The weeks that followed took Hirianthial frequently from Rose Point, and this he endured because he knew the situations that warranted his absences were extraordinary. How often would his cousin be employed in setting up an empire, after all? He did not begrudge her the questions she put to him, for while she was savvy about the Alliance—was, in fact, more savvy about financial and industrial matters—she did not have his recent experience traveling it. He had spent almost sixty years abroad on various planets, had dipped in and out of several environments while doing so: the university, medicine, and then the itinerant lifestyle of a trader. His insights when blended with hers were more productive.
He accompanied her to the isle where the heir had remained sequestered, and freed the Chancellor and Bethsaida from their self-imposed exile there. Bethsaida remained unsuitable for her previous position; her nervousness riddled her aura with flaws, like brittle glass. Liolesa put her to work traveling to the churches and convents of the countryside, making a census of the clergy in preparation for the changes in policy the Queen planned in the wake of Baniel’s power-play. It was Lesandurel’s Tams she put to work in Ontine, cleaning out the debris of the battle and modernizing the building as much as possible. Hirianthial found himself walking the halls in winter and marveling that he did not need a coat, and that the water closets were no longer worthy of that name; even Kis’eh’t proclaimed them proper bathrooms, and expressed gratitude that someone had finally seen sense about the renovation.
The flux of the political map remained troublesome. Scattering Asaniefa shocked the remaining Houses antagonistic to Liolesa’s aims into wary retreat, but did not dissuade them from their views. Hirianthial thought that a few decades would accustom them sufficiently to the conveniences of the Alliance to prevent any uprising as obvious as the one Surela had spearheaded, but Liolesa remained unconvinced. He accused her of cynicism; she accused him of letting his forthcoming marriage fill his head with thoughts of unicorns and roses.
That he admitted to with good grace, because it was almost certainly true.
Reese he saw, though not as much as he preferred. She too was busy: renovating Rose Point, finding the best use of the gifts Fleet had bestowed, buying up supplies for the various industries she wanted her House to oversee in order to maintain its profitability. The Queen had awarded her seed money to furnish the House, and this amounted to more money than Reese had ever handled in her life. She confessed to him at some point, bewildered, that had that not been startling enough, she’d never had capital before, and she had no idea what to do with quite so much.
“Build me a hospital,” he said.
She’d glanced at him, thoughtful, then grinned. “Get me an equipment list.”
He found the time to make one, and sent it along with suggestions for Val’s school of talents. He also sent Val, once Liolesa had finished with him, and Belinor, who was now apparently inseparable from the former renegade. On seeing the new high priest of the Lord, Hirianthial was amused at the younger man’s hangdog expression.
“Ended up in charge, did you.”
“All I wanted was to wander around and be of some modest use….”
“Congratulations. Now you may wander and be of significant use.”
Val had snorted and gone on, over the Pad and to Firilith where Reese awaited him with plans for a chapterhouse, and Belinor awaited him with the torment of his conservative wisdom. Hirianthial thought that would work out well. Val needed a Urise of his own, and if Belinor had granted himself that privilege, well… no one had gainsaid him.
The wedding itself he did not involve himself in, because he was barred from it with a strictness by Felith, Irine and Kis’eh’t, all of whom insisted that men should have nothing to do with weddings. He’d considered protesting but decided he was not up to their combined intransigence. In lieu of that battle, he requested only that it involve at least some elements of the Eldritch ceremony. Since Urise had taken up residence at Rose Point, where he could watch the flow of colorful mortals pass, he thought they would have no trouble researching the particulars. The only thing they asked of him was a guest list, and that he provided before Liolesa tugged him away to discuss Fleet basing rights, and to help her bid a formal farewell to the Moonsinger, now properly crewed. The battlecruiser’s departure left them with a scout and two Fleet courier vessels in orbit, and the Queen deemed that protection enough with Lesandurel’s fixed fortifications building apace.
It was a gentle winter, and with each passing day he was aware of the promise of spring. Not just in the landscape as winter waxed and then began to release its grip on the fields and the skies… but in their society, as the Alliance began to trickle into their closed culture, like wildflowers drifting into a sheltered field… and in his own heart, as he prepared himself for the life to come.
