When he glances back, Tiernan and Hyacinthe are still staring at each other with painful suspicion, in a standoff that he doesn’t think either of them knows how to end.
Oak climbs two floors before he stops and listens. If he hears the clang of metal on metal, he’s going back. He must have missed something, because Hyacinthe speaks as though replying to Tiernan.
“And where am I in this reckoning?” Hyacinthe asks.
“Three times I put aside my duty for you,” Tiernan says, as angry as Oak has ever heard him. “And three times you spurned it. Once, when I went to you in the prisons before you were to be judged for following Madoc. Do you remember? I promised that were you sentenced to death, I would find a way to get you out, no matter the cost. Second, when I persuaded the prince, my charge, to use his power to mitigate the curse you wouldn’t even have had if you had simply repented your betrayal of the crown. And let’s not forget the third, when I pleaded for you to wear the bridle instead of being put to death for an attempted assassination. Do not ask me to do so again.”
“I wronged you,” Hyacinthe says. Oak shifts on the stairs so he can see just a bit of him—his shoulders are slumped. “You have put aside your duty more than I have put aside my anger. But I—”
“You will never be satisfied,” Tiernan snaps. “Joining Madoc’s falcons and turning on Elfhame, spitting on mercy, blaming Cardan and Oak and Oak’s dead mother and everyone except your father.
“No vengeance will ever be enough, because you want to punish his murderer, but he died by his own hand. You refuse to hate him, so you hate everyone else, including yourself.”
Tiernan didn’t raise his voice, but Hyacinthe makes a sound as though struck.
“Including me,” says Tiernan.
“Not you,” Hyacinthe says.
“You didn’t punish me for being like him, for guarding her son? You didn’t hate me for that?”
“I believed I was doomed to lose you,” Hyacinthe says, voice so soft that Oak can barely hear it.
For a long moment, they are quiet.
It seems unlikely they are going to break into violence. Oak should go up the rest of the stairs. He doesn’t want to invade their privacy more than he already has. He needs to go slowly, though, so they don’t hear his hooves.
“Joy is never guaranteed,” Tiernan says, his voice gentle. “But you can wed yourself to pain. I suppose, at least in that, there is no chance of surprise.”
Oak winces at those words. Wed yourself to pain.
“Why would you want me after all I have done?” Hyacinthe asks, anguished.
“Why does anyone want anyone else?” Tiernan answers. “We do not love because people deserve it—nor would I want to be loved because I was the most deserving of some list of candidates. I want to be loved for my worst self as well as my best. I want to be forgiven my flaws.”
“I find it harder to forgive your virtues,” Hyacinthe tells him, a smile in his voice.
And then Oak is up the stairs far enough to be unable to hear the rest. Which is good, because he hopes it involves a lot of kissing.
CHAPTER
11
W
hen Oak was a child, he came down with fevers that laid him up for weeks. He would thrash in bed, sweating or shivering. Servants would come and press cold cloths to his brow or put him in baths stinking with herbs. Sometimes Oriana would sit with him, or one of his sisters would come and read.
Once, when he was five, he opened his eyes to see Madoc in the doorway, regarding him with an odd, evaluating expression on his face.
Am I going to die? he asked.
Madoc was startled out of whatever he was thinking, but there was still something grim in the set of his mouth. He walked to the bed and placed his large hand on Oak’s brow, ignoring his small horns. No, my boy, he said seriously. Your fate is to cheat death like the little scamp you are.
And because Madoc could not lie, Oak was comforted and fell back to sleep. The fever must have broken that night, because when he woke, he was well again and ready for mischief.
This morning, Oak feels like a scamp who’s cheated death again.
Waking to warmth and softness is such a delicious luxury that Oak’s burns and bruises cannot dent the pleasure of it. There is a taste on his tongue that is somehow the flavor of sleep itself, as though he went so deep into the land of dreams that he brought some of it back with him.
He looks at his little finger, bare now, and smiles up at the ice ceiling.
There is a knock on the door, shaking him out of his thoughts. Before he realizes he’s not wearing much in the way of clothes, Fernwaif bustles in with a tray and a pitcher. She’s got on a brown homespun dress and an apron, her hair pulled back in a kerchief.