When she woke that night, she was back in the green silk-tented room, with the mild, silver light of the Moon Itself shining in over the balcony, with Conor sitting anxiously by her side, holding her hand, and Phoebe standing gravely in the shadow of the carved wooden door. And next to Phoebe, Rex.
“They told me you fainted,” Conor said timidly, twining his fingers through hers. “They didn’t tell me where. They said…” And then he was abruptly quiet, because Livia, my grandmother, had glided silently in the door.
“Conor,” she said, “Rowena is here.”
Did Lily know then what was bound to happen next? I think she did. She did truly love my father, which meant that she loved even his weakness and felt tenderly toward it. I know that my mother must have known my father for what he was: “a handsome, charming weakling,” as my grandmother later told me dismissively. And I myself have reason to know that the love that goes deepest doesn’t necessarily make sense to an outside observer. My father was meant to be a playful, happy lover. That much you could trace on his later, age-ravaged features. You could still see the hopeful, openhearted boy who had never found anything in the world to oppose him, but who had a chance to stay unspoiled through an essential goodness that escaped his mother’s eye.
He didn’t turn his head now. He didn’t answer Livia.
“Conor,” she repeated impatiently, “I said, Rowena’s here. She’s expecting you. Everyone’s expecting you.”
Did he waver there for a moment? Did some vision of a real future happiness, one he would have to fight for and that would then be all the more really his, did that come into his mind? What he told me later made me sure it did. That he loved Lily with all his open boy’s heart is undeniable. He told me of it much later, and the strength of that feeling resonated still, there between us.
But while Conor had love—affection, and passion, and, at the bottom, a kind heart—he did not have wisdom, or even strength. Well, where would he have gotten them? Wisdom wasn’t exactly taught in the prep schools of Megalopolis, and as for strength… strength, I’m afraid, comes in suffering, and he hadn’t suffered. Not yet.
I’m sure he told himself he could have it all. He could marry Rowena, the way everyone expected him to, and he could have Lily, too. I’m sure that’s what he thought. It’s how most young men would (though not all, I’m glad to say). How could he have known what that one misstep would mean for his future? He who never looked past the next spurious accolade, the next trivial prize?
“Conor,” Livia said a third time, and I myself have heard a version of the voice she must have used. Even I had difficulty not obeying that voice, and I have a character carefully built by many loving hands to withstand it.
My father did not. His character was to come later. That night, he was just a spoiled, affectionate boy, and he was used to letting tomorrow take care of itself.
He gave Lily, the one and only love of his life, one last pleading look. I can see him do it now. “Save me,” that look said. “Make me do what’s right. Make me stand up to her, make me stay with you.” And Lily, in that moment, loved him with all of her heart, when the Angel’s presence had shown her heart to her…at exactly the same moment the Angel showed her what she had to do. What she had to do was opposed to that love, made it impossible in this world, the way this world is presently made, and that was the pain that wracked her from that moment on. To go against your own desire is to swim upstream against an icy current, and that was what my mother did.
She started now. Everything in her yearned to grapple with Livia’s will for Conor. But she loved him, and she knew what she had to do. And she had to start by giving him the choice herself, as a gift.
He looked at her again. “Conor,” Livia said a fourth time, and he knew there wouldn’t be a fifth. “There is bound to be a huge crowd outside with Rowena, and there will be another when we go back down to the Great City. Try to present yourself the way we would like to be seen.” At this, Conor pulled himself together, as if slipping on a costume of some kind. He tried a light-hearted shrug, and turned and went out the door.
Livia looked at Lily and gave a wry smile. She lifted her eyebrows and followed her son out.
And Lily, pain shooting through every part of her, her joints, her hands and feet (but mainly through her heart), pulled herself, bewildered, from the green silk-hung bed, and, going to the balcony, yanked painfully at the door.
Phoebe came to help her, but the door was locked. Still, through the crystal glass, the girls could see the crystal-enclosed courtyard below, where Conor greeted a fur-swathed Rowena with a kiss. A million flashes from a million cameras went off, blinding Lily’s eyes.
Her hand reached down blindly as she pushed the rising pain back down her throat, to rest there on her heart. Rex was there. She knelt down next to him, and buried her face in his coat. And wept. Because she wanted Conor. She knew she couldn’t have him, without using the power of her will. In other words, it was a choice for Lily of using Love or using Power.
It was a fatal choice for her love. It would become a fatal choice for her as queen, too.