To have a wife—to have this wife. To love again, fully. To have children… to grow old with family. To have a chance, perhaps, at the richness of aura that shone ‘round Lesandurel like divine raiment.
In this, his work and his frequent absences functioned as a vigil. In his heart, he turned his face toward the coming light.
Irine had asked if she was ready to do this. Reese had told her the truth: that it had to be done, and putting it off wouldn’t make it any easier.
That didn’t make walking the corridors of the Earthrise feel any less bittersweet. Her chest ached as she wandered through it, observing the repairs Fleet had made while the ship had been nestled in one of its berths. Even the broken locks and blinky lights worked. It made her eyes prickle with tears she refused to shed.
This place had been home—no. A refuge. Home had involved the people she’d accreted while piloting this ship from port to port, never resting, always hoping that the next big thing would be the one to bail her out of yet another looming monetary crisis.
And it wasn’t as if she was retiring the ship. Or even selling it. Ra’aila and her herd of crazy Aera, and the one or two other Pelted who’d chosen to answer her call for a crew… they’d take good care of it. The ship would be back in orbit at the end of every trip, delivering cargo to the new space station Hirianthial’s House-cousin was working on. That part, Reese liked. That the ship that had striven so valiantly to be the home she’d needed would have a home of its own, a port to come back to.
So she walked the Earthrise from stem to stern. The echoing cargo holds with their spindles for the bins, waiting for something to haul. The narrow corridors with their metal mesh floors. The bridge, somnolent, all its boards glowing the subdued blue of a ship drowsing in parking orbit. She went through the crew quarters, finding them already empty: the rest of the ship’s former crew had had time to come up, but she hadn’t, not until now. She walked through the engineering deck, remembering the pirates crawling all over the machinery, looking for evidence of perfidy. She toured the galley and the mess, remembering apple pies and coffee and less satisfactory experiments that everyone had nevertheless eaten. She checked on Kis’eh’t’s lab/clinic, brushing her fingers across the dents in the bulkhead where the equipment had been bolted.
She saved her own cabin for last.
Other than a set of crates by the door, there was no sign that anyone had come into the room. It was just as Reese had left it when she’d crossed over the Pad to Rose Point and given the ship into Sascha’s hands. Her hammock hung in the corner, next to the unrumpled bunk; her data tablet was on the desk, long gone dim, and when she touched it awake she found the ship’s accounts still bright on the surface. Her collection of jumpsuits and vests and a jacket or two hung in the closet, along with her boots, and in the bathroom, she found a bottle of chalk tablets and the box of wooden beads, fragrant still, redolent of Mars. She left the tablets and took the box with her, sat in her hammock, let it swing her gently to and fro.
In the beginning, it had only been her. No Flitzbe, no twins, no Phoenix or Glaseah… no Eldritch. Just this emptiness, the suffusive quiet. It had been crushingly lonely, but she had convinced herself that it was better than what she’d fled.
It hadn’t been. But it had led her, somehow, to something that was.
Reese looked around at the room that had been the confines of her world for years, then pushed herself off the hammock. She began to pack.
An hour later, she toggled the antigrav on the crates and tethered them together, then pulled them into the corridor. The ship’s new permanent Pad was in the cargo hold, so that’s where she took them.
She brushed her fingers against the metal near the comm panel.
“Ra’aila will take good care of you,” she whispered. “You take good care of her. And keep an eye out for Surela, too. Okay?”
The silence answered, and that felt like a good answer. Like waiting. Reese stroked the wall once, and then took the crate leash and walked over the Pad, and into her new life.
“That,” Lesandurel said, “is a horse.”
Hirianthial chuckled at the awe that set the other man’s aura glittering. They stood together in the dusky warmth of Laisrathera’s stables, which had gone from an empty shell of half-ruined stone to a fine complex for both riding animals and brooding in less time than he’d been able to credit even the Pelted with. It smelled sweetly of hay and leather, and reminded him of a youth spent breeding animals for Jisiensire. He ran a hand down the long neck of the mare studying them over the door of her stall, gathering the alert curiosity of her mind through the touch, like velvet over the nap of her skin. “Fine, is she not? And we have more on hold.”
