anyone was in your bedroom with your dead mate staring at me,” she hissed, then slammed the door behind her as she darted away down the hall.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mira had stormed off to the river room, and when she finally returned to her bedroom, hours later, Tarquin was gone. He was nowhere to be found in the morning, although that wasn’t too unusual. At breakfast, Cyrus had started to tell Mira where he had gone, but she interrupted him with a laugh before informing him that she didn’t really care. He’d eyed her skeptically, with a look that she would have shrunk under a week before, but she just met his gaze and kept her expression carefully neutral.
“I tried it your way,” she said. “It didn’t work.”
She lounged in her room all morning, angry and nauseated and bored. She wished that Tarquin was around so she could yell at him some more, or maybe apologize and kiss him sweetly and beg him to love her, too. The thought made her a little sick with herself. When had she become a simpering little coward?
She spent some time reading and some more time copying words in her journal.
As she tucked it away, hidden in the desk so it wouldn’t be found, she came across the letter from home. With a sigh and a look into the hallway, ensuring she wouldn’t be intruded on, she held it in her lap and sat to read it.
She was grateful that the words were short and to the point.
Mira, it read, Colin has been badly hurt. Please come home while he’s still with us.
She read it four more times to be sure she had it right, ignoring her pounding heart and her sweaty hands. It was from her father, who had never wanted her to leave in the first place. Surely he was overreacting to a small accident with the farming equipment and using it as an excuse to guilt Mira into coming home. …while he’s still with us, she read again, though, and couldn’t imagine her steady father making that up.
She stood on unsteady feet and clutched the note to her chest. It had arrived the day before, and had been redirected from the palace. She wished her father would have dated it, but she couldn’t imagine it having been written more recently than a week before.
While he’s still with us.
She strode from the room to beg f
or Cyrus’s assistance.
Within an hour, Mira was in the finest carriage she’d ever seen, accompanied by a mage in Cyrus’s employ— Jane. She was a talkative sort, and seemed to be young, although for someone residing in Cyrus’s ridiculous home she knew she couldn’t trust her senses. She appreciated the chatter as they traveled, the horses magically sped and the carriage magically heated, all by Jane.
Cyrus had been sad to see her go and had kissed her gently on the forehead in a gesture that had felt more fatherly than any kind of kiss she’d ever received from Tarquin. He had made her promise to write, and she’d promised to try— smiling to herself at the implication— and then he wished her well, wished her family well, and had sent her on her way as quickly as possible.
He’d ordered Jane to accompany her not for any particular skill in traveling magic, but because she was an accomplished healer. Mira was grateful for the thought, wishing desperately that they would get there in time. Surely he couldn’t already be dead. Surely if her favorite brother was gone from this world she would know it— would feel it somehow.
Jane chatted about the history of Amling, and the great feats that had gone into building Cyrus’s home, and the countryside as they rode, and Mira nodded along politely as she thought of her brother and the way he had teased her as a child. She thought of the time he’d stolen her doll, the one her father had saved for her from his mother, and how Colin had thrown it into the pig’s pen and laughed at her as she cried. She thought of the way he had hacked her hair off as she’d slept, and how her mother had wept over it for days.
She touched her short hair now and smiled to herself. He would like it like this, she thought. She thought of the way Colin had retrieved her doll from the mud and cleaned it carefully when he saw her eyes well with tears and her chin tremble. She thought of the way that he’d whispered to her that he thought she would prefer short hair so she wouldn’t have to sit still the whole time her mother neatly arranged it each morning; her least favorite time of day.
And then she lost all pretense of listening politely to Jane, because she also thought of the way that a boy at school had tried to touch her bottom under her skirt, and Colin had punched him until his nose bled. And she thought of the way he’d patiently, poorly hemmed his own extra pants to fit Mira, so that she wouldn’t have to put up with it.
She was grateful when Jane put her arm around her shoulders, and didn’t realize that there were tears on her face until Jane offered her a handkerchief.
“We just have to get there, and he’ll be alright,” Jane promised. “I haven’t met someone yet who I can’t heal.”
Mira sniffed, nodded miserably, and tried to smile. While he’s still with us. She hoped desperately that he was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tarquin returned late in the evening. He was avoiding Mira, he had to admit to himself, but all he wanted to do was run back there and kiss her madly and hold her to him. But he couldn’t anymore. It wasn’t fair to her to keep this up when he couldn’t trust himself to remain committed to her; to not get sucked back under the waves of his grief which beat at him ceaselessly, still, nearly a decade later.
