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“You were better than I was,” Rae said, “at listening. At self-sacrifice, to win, to let someone else win, in some of our games. I understand more, now, I think.”
“And you were better at finding solutions that didn’t involve self-sacrifice.” He raised both eyebrows at her. “I’d been wondering, though…I think I’d wanted to ask you…”
“Whether you were still the Heir,” Rae finished for him. “If you weren’t really one of us. But you are. You must know that.”
“Must I,” Tir said, amused, listening. Being good at that.
“Of course.” She regarded him with startled eyes, ink-dark but holding shifts of color like the sheen on certain seashells, pools of rich oil, forest leaves at night. “I thought you knew. You’re so necessary; the lands—both lands—need you, for everything to work. They need you to be who you are. And, Tir…” She touched his arm, firm. “We all need you. You’re more of Fairy than any of us—what you chose, how deeply you believe, what you did for us all. You’re our Prince because that’s who you are.”
Tir looked at his favorite cousin, among roses and sun in a human garden: both of them older now, someplace they’d never been before, learning. “I think I can come up with some ideas. For your students. Some techniques, meditations, shapes to settle into…it might even help. Me, I mean.”
Rae’s eyes lit up.
“Don’t expect too much,” Tir said. “I have treasury meetings. Moving-picture design meetings. You know, every other organizational miracle everyone expects of us heroes. But…I would like to be part of this, with you. To see what we can share. To bring magic closer to everyone.”
“It will,” Rae said. “It will. For—everyone, I think. Tir—I love you.”
“I know. Want a hug?”
“Yes,” Rae demanded, and hugged him so hard his ribs protested, and he hugged her right back, just as much.
She said, letting go, “I’m your Heir, by the way. You know, decades from now, whenever you get old and boring, and you and Oliver decide to go away and enjoy yourselves. Unless something changes, anyway. But that’s what the land’s saying. You know that, right?”
“Yes,” Tir said. He hadn’t known for sure—he couldn’t sense it—but he knew. “And you’ll be just as good as I hope to be.”
“Better,” Rae said, with affection, “I’ve got ideas,” and touched the rose again. Butterflies, summoned from nowhere, fluttered up around her.
Tir went to find his mother, after that, and hugged her as well; she was not expecting that, caught in a moment between an audience with two members of the Sylvan Tribe and a conference with Oliver’s mother about diplomatic relations with Stratsburg. She gazed at him anxiously; they always had looked alike, tall and thin and dark. She had wood smoke hair, and gold-dust eyelashes, and fingers like eddies of wind, in motion.
“I love you,” Tir said. “I know you love me.”
“I do. My son.” She moved; the wind fluttered. “I am here. I know I wasn’t…I know you and I…it’s been so long, my Tirian…if I’ve asked so much of you, I never meant…”
“I’m your son,” Tir said. “I like solving problems. We’ll work on it. Together.”
His mother smiled at him, and murmured that she did like Oliver, that she could see his heart, and it was made of colors, like the sunrise. Tir nodded, and told her about Oliver’s new painting, a study of the new riotous hues and blossoms in the gardens and around the castle, magic and light and stone and earth; and she smiled.
He was up in the astronomy tower when Oliver came to find him, later. The old telescopes and star-maps and battered furniture welcomed him; they’d done so for years. Brass and bronze and wood surrounded him with memories, inviting, wrapped with care by time and affection.
He’d been gazing out over the land, his land, their land. Joined together, visible in the faint purple gauze over the sky, the opal glint to the river. Like himself, not entirely one nor the other, now.
It was home. Where he fit. Where there was work to be done, and a future to build. And magic.
He was thinking about that, leaning elbows on the window, hair coming loose from its braid, when his husband appeared. As usual, Oliver’s step echoed before he arrived, filling up the space. Tir loved knowing that, hearing him, anticipating him.
“Your favorite cousin told me you were up here,” Ollie said, nudging the door shut with a foot, “but I knew anyway. I could feel you. Being happy?”
“I have been all day, I think.”
“I love that.”
“Do you always know?”
“No, it’s not reliable. And weak; you know that. Short-range. Boysenberry mead?”
“Very much yes, please.” Tir turned to face Oliver instead of the forest and the river, and then hopped up to sit on the window-seat anyway, legs swinging. When they’d been younger he’d been too short to reach the floor. “I like you knowing. And I can feel it, a little, secondhand, when you’re using the gift. I like it.”
Oliver leaned against the wall next to him, handed over mead. “I love knowing that, too.”