“How many did you buy?”
“These six here, and another ten in foal—or, perhaps I should say, in dish, since they have not yet been generated.”
Lesandurel chuckled. “Alliance magic. I never tire of it. Show me the others, then. Is this one yours?”
Hirianthial grinned. “This one is my lady’s, and the first I bought. A bet I lost, and a horse was the prize.”
“And you spared no expense, I see. Well done. A woman should have a good horse. And a man, too, at that.” Lesandurel considered the mare wistfully.
“Should Laisrathera be expecting a purchase from the Meriaen, then?”
“Ha! And where would I put a horse in my little empire?” Lesandurel pursed his lips, smiled. “Well. Maybe if I buy myself a little estate on-world.”
“A man should have a good horse.”
“Ha!” Lesandurel said again. He grinned. “Show me the others.”
Hirianthial could not have wished for a more appreciative audience. The years away had not dimmed his House-cousin’s knowledge or interest in horseflesh. While discussing the topic with the Pelted who’d sold him the horses had been enjoyable enough, in its own way, it was an entirely different matter to have the discussion with another Eldritch. Horses were a passion and a hobby for the Pelted. Here, they were livelihood, transport, life.
“Of course, all that will change,” Lesandurel said when they’d repaired to two bales of hay at the back of the stables, there to share small cups of Tam-ileyan beer while watching the animals shift in their stalls and the golden light slowly creep across the floor, setting motes of dust a-sparkle. “The farms will have to be mechanized, if they are to yield a worthwhile calorie-to-effort ratio. And the Pads will make riding superfluous, except for short distances.”
“The Pelted do walk,” Hirianthial pointed out.
“The Pelted walk because it’s healthsome, not because it’s necessary. Necessity is the parent of many virtues.” Lesandurel set his cup on the wooden board they’d pressed into service for a table. He leaned back, resting his shoulders and head against the back wall. “Things will change here, and I am not displeased with that, but… the life we knew, cousin… it will pass.”
“Perhaps,” Hirianthial said. “But we are not Pelted, Lesandurel. Those of us who lived with that life will not die tomorrow, to forget its lessons.”
The other man chuckled. “No.” He folded his arms behind his head. “I suppose we’ll see how it comes to us.”
Hirianthial half-closed his eyes, soaking in the contented auras of the horses, the comfort of his guest, the faint warmth imbued by the alcohol. “Will you stay, Lesandurel? Start a homeworld branch of the Jisiensires?”
“Andrel,” the man said. At Hirianthial’s look, he stretched his arms and said, “My nursery name. Hardly anyone uses it, but you may. And to answer your question… I don’t know.” He sighed. “I am no longer used to the country life, if you will permit the possible insult.”
“I cannot take umbrage at an accurate characterization,” Hirianthial said, still struggling with the unexpected offer of intimacy. “But you could do a great deal here.”
“I could, I suppose. Jisiensire already has a head, though.”
“So it does.” He relaxed against the wall himself and offered, “An admirable woman, Araelis Mina.”
Lesandurel eyed him. “The happy lover wishes to play matchmaker to all he espies, is that it?”
“You could do worse.”
That earned him a snort. “I don’t know her.”
“She is here for the wedding—”
“Which is tomorrow.”
“A man could do a great deal of listening and talking in two or three days.”
Lesandurel laughed. “You won’t leave off until I at least promise to introduce myself.”
“I wouldn’t think to ask it of you,” Hirianthial said. “I’ll make the introduction myself. It would only be proper.”
A snort. But Lesandurel’s aura developed a tinge of effervescent amusement. “I do admire the passel of pards she’s surrounded herself with. Sellelvi’s kin, I imagine.”
“And much delighted to have rejoined their ancestress’s Eldritch family, yes. I think they will find each other quite suitable.”
