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He remembered the feel of Tir’s hands in his, the delicate touch of skin and bandages and new sensations. He heard Tir, in memory, laugh at him or tease him or say quietly, with conviction, I’m here with you.
Tir wasn’t. Not now. Not ever again. Only ash, and memory.
The first days weren’t the worst. Those didn’t feel real yet. The days became a week, though. And then more. And more than that.
And Oliver knew everything, now; knew how much he’d got wrong, when it mattered. And also before then, all his life. When he could’ve said the right words. When he could’ve kissed Tir, or asked whether he ever could, if Tir could want, ever—
He could have tried.
And now he couldn’t. And he’d failed Tir. The person he’d loved, always, all along.
“I love him,” he whispered aloud, into the second week, when his mother found him in the library sobbing over a gilt-edged copy of the collected Scarlet Hood ballads. “I’m—he was—I saw him. I saw him. In the—it was him. It was always him.”
“I know,” Queen Eleuthenia said, and rubbed his back the way she had when he’d been young and unable to sleep. “I know.”
“I never told him. I never knew.”
“He made his own choices.” Her voice tried to be soothing, but it was in mourning too. They ached together. “He stayed with us for all those years. He chose to come with you.”
“I failed,” Ollie breathed, broke, confessed: “I was supposed to save him.”
“I think,” his mother tried, “that perhaps the magic works differently with fairies, sweetheart. Perhaps it’s backwards, and he was meant to save you.”
“But I love him,” Oliver whispered again, falling apart, feeling too much; and his mother put both arms around him and told him he’d be strong, he’d hurt less, someday. She told him he had family, and he was loved, and he could survive this.
She would know. Of course she would. And Oliver leaned on her, and his mother leaned on him.
They got through it, together.
He spent some days alone, not wanting to see anyone. He spent some days with his family, wanting distractions, wanting to get out of his head. He went down to the closest tavern and got blindly drunk one evening without exactly planning to—villagers kept patting him on the arm and buying him drinks and being too understanding, telling him about this or that kindness Tir’d once done on their behalf, and Oliver soaked up every story, drowned himself in every scrap, collected pieces of Tir like a crazy half-sauced magpie. He woke with the hangover from hell and a too-bright awareness of chatter in the hallway outside and the scents of oatcakes and ham from the kitchens, before the cooking had finished.
He overheard—overheard, underheard, he’d not settled on a term—his sisters talking in the hall outside their old bedrooms, that night. They’d both arrived, Eleanora Margretta with her polite shy greyhound of a husband and their three-going-on-four offspring, and Lou on leave from her medical studies, dry and calm and comforting. He knew they wanted to be here for him; he knew they’d come to mourn Tir with the rest of the family. He’d been their brother, after all.
Oliver appreciated the thought. Tir would’ve appreciated the kindness.
He didn’t know how to tell his sisters that. He didn’t know how to talk. Half the glances held pity like tiptoed steps around the walking wounded; the rest were too hearty, purposefully trying to take him out of himself. One minute he wanted that, the next he didn’t, and in between he just didn’t know.
He wanted Tir. He wanted to say everything he’d never had the chance to say.
You’re my anchor, he wanted to explain. You’re my harbor in the storm. You found my good riding boots when I lost them and I love you. You buy every single novel put out by that newfangled printing press and leave them wherever you’ve been reading and I love you. You believed in me when I didn’t, and I love you.
He skipped the evening’s family dinner, informal as it was, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling. He heard, with his new hearing, steps along the staircase; his sisters murmured about him, going down.
“He’ll be all right,” Em said, though she said so without certainty. Candlelight played on her face, highlighting concern; through walls and closed doors Ollie could see her, honey-blonde curls and the strong chin of all the royal family, and the gentle curve of her latest pregnancy under the flowing loose robe. “Won’t he? I mean, he can’t go on like this.”
Louisa sighed. She was taller and thinner, a gilt-edged portrait-frame of a girl, practical with a healer’s compassion. “He’ll be fine. Eventually. It’s grief, it’s not…Oliver is strong. We know he is.”
“He’s so lonely,” Em pleaded, a wish for the universe. “I wish we could—”
“I know.” Lou rubbed her own eyes, a telling sweep of a gesture: mourning, heartache, regret, acceptance. “I know. I had a bit of a…a fantasy, once, did I ever tell you that? When I was, oh, nine or ten years old…back when I thought I’d have to marry someone, before I realized I didn’t…I told Tir I wanted to marry him. Gorgeous, magical, funny, already part of our family…of course it wasn’t anything. Schoolgirl daydreams. Silly things. But he was so kind about it.”
“He would’ve been, yes.”
“I think we all knew he loved Ollie. Well, not Ollie.” Lou shook her head. “That’d be Ollie.”
Em laughed, through pain.
Lou went on, “But maybe if we think about it, it’s what was meant to…maybe it’s—not good, but—what future would they have had? Has a Crown Prince ever married a fairy? In all our history? Someone not human, someone—not from here. And at least Oliver is alive. There’s…that.”