When he returned, he vowed to himself to apologize, to at least give her some explanation of why he wouldn’t ever be over this, of why he couldn’t ever be Mira’s. It ate at his chest, he realized, in the same way that Aurelia’s death had. The depth of the feeling overwhelmed him.
He didn’t know if it mattered. He loved Mira. It should have been simple, should have been the easiest thing in the world to love her. He should have taken her in his arms and held her and kissed her until she knew how he felt.
But he wouldn’t— couldn’t— give Mira all of him. There was always that small, necessary part that belonged to his mate.
Cyrus had summoned him to dinner, and promised information about his brothers, so despite Tarquin’s need to track down Augustus, and his wish to find Mira and— he didn’t know, he ignored both and dressed for dinner.
“You’ve heard of the Dark Ash Tribe?” asked Cyrus, once Tarquin had been served.
“Once,” he said, “but I know little about it.”
“They’re north of here,” Cyrus said, then swirled his glass and took a long drink. “Far north. Almost to the border. They’re like you.”
“Like me?” he asked.
“Dragon shifters. But— not like you. They avoid their human form as much as possible. They’re not what you might call civilized.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“Tate has joined them,” Cyrus interrupted, “and renounced his connection to the throne. I don’t know why, but there it is. You’ll find him there.”
Tarquin considered that. It was an interesting way to have disappeared, but he wasn’t entirely surprised. Tate had always been an outsider, especially compared to his twin.
“What of Demetri?” he asked, the question full of implications. “Do you know anything?”
“Very little,” said Cyrus, “but what I do know might interest you.”
Tarquin just leveled his gaze at the strange man, trying not to let his frustration at the slow drip of information show.
“Demetri is dead,” he said. “Or— Demetri was dead.” He studied Tarquin, clearly looking for his reaction.
“Dead?”
“Not anymore,” he said. “I don’t have details; I don’t know where he is.”
Tarquin was quiet while he ate, unsure what to think about that. It was a relief, certainly— he’d only gotten the first half of the news from the bearded man.
“May I ask you something personal?” Cyrus asked, interrupting the silence.
Tarquin nodded.
“You’re the youngest of your siblings, correct?” asked Cyrus, his eyebrow arching elegantly.
“Yes,” he said.
“I know your father was… aloof, but your mother loved you?”
He nodded again, wondering where the strange man was going.
“Did your mother love you less because others came before? Did she love your brothers less because you came after?”
He didn’t say anything, but… there was something there. It wasn’t something he could dismiss, it was… he didn’t know.
“Mira left,” Cyrus said. “You’ll find her at her family’s home, if that’s something that you need to know.”
Tarquin nodded and stood. “Thank you,” he said, “for the information— and your hospitality.”
He left the room quickly. He needed to find Augustus.
Mira arrived quickly, with the help of Jane’s magic. She arrived quickly, but not quickly enough.
Colin had died several hours before, though her mother’s unearthly keening was still echoing through the house when she rushed in the front door, afraid of what she would find. Jane had been by her side, ready to help as she could, but when she saw the dead man laid across the table she squeezed Mira’s shoulder sympathetically, offered a small smile, and retreated back to the carriage where she could let the family mourn in peace.
Her mother laughed frantically when she saw that Mira was home, and then hugged her so tightly that her bones ached. She savored the feeling. She tried to keep her eyes from her brother’s corpse, tried not to think of how his face was too pale and his chest was too still and his eyes would never open again. She held her mother against her and shushed her like a baby, because she didn’t know what to say.
She was rocking in place with her mother when her gaze fell on Eve. She hadn’t even seen her at first, hadn’t even thought of her, which immediately made her feel awful because if anyone should be comforted right now— it was Eve. She sat in the corner, in the shadows, her eyes locked on Colin, her face blank, and her hands protectively over her growing belly. Mira blinked at it. She had known that they were expecting a child, but the reality hadn’t hit her until just that moment. A child who would be coming soon. A child who would never know its father.
She released her mother into E
than— her other brother’s— arms, and found her father right beside her. He pulled her in close for a hug, a more supportive action than what she’d had from her mother, and she found herself weeping quietly and pressing her face into his shirt. He told her comforting things, told her how she’d always been Colin’s favorite. Mira couldn’t take her eyes from Eve, though.
They all stood in the room for a long time, a mostly silent vigil, until the sky was dark. She didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what needed to be done, so she retreated into her old room and sat up in bed, mournful and exhausted and helpless.