“I have always preferred the foxes myself.”
“Of course.”
Lesandurel shook his head then, and his aura darkened, as if a cloud had passed over it. “I mean that just as it was said.” He smiled a little. “I loved Sydnie Unfound.” He nodded at Hirianthial’s sudden glance and reached to refill his cup. “Yes, just as you think. I loved her, and she adored me, but not as a maid loves a swain. To her, I was… something magical, and beautiful, something to be treasured and awed by. One does not marry an idol.”
Was that why Reese had been able to love him, he wondered? Because he’d come into her life, not as something perfect and above need, but as an obligation and an inconvenience? His mouth quirked. What was it about their relationship, that always the negatives begot the positives? He said, careful, “And after Sydnie?”
“I don’t know,” Lesandurel admitted. “I became busy. The Tam-illee reproduce slowly compared to the Pelted, but compared to us? Soon enough I was drowning in the troubles of daughters and granddaughters, and that is what they were to me: people I’d known as infants, who grew into their adulthood in my presence. I could never think of them as possible lovers, when I had so lately been busy salving their adolescent traumas.” He looked away, his eyes resting on Reese’s golden mare. “Several of them loved me, I think. But all of them outgrew it. And that was for the best.”
“You save yourself for an Eldritch love, then.”
“I haven’t been saving myself for anything, and well you should know it with your sorcerous insight.” Lesandurel smiled, amusement beading his aura. “When I say I have been busy, that is precisely what I meant…! But I admit, my mind turns more and more toward the thought of a companion. Perhaps I will meet one, as you have.”
Hirianthial took a sip from his own cup. “One of the Pelted, do you suppose?”
“No… no. Most of them are very fond of children. We can be fruitful with humans, but not their progeny.” Lesandurel shook his head. “No, I think I am curious if children of my own body will be any different than children of my spirit. Somehow I suspect not very, save that they will spend longer in the awkward ages, bedeviling me.” He grinned, then allowed that grin to fade. “And you? What shall you do, when this has done?”
This being his marriage to Reese. Hirianthial held his shoulders taut to keep them from betraying him, knew that they did anyway. “Then, I suspect my cousin will keep me… busy.”
“Ha,” Lesandurel said softly. “A fair turnabout.”
They drank together, unspeaking, enjoying the rustle of the horses, the idle switch of their tails, their whuffles and soft shifting sounds.
“You could marry your cousin,” Lesandurel said.
“Liolesa?” Hirianthial asked, brows lifting. “I hardly think she needs a man.”
“No woman needs a man, arii.” A grin at Hirianthial’s start at the use of the Universal term, dropped into the middle of a conversation in their tongue. “Least of all her. But that doesn’t mean she might not want one. Or find one useful at her side. Or to give her children, now that she is without heir again.”
“Perhaps,” Hirianthial said. “I wouldn’t presume to that position. I have no desire to be King-Consort.”
“No doubt. But would you accept her, if she offered?”
Hirianthial said nothing for a long time. He tried to feel the shape of his life after Reese and couldn’t. Didn’t want to, this close to its beginning. By this time tomorrow, he would be wed.
Finally, he said, “I love my cousin.”
Lesandurel received that as the message Hirianthial had intended, and did not press.
After a time, Hirianthial added, “Hiran.”
Lesandurel lifted his cup. “Hiran, then. I am sorry I missed your tenure as seal-bearer for our House.”
Hirianthial tapped his lightly to the other man’s cup. “Andrel. You need not. We will see more than enough of one another in the future we will make for our people.”
“Eldritch and Pelted both.”
“Eldritch and Pelted both.”
“Angels, Angels, Reese… Allacazam is missing!”
Reese ignored Irine to peer at her own reflection in the mirror, resisting the urge to touch her eyes and smear all the hard work Felith had just done there. “Did you check my hammock?”
“Yes!”
“My bed, then?”
“Yes!” Irine grabbed her ears. “He keeps rolling away lately and hiding places, and it’s driving me crazy.”
