“No,” she said coldly.
“You’d welcome him.”
“I would not,” she said.
He simply looked at her for some time, and when he spoke again, he had seemingly taken up another subject. “When we were boys,” he said, “we’d play together outside amongst the wildflowers.”
“I remember how it was that you ‘played,’ Celedin,” she muttered.
“No, this was before you,” he said in that grasping voiceof his, harsh but barely substantial. “We were very young, so young that it was permissible that we might cry when we skinned our knees. He had a mother, and she would cuddle him and run her fingers through his black hair and whisper into his forehead that he would be all right. She would whisper, ‘Hush, hush, my sweet boy.’ And when I cried, my father would say, ‘Toughen up.’ My father would say, ‘I’ll give you something to cry about.’”
“You were jealous,” she realized.
“I didn’t want to be Dathor,” he said.
“No,” she said. “You wanted someone to love you.”
“That’s not for me,” he said, tilting his head to the side and looking her over. “I am not a being that anyone loves.”
She licked her lips. “Well, you… you could make it a bit easier for the rest of us if you weren’t so awful, you know?”
He nodded, then winced as it tugged at his not-quite-healed neck. He sagged into the wall. He was seated on the small bed up here in this small room. He looked up at the window overhead. “I don’t suppose it will matter to you, but I am sorry, Aerhril. I’m sorry for the way I’ve been with you. I’m sorry for so many things. It’s funny, when you think you are dying, the way everything flattens out and the worst parts of you rise up to the surface.”
She was not sure what to say to this. She did not forgive him. There was too much to forgive. But she did wonder at it all, at whether any of them could truly be termed good.
Perhaps there could not be goodness in as harsh a landscape as this. Perhaps there could only be brutality and beauty, warring with each other, feeding each other.
Was Celedin truly worse than the rest of them? Or did she and Dathor just paint him as the villain so that they could see themselves as the heroes?
“I am sorry, too, Celedin,” she said finally. “I know that your life has been quite difficult in many ways.”
“I know I…” His voice was a scrape. “When you arrived, you were the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to touch it, your beauty, I wanted…”
“Celedin—”
“I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to touch anything gently. I touched but I hurt you. It was all I knew.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I forgive you.” Maybe she even did. Maybe it wasn’t even a lie, something said to placate him, to shut him up.
“I knew you’d never touch me willingly,” he said. “I knew I had to have you by force. But he… he has you by force, and you still go to him willingly. What is it about him?”
“I am not going to him willingly,” she said. “I hate him. He hates me.”
“He’s just as bad as me, in the end, Aerhril. You and I both know it. Why do you choose him?”
So, now, she pitied Celedin. When she came to look in on him, there was this well of it, a vast ocean of how sorry she felt for him. She could see it all now, see every moment of his life, how he had reached out for love and been turned away at every turn. She could see that the way he reached out for love was flawed and destined to fail, but she could also see that every time he was denied and scorned, he grew worse.
She could see all of it.
She pitied him.
She knew that somehow, her love for Dathor had been first rooted in pity, but it wasn’t the same. She and Dathor had been allies, and she and Celedin…
Well, they could be allies now, she supposed. She and Celedin could ally themselves against the orcs, but what good would that do, because he was useless.
She had pitied Dathor, but he had been so very strong, also. She had also admired him.
Love was complicated, was it not?
