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Fadi figured out how to pick his jaw up from where it’d dropped, and said, “You’re a Fairy Prince! And—and I’ve slept with you.”
Oliver made a suspiciously cranky noise under his breath, nearly a growl.
“Once,” Tir said blithely. “And we decided it didn’t count. So that’s that, then.”
“Sorry, what is?”
“You didn’t say you didn’t want to try,” Tir said.
“We’re on your side,” Ollie said. “Anyone who says anything to you will be saying it to us. And they won’t, anyway.”
“No, likely not.” He toyed with his borrowed ring, twisting tiger’s-eye stripes around on his finger. Tir and Oliver were indeed heroes, and had two kingdoms’ worth of love from their people. A year ago, before the Prince of Fairy had died to save the Crown Prince of Bellemare, this would’ve been harder; he knew that too. Part of the shock had simply been the disruption of habit: he’d not forgotten but grown used to not thinking about his heritage.
Beryl hadn’t meant to hurt him. And some minor scandal—not even that, not these days—wouldn’t kill him.
And Tirian and Oliver were his friends, and stood caught on that tightrope just as he did: symbols of human and fairy coming together. Tir especially: Tir who’d become both and not fully either, these days.
He understood that feeling. He’d known it most of his life, slipping across worlds and identities, trying to pull disparate pieces into one: the cool saltwater delight of a harbor-side childhood, the calls of gulls over waves, the dry sunbaked hills of his grandfather’s desert and pebbled mosaics and the clear focused joy of medicine, of lessons and surgeon’s hands and puzzles to solve and lives to save, and behind that the tantalizing flutter of true sight, other sight, so easy to speak offhandedly and land precisely on a patient’s problem…
Beryl had tried to reach out for him before he’d run from the ballroom. Had worn an expression of distress, of regret at saying words that in his own country hadn’t even been wrong.
Something new, he’d said to his fairy. That’s what we’re building. Together.
His fingers ceased fidgeting, letting the ring relax. “Tir?”
“Yes,” Tir said promptly.
Fadi took a deep breath. “Would you do me a favor? Two favors, in fact. Sorry.”
“Anything,” Tir agreed. “Keep that ring, by the way, I don’t wear it and it likes you. What do you need?”
“Do I get to help?” Oliver asked. “I also get veto power. Especially if it involves you two and a bed.” This was a joke; Oliver and Tir trusted each other beyond doubt. Ollie obviously remained somewhat grumpy at the mental image.
“I don’t think,” Tir said, “that that’s what he has in mind. Though I might be wrong. I remember one novel that had a plot involving jealousy and an arranged—”
“No no no,” Fadi interrupted, “but thank you for that, I said no, Oliver, so stop plotting ways to dismember me. No. I have a plan. And yes, I need something from you as well. Here’s what I want you to do…”
He explained. Tir made satisfied romantic noises. Oliver nodded. “We can do that.”
“Thank you.”
“In the morning. After he gets to rest.”
Tirian obviously opened his mouth to object, took in Ollie’s expression, and changed his response to, “It’ll be good for poor Berry, anyway. He could use a night to remember that he’s not in Fairy anymore, and he ought to think before he speaks, and he does need to apologize to you, because he didn’t, not that I heard.”
“Fair enough,” Fadi conceded. It was; and he could use a night to unfold and straighten out his own emotions. “Send him my way after breakfast.”
“I like you being happy,” Tir said, projecting fondness at him; Oliver agreed, “We both do,” and scooped his True Love up from the old sofa and cuddled him all the way down the stairs. Tir did not complain about this.
Fadi, left alone in the astronomy tower, ended up smiling: at his friends, at the winking ring on his finger, at the shimmery brass scientific instruments yearning toward the sky. He liked himself being happy too.
The morning dawned cloudless and pale blue as robin’s-eggs, a bell-curve of endless wintry sky. Fadi dropped into the kitchens for bread and cheese and an apple, accepted commiseration and assertions of staunch friendship from castle cooks, and headed off to the infirmary. He had preparations to make.
He touched one of those unseasonal snapdragons, going in. They wreathed his door in brilliant color, bright as luck, or as a future.
Beryllin appeared in his doorway at half-past nine; Oliver and Tir had been prompt. The fairy lord shuffled feet, moved to tap at the door-frame—the door was open, so knocking on it would’ve been awkward—and finally tucked penitent hands behind his back. “You…Tirian said you…you might want to see me?”
“I do want to see you, yes.” His fairy was wearing dark woodsy brown today, Fadi noticed: not quite mourning colors, but subdued. He’d braided that moonglow hair back: more somber, and older.