“He’ll turn up,” Reese said. “He’s not going to miss the wedding, he knows it’s today.”
“Does he?” Felith asked, entering from the room the Eldritch insisted was a closet. In Reese’s opinion, it was about six times too big for the name. The room even had a padded bench in it, which struck her as particularly crazy. Who sat in their own closet? And why? To contemplate their mounds of clothing? Ridiculous. The dress they’d talked her into was fancy enough without adding enough clones to fill a cargo bin.
“Does he what?” she asked, distracted. She forced herself to admit she was nervous.
“Know that today is the wedding,” Felith said, setting the gown on the chair next to Reese. “I did not perceive him to have much sense of normal time.”
“He has ways,” Reese said.
Felith was eyeing the gown with as close to a scowl as a well-bred Eldritch woman allowed herself. “I still think this would be far more proper with a corset.”
“I am not wearing a corset under my wedding dress,” Reese declared. “The first time Hirianthial kisses me, I’ll faint.”
Irine snickered.
“Kissing of that sort is reserved for the bedchamber,” Felith said after bestowing a quelling glance at the Harat-Shar. “The kiss during the ceremony is a symbol of the union made manifest. It is supposed to be chaste.”
Reese sighed, rueful. “Blood, Felith. It doesn’t matter what kind of kiss he gives me. They all make me breathe too fast.”
“Oh!” Felith colored. “Well. That’s to be expected. He is the man you’re wedding.” Briskly, she continued, “Come, let us dress you. The bells will ring soon.”
“Right,” Reese said, and stood, allowing the ritual. Not just the gown, but over it, a new medallion of her own, Laisrathera’s, peach-colored stone clasped in white gold, with a bright star for an emblem: Earth as seen in the Martian sky. Felith threaded it on a long chain so that it fell past her breasts, hanging over her ribcage; it left her throat free for the choker of rubies and coral-colored moonstones the Queen had given her. All of it felt too expensive for Reese, but she supposed that was her fault for getting tangled up with royalty and Eldritch princes.
“You have a little time,” Felith said once they’d finished the toilette. “If you’d like, we can stay…?”
“No, that’s all right. I wouldn’t mind some time to myself.”
Irine nodded. “And I’ll look for Allacazam.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Then I’ll look for Sascha. I need a cuddle.”
Reese grinned. “Just so long as you remember to bring the ring.”
Irine went into the pocket of her own dress and brought out the pouch, shaking it. “Still in there.”
“Good. Then go have your cuddle. I’ll be out soon.”
Alone, she smoothed the silk folds down. It was traditional for seal-bearers to marry in their House colors, so she wore apricot, embroidered in white and honey-gold. Irine had assured her that it set off her brown skin beautifully, and she’d seen the admiration in Felith’s eyes when the woman had drawn away to consider her handiwork. They’d seen to every detail, except her hair; Reese had handled that herself, using the beads from her box. The smell reminded her of home, knitted her past and her future together in a way that calmed her anxious stomach.
She was not the woman she’d been when she left Mars. Nor the one she’d been when she met Hirianthial. She’d seen it in her own face, sitting patiently while Felith had applied the cosmetics that had edged her eyelids in gold and gilt her lips. Strain had etched lines in her face, and worry. But she liked her eyes better. She didn’t mind meeting her own gaze anymore.
The bells started singing, summoning the celebrants. She lifted her chin, brushed her skirts and answered the call.
The thing Reese remembered most about the ceremony was how little of it she did. In the days to come, it would fade into a pastiche of sensory impressions and a vague sense of overwhelming happiness… and that was fine with her. She had plenty of people to remind her of the details and she looked forward to their teasing and their company and the years of friendship those things implied.
Some parts, though, she did recall. Rose Point had once had a cathedral on the grounds encircled by the curtain walls, a building long since reduced to a rumpled stone foundation… but the keep’s private chapel remained mostly intact, boasting three walls and enough of the roof to support its bell tower. The garden’s vines had overgrown one wall, knotting through the mortar and spilling over the pinnacle into the nave. With the advent of spring, the roses had died off… but other flowers had bloomed, shining gold, tiny and fragrant. Reese had ordered the place swept, the stained glass windows replaced, and had the bell serviced, and liked the result: old and new, natural and man-made, sacred and somehow casual enough to be borne. That, then, was where they’d decided to host the ceremony.
