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“Does it even matter? If he’s distracted for a few weeks or a few months? Even a few years? He is eternal.” She didn’t realize how much she was hoping Marquin would deny that conclusion until he didn’t.
“We are…working on the issue,” Marquin said carefully.
“But you won’t tell me how?”
“No.”
“We’ll be more open with you about when we leave. And we’ll be here as much as we can. That is what we can offer you.”
A week ago, she might not have taken it. She told herself she only did so now because it was practical to, but the truth she wouldn’t quite acknowledge was that something in her had shifted during that brief time spent in Numair’s village, and she wanted things she hadn’t known to want before.
Chapter Seventy-Six
Just Like All the Rest
The first hint of something wrong came at dinner that evening. She sat across from Numair, as she always did, and he was…vacant. He was always vacant with everyone else, though they never noticed, but he’d never been that way with her, even in public. The difference was in his eyes, in his voice, in the content of his responses that had always before been curated to appear perfectly vapid while containing undertones just for her.
It was as if all of that had been struck from the man. One night passed, then two, then three, and it was as if everything that had made them them—Clare and Numair, Numair and Clare—had been devoured by a lurking beast that had left no crumb behind. Her imagination offered a dozen explanations in lieu of the one she feared, all of them stemming from Alaric, or in her darker moments even Verol, but none of those accounted for one thing: he never wore that green scarf anymore.
The one no one knew the meaning of, save her and him. The one even threats or interference would not necessitate him dispensing with, because she was the only one who knew it meant he was thinking of her.
By the end of the fifth day, even the court had noticed the difference. She and Numair usually joked and played off each other, and she always found some reason to take him away from whatever woman he was with at the time—to give him the only respite from his role that she could offer.
But her early attempts to reclaim that ground had been met with such lackluster responses that she quit making them. He never found any reason to be alone with her. No letter arrived by Celerian runner to explain this sudden change in behavior. To reassure her.
Twice, as she’d returned from singing in the city, late at night, she’d ridden by his estate. But the rocks she tossed at his window went unanswered. Anxiety was a constant shadow at her back, whispering over and over a single fear: Did I ruin everything? Had he seen too much of who she was while they were gone? Had he finally realized just how deeply her damage ran?
But why kiss her in the forest, if that was true? It didn’t make any sense. It had to be Alaric’s magic, or Verol’s, except there was a dark voice that wouldn’t stop whispering, He’s had a little distance from you now. You saw how he was, what he came from, and it is nothing like you. Perhaps for a while he thought you were similar, but you were too foreign to even understand family. He is not broken in the same way you are. Why would he want to stay with you?
The court was beginning to whisper it too. That she wasn’t so special after all, just another dalliance, and now he was done with her, like he was eventually done with all the others. And they delighted in mocking her for it, now that no favoritism was shown to her to stand in their way. Especially since Alaric had likewise stepped back, allowing her the promised time to think on his demands.
Half the courtiers gossiped that Numair must have finally bedded her and found the experience lacking. The other half claimed he’d been in love with her, but her constant attention to Alaric had finally driven him off.
It was not lost on her that nowhere in any of these explanations were Numair or Alaric to blame. It was always, in one way or another, her fault. Because even in this court where no laws prohibited consensual carnal activities, where in theory a woman could not be held accountable for them when a man could not, in practice society still made it so. A woman was always easier to blame than a man, no matter how reprehensible the man’s behavior. A woman was always easier to shame.
If it weren’t for Alys and Lina and Proconsul Aula, she might have been completely ostracized. Verol and Quin never frequented the social spaces in the palace, and they had sent Fitz away, to do something they refused to tell her about. As it was, the company she did have was getting difficult to be around, because Alys wouldn’t stop asking her What in Ferrian’s hells is going on with you and Numair? and Do I need to kick him in the balls because I will. That was actually easier to deal with than the knowing, sympathetic looks Lina and Proconsul Aula kept giving her, as if she was some naive storybook damsel.
She broke down and sent him a letter by Celerian runner, hardly blinking at the exorbitant cost. Then she sent a second, and a third. He never sent one in return.
By the time the week’s five palace days were up, and she and Verol and Quin were headed back to the Arrendon estate for the weekend, she was strung like an overtightened guitar string, ready to snap at a too-firm pluck. But it was when she went to her room and found the hibiscus plant, dead and desiccated against her window, that everything came to a shattering crescendo inside her.
She must have made a sound, and a terrible one, because Verol and Marquin both came running.
“What is it?” Verol demanded.
She had the window open, hands cupping dead blooms that hadn’t yet fallen off. “It’s dead.”
Verol looked between her and the plant several times, his tension melting to confusion as he gradually understood that, yes, she was upset about a plant. “It isn’t native to this region. Or adapted to this season. We thought you were making it grow. Like you did with Marie’s tree.”
She didn’t correct him. She couldn’t. Because despite everything, Numair’s secrets were still hers to keep, and she would choke on them if it killed her.
I could make it grow, the Song told her. Hesitant, like it didn’t understand her reaction any more than Verol did.
The memory of Numair’s hand covering hers, him telling her Not everything beautiful has to be marred.
Her harsh Then it’s just going to die.
I won’t let it. I promise.
