“Sure.” A softness came into Hilo’s eyes. “Maybe not quite as good as it looked the first time, only because I thought I’d die the next day. Everything’s more beautiful when you don’t think you’ll see it again.”
“Sometimes,” Wen said as she took the lid off the fish plate, “it’s more beautiful afterward, when you . . . realize you have a second ch-chance.” She fumbled the spoon; nerves.
Hilo reached across the table and took the serving utensils from her. He placed some of the sea bass and pea shoots on her plate, but his movements grew sharp; he cut into the fish as if it were still alive and had to be killed. His voice had been kind, but now it held a pained edge. “There aren’t any real second chances. Even when you live through the worst parts, life doesn’t go back to what it was before.” He sat back in his seat, scraping the legs noisily against the floor. “Just look at Tar. There are some things a person can’t recover from.”
Wen squeezed her hands together in her lap, reminding herself that this was what she’d wanted—an honest conversation with her husband. “Tar and Iyn Ro shouldn’t get married,” she said. “They’re not good for each other.”
“They’ve been hot and cold for years,” Hilo grumbled. “Now they promise me they’re finally serious enough to take oaths to each other, so why shouldn’t I let them have their chance? Tar needs more people in his life, more things to do.” Tar had been staying over at the main residence so often that he’d practically moved in with them, but after he and Iyn Ro had gotten engaged last month, he’d been spending most of his time with her in his apartment in Sogen.
Wen knew that Hilo had reduced his Pillarman’s duties, had told him to take time off to relax, saying it was well earned after his travel to Espenia and accomplishing such difficult tasks there. That was true, but the real reason was that Anden had returned from his own trip to Port Massy and told the Pillar of his conversation with Dauk Losun.
“Hilo-jen,” Wen had heard Anden say worriedly, the two of them standing in the Pillar’s study, “Tar is green turning black.”
Green turning black was an idiom for a jade warrior losing his sanity, usually from the Itches, possibly becoming a danger to himself and others. Someone like that might have to be confronted, might have to give up his jade or have it forcibly taken from him by intervening clan members. Wen was sure the problem with Tar had nothing to do with jade overexposure, however. Without Kehn, he was one wheel holding up a runaway rickshaw, his continued devotion to Hilo a ballast against loneliness and bloodlust. The only thing that seemed to make him genuinely happy was spending time with the children, especially Kehn’s son, Maik Cam, but he was so prone to filling their heads with violent stories that even Wen, who didn’t believe in shielding children from reality, limited how much time the kids spent with their uncle Tar lest she have them coming into her bedroom at night wide-eyed with nightmares.
Tar’s engagement to Iyn Ro last month had come as something of a surprise. “At least he’s trying to change,” Hilo pointed out. “Tar deserves to be happy.”
“And the rest of us?” Wen asked cautiously. “What do we deserve?”
Hilo’s chewing slowed. He eyed her from the side of his vision as he reached for the plate of warm stuffed buns. “What do you mean by that?”
Wen twisted the napkin in her lap, gathering her resolve. “We . . . can’t st-stay apart and hurting like this, Hilo,” she said. “The Pillar has to . . . keep the family strong. We’re not strong now. We’re stuck. You haven’t . . .” She couldn’t put her churning thoughts into the exact words she needed, and she saw her halting speech was arousing his pity and making him agitated. “What . . . do you . . . Do you want a divorce?”
Hilo pushed back in his chair. Wen had never feared her husband before; he had never hit her or even looked as if he would hit her, but the expression on his face now felt as if it would stop her heart. “Is that what you want?” he asked with soft rage. “After all this, you haven’t betrayed me enough, now you’re thinking to break up the family?”
She shook her head vigorously, but Hilo’s voice rose, all his anger over the past gathering into a storm, the accusation in his eyes rendering her speechless. “Why, Wen? Haven’t I always loved you and taken care of you, supported your career, done everything I could to keep you and our children safe? And you couldn’t obey me, in only one, simple way?”