She remembered the heady perfume of the flowers and the sea, and the warmth of the sunlight on her shoulders and Hirianthial’s, the way it made the wine red velvet of his coat seem to glow like garnets. She remembered—vaguely—Liolesa, as the head of the Goddess’s order, and Urise, serving for the God’s, saying something about love and duty, posterity, joy.
She remembered the gifts, because those were important: she gave him one of the matched set of rings she’d had made with the Laisrathera star-on-apricot field, and a new dagger to replace the ones she kept misplacing: a dagger, not a sword, as acknowledgement that while he had accepted the role of Laisrathera’s sword-bearer, he had a greater responsibility now to the kingdom—empire—as a whole. That dagger went on his belt alongside the sword he’d used on his world’s behalf, and she found herself okay with the reminder of all that he could do, and had done. If there was violence in their futures, she trusted that they would handle it.
When it was his turn, he gave her his life, because that was what men pledged to their brides, and she remembered him bowing his head to her when he vowed it.
She remembered sipping from a shallow bowl of honey, symbol of the sweetness of the life they were to share. And she remembered his lips tasting of it when he’d tipped her chin up with gloved fingers: sweet gloss on warm, dry skin.
…Reese definitely remembered the kiss.
The priest had wrapped their joined hands with the binding cloth, then, apricot and gold for Laisrathera, bronze and burgundy for Jisiensire, and meeting in the center the unicorn that spoke of Hirianthial’s royal blood. Hirianthial had removed his glove for that and she’d felt his fingers warm in hers, close in the dim heat of the silk.
After that, there was the expected celebration… for everyone else. The Eldritch, Felith had confided, expected the happy couple to leave the festivities for the guests and ascend to their rooms to consummate their bond. And then, if it pleased them, to return. The revelry would last for three days, and while they were expected to make an appearance it was not at all untoward for them to leave it until the last day. Indeed, it was something of a triumph if they did, hinting at many forthcoming years of marital bliss. Reese thought it all a little dramatic, and probably a way for people to enjoy the food and board of a rich family—Felith admitted to it without embarrassment. But when Hirianthial tucked her hand under his arm and suggested they depart, she thought there might be some merit in not having to suffer through a big dinner and hours of well-wishers before finally being alone with the man she’d married. The sounds of the party carried up through the halls as they left it behind, made it feel like they were escaping. Her heart raced, and she found she was grinning.
He surprised her by taking her by the waist and lifting her, twirling her. “That is how I like you,” he said in that baritone that she now allowed herself to admit had always made the hair on the back of her neck rise. “Laughing.”
“I’m not laughing,” she protested, though by then she was.
“You’re laughing on the inside,” he said, and kissed her, and then she wasn’t laughing—that was fine, though. Better than fine.
“Come,” he murmured against her mouth. “Let us find our bed.”
…and that was nothing like she’d imagined, because she wasn’t capable of imagining just how good it could be. Except that it was tender and wonderful, and that maybe that cultured exterior was capable of hiding something untamed. And that was good, she thought with her hands wound through his short hair, tangled in the hair-chain that sang as she pulled him down. A man should always have something a little untamed in him.
“A woman too,” he said against her sweat-glossed cheek, in a tone almost like a purr.
“A woman too,” she agreed, gone all to goosebumps and not at all minding.
The light through the window had faded to silver in a dark sky. It was later—how much later, Reese didn’t know or much care. The party was no doubt still going, but her crew could handle it, and what they couldn’t, Liolesa surely would. There was no reason in the world to descend, and every reason to linger here with her cheek on this chest, with this muscled arm curled around her shoulders, keeping her close. How had the muscle never occurred to her? A light-gravity worlder who had learned the discipline of the sword, consigned to decades in heavier gravities? She should have known, but it was instead a delightful surprise. A delicious surprise. She traced a scar on his side, thinking that she would ask him about it one day, but not today, and that maybe she’d taste the skin there, but not just now.
