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“I have missed that smile.”
“Cristiano—”
“That you love me at all humbles me,” he told her, as if he was making vows. And not with the briskness he’d displayed at their wedding. “You, who have been through so much. I thought that the purpose of my life was to distinguish myself from my father. I wanted so desperately to be nothing like him. But somehow, I never saw that I was as drunk on my own perceived virtue as he ever was on whiskey. Until you.”
“None of this is necessary. Really.”
“It is more than necessary.” And his voice was like thunder, then. “It is past due. This whole time, I have thought that I could avoid saying these words that I barely know how to form if I expressed myself another way. I thought that while I heard that beautiful song of yours, so passionate and all mine, you would hear the truth in my heart as well.”
Julienne found she was holding her breath.
“The things you make me feel terrify me,” he said, and she understood that she was seeing the real Cristiano now. No ice. All flesh and man. And all hers. “They make me feel mortal, weak and wrong. And all my life, I have considered it my duty to exorcise anything I felt. Better to be like ice. Better by far to be half-dead—but you make me feel alive, Julienne. You forced me, against my will and inclination, to face up to the things I wanted so badly I’d locked them away inside myself. And then you systematically broke down each and every one of my compartments.”
She didn’t know if she should melt or apologize. But Cristiano took one of her hands and brought it to his chest. Then placed her palm over his heart. “I’m going to tell you a fairy tale.”
“Does it involve witches?” she managed to ask, not sure if she was laughing or crying.
With his free hand, he reached over and wiped away the water beneath her eyes.
“Once upon a time there was a fool,” he told her, his voice a low rumble that she could feel, now, as well as hear. “He was raised by an ogre and a troll. The ogre taught him airs and graces. The troll taught him pain. The fool knew no better, and imagined that one was a king and the other a jailer.”
“This is already a very sad story.”
Cristiano’s dark eyes gleamed, but he kept on. “Time went on, and the fool allowed his king to color his world. He thought that made him a man. A hero, even. Until one day, at the end of a very low hour when he had indulged his innate selfishness and would soon learn that there would be consequences for his folly, he had the opportunity instead to play the hero he’d always imagined he was. For in walked a girl, and he saved her.”
“Oh, okay,” she said. “I likethisstory.”
“But you see, like any fool, he thought saving her was enough. He turned his back on her, told himself it was a virtue and made a career out of turning himself to stone.”
Beneath her hand, his heart beat, hard and strong. Beautiful. And inside her, she felt their son’s feet poke at her, and if this wasn’t love—physical and real and true—she was sure she didn’t know the meaning of the word.
“And then one day, years later, the girl found him again,” Cristiano said, still telling his story. Or maybe this was really their story. “She flattered him, flirted with him. For she had grown up to become a beautiful princess, and the fool thought—of course. He considered himself a hero, so why shouldn’t he have a princess? So he kissed her, but when he woke the next morning, it was to find that the princess had disappeared. And worse, that she had prized off the stone he wore instead of a heart and had taken it with her.”
“Not a princess,” Julienne whispered. “And you’ve never been a fool.”
“Six months passed,” he said, a faintly reproving note in his voice. “And the fool knew that he was not the same. His stone was gone, and that meant that he could feel that beating, untamable organ beneath. Suddenly, there was blood in his veins. Suddenly, he wanted things he knew he couldn’t have. But he ignored it all, and assumed that if he locked himself away in eternal winter, he could find another stone. The world has no shortage of stones, after all.”
Julienne’s hand was still there on his chest, splayed wide over his flat pectoral muscle, and all she felt was his heart. The kick of it, insistent and strong.
No stones to be found.
“One day, the princess returned. She gazed at our fool, and to his astonishment, he could see in her eyes that what she saw was a hero. ‘Look,’ she said, and showed him her big, round belly, swollen with child. ‘I have taken the stone that lay upon your heart, and see what I’ve made with it.’”
“A son,” Julienne whispered.
“A son,” he agreed. “But the fool knew that he was no hero, you see. And more, he was afraid of the princess, and the things she made him feel, and that hollow where his stone once lay. He knew that the princess was filled with light, and it was only a matter of time before she looked deep enough to see that there was nothing in him but darkness. He had an idea. He would marry the princess, and pile stones on top of her, muting her light. Saving himself in the process.”
“Some princesses like stones,” Julienne argued, astonished to hear the thickness in her voice. “Or they wouldn’t take them from unsuspecting hearts in the first place, would they?”
“A princess might like to collect stones,” Cristiano said, shaking his head at her. “But no one likes to have them stacked on top of their chest. Crushing out the will to live. The fool kept going, for he knew no other way. Every day he lay another stone upon the princess, and every day, he watched the light in her fade. Until one day, he realized that when she looked at him, all she saw was stone. That he was no longer a hero at all. And the fool knew then that if he continued along this path, it would only end one way. First he would kill the princess, as surely as if he choked her with his own hand. And then, inevitably, he would do the same to his son.”
“Cristiano,” she said.
And it was only his name. But it held whole worlds in it.
“More than that, he understood at last that the ogre and the troll were neither kings nor jailers, but had once been fools themselves. And once he understood that, everywhere he looked, he saw the stones his ancestors had piled up like walls.”
She tried again, but she couldn’t seem to speak. And she knew she didn’t have stones on her chest, but love. So much love it hurt.