“If you will permit,” he murmured, brushing his lips against her forehead. “There is a custom….”
This roused her from her pleasant drifting and she laughed, husky. “Another one! Sometimes I think you people are nothing but customs.”
“Remove one and we may all collapse?” He smiled against her skin; she could feel it. “Sometimes I wonder myself. But this one is pleasing. I think you may find it so also.” Rolling onto his back he stretched an arm toward the table alongside the bed and brought back a little box. “For you.”
“A present?” Reese sat up, pulling the blankets up onto her lap.
“During the wedding is traditional for the bride to bestow gifts because she is invariably the one with the wealth,” Hirianthial said, lying on his side beside her with his head resting on a palm. “But if a man is pleased with the match he will bring his own offering to the marriage bed. A troth gift, it’s called politely.”
She glanced at him. “And impolitely?”
He laughed. “A stud gift.”
She couldn’t help it… she laughed too. “You people and your horses. So do I open it now?”
“I would be pleased if you did.”
The box was small enough to fit in her palm, but so intricately carved she couldn’t fit her nail into some of the cuts. The pattern reminded her of something but she couldn’t place it: leaves maybe? How long had it taken someone to make this box? Because, being Eldritch, someone had to have made it by hand. Knowing that made it incredible, like something out of a storybook.
Strange how wary she used to be of gifts, when looking at this one all she could think about was how it felt anticipating something new and wonderful. She carefully opened the lid.
There was a kernel inside. A kernel she would have recognized in her dreams, and yet seeing it here, in this context…. when she touched it her fingers were trembling. “Is this really….?”
His voice was low. “I took the liberty of having it engineered using the material in the bead you wove into the dangle. It is viable—you have only to choose where to plant it.”
“It may be too cold here for a eucalyptus,” Reese said, her eyes watering. Her voice was going hoarse on her.
“I’m given to understand that some cultivars thrive in the cold, so long as they have the right exposure. Or we could build it a greenhouse.” He smiled. “The Queen has enough of them for her horticultural experiments. Why should not Laisrathera have one as well?”
She was going to cry. Was already crying, and didn’t care that he could see it, because he’d resurrected her eucalyptus, the one that had given her comfort in her troubled childhood. Had come up with the idea, had somehow divined how important it had been to her, and he’d done that for her, and sacrificed the bead she’d given him to do it. That’s what the familiar pattern was on the box—she looked a second time—those were eucalyptus leaves, as seen through the eyes of some Eldritch artist.
As she wiped her eyes, Hirianthial reached for her, gathered her into his arms. He didn’t try to reassure her, didn’t mistake her tears for an expression of some feeling that needed comfort. It didn’t, because she was crying for release, for relief, for knowing that for every loss, there was a possibility of a returning. A potential for redemption, for a second try. She’d gotten hers… he’d gotten his. Everything was right with the world.
Everything was clear.
“Heart,” she said suddenly against his chest.
He canted his head, just a little, to look down at her, and she met his eyes.
“That’s your song name,” Reese said, quiet. She curled her fingers around the kernel, bruising her fingertips on it to make the scent cling to the skin. ”My Heart. That’s what you are. And what you gave to me.”
He touched his fingers to her lips and whispered, “Oh, love.”
“Exactly,” she answered, soft. And kissed his fingers. Then she thought, if she could kiss him first, maybe there were other things she could try doing first. So she set the box aside, and the kernel, and did, and smiled at his ardent welcome… and maybe they lost a few more hours.
In the morning, while he ran a bath in the mercifully renovated chambers because God and freedom help her if she was going to use another water closet no matter how much she liked this world, Reese donned a robe and dared to peek out into the corridor. She almost tripped over Irine, who was sitting crosslegged beside the door, reading a data tablet. At the sight of Reese, the woman set it aside and perked her ears. “You’re out sooner than I thought!”
“I’m not out for long,” Reese said, belting the robe closed. “I just wanted to find out how things are going.”
“Oh, it’s great.” Irine laughed. “The crowd’s over half-Pelted, you know, and those Harat-Shar who came to be Araelis’s family are awfully charming. Felith’s got everything running on a schedule for people who want events: picnics and little outdoor games and contests and feasts… something for everyone. But honestly, most of us are enjoying it for the chance to get to know one another. All the movers and shakers on this world are here, right now. We’re seeing the future happen, you know?”
“I do, a little,” Reese said, smiling. She sat next to the tigraine, leaned into her and sighed. This fur smelled like home, too.
“Happy?” Irine asked, gentler, nuzzling.
“Yes.”
“Just like that.” Said fondly, but with a little bemusement, too.
“Just like that, sure,” Reese replied, finding it funny. “If ‘just like that’ means having to get through my whole life to make it to this point.”
“Yeah,” Irine murmured, sliding an arm around Reese’s shoulder. “I can see that.”
“Worth it though.”
Irine grinned and nudged her. “So I smell.”
Reese colored and poked a furry side. “If you were anyone but Harat-Shar, I’d be embarrassed.”
“But I’m not,” Irine said. “So it’s all good. Oh, and you know… I found Allacazam.”
Allacazam! She had forgotten he was missing. “Where was he?”
“In a closet. Budding!”
Reese sat up, stunned. “Budding??”
“Budding,” Irine said, satisfied with her shock. “There are now two more little Allacazams rolling around. Must be something in the air.” She grinned. “Maybe we can send one of them off with Ra’aila and the Earthrise. It would be weird for the ship to be running without a Flitzbe.”
“It would,” Reese agreed. And added, “When they’re older. Freedom.” She laughed and rubbed her face. “God.”
“And Goddess and Angels and all the good things in life,” Irine agreed, and wrapped her tail around Reese’s waist to go with the arm.
They sat like that a while, content, and then Irine bumped her hip. “Go take that bath with your man. And tell him that the Queen said something about him owing her a harp song or something.”
“A… a harp song,” Reese said, bewildered. Then the image of Hirianthial sitting at a harp with his fingers—his long and very knowing fingers—on golden strings came to her, and she wasn’t sure whether her shiver was anticipation or something a little more blushworthy. “All right. Thanks, arii.”
“It’s my pleasure.” She grinned and pushed Reese to her feet. “Go on, now. Work him hard! It’s been too long for him. And since it’s been never for you, work yourself hard too!”
Reese covered her face and fled.
When she let herself into the bathroom, Hirianthial was just setting out the towels, and the sight of him doing something so domestic, so normal…
…while naked….
He took one look at her expression and started laughing, a real, deep laugh, unfettered.
“I like you laughing too,” she said, grinning, her heart squeezing in her chest at the sight. “And if all it takes is me leering at you, I’ll take lessons from the twins.”
“You can try,” he said, kissing her fingers. “But you can’t leer, my Courage. It’s not in you.” Merriment pricked color from his wine-dark eyes. “But you are welcome to stop short in shock anytime you wish.”
“You are terrible,” she said, and pulled him close to kiss him, and let him draw her down into the bath. “So I hear there are events going on downstairs. Picnics and games and feasts and such.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“A picnic actually sounds kind of nice.” He was rubbing soap onto her shoulders and back, and all the tension was oozing from them. She continued gamely. “We could pack a nice lunch, go out in the sunlight.”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“Take those horses you bought… they’re kind of nice horses.”
“Mmm.” His lips were on her neck now.
“Hirianthial Sarel Eddings Laisrathera, I can’t concentrate while you’re doing that!”
“That was rather the idea.”
She tried her last volley. “We could make love in the flowers?”
“Maybe later,” he said, mischievous.
She sighed warmly and twitched her hair out of his way. “Okay. Maybe later….” And after a moment, amended, “All right. A lot later.”
He laughed that low, gentle laugh, and Reese smiled, turned in his arms, and reached up for him. The flowers would be there tomorrow, and if they weren’t… well. She’d still have roses in winter.