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Rose is reading at the desk. She’s been at it for an hour, and her mutterings are becoming more pronounced, her finger pressing harder into the pages as she traces the path for her eyes.
She’s eleven and still struggles with her sentences, and she becomes frustrated when Nox tries to help her.
I’m not much help, so I brew her tea and let her have extra sugar cubes to make up for the time her brothers get to play outside after they’ve finished their studies.
When I ask her if the letters ever become jumbled, if they ever try to run away, she tells me no.
Nox is in the garden,holding Anders to his chest. Now that Rose has returned to us, I’ve stopped thinking of Anders as my third and his second. Nox treats Rose like his own, no different than Thomas and Anders, and it’s one of the things I adore about him.
He’s at such peace here, tending to our little garden. We’ve gotten plenty good at it, but his mother still visits twice a week to assist us.
I think she likes having an excuse to visit.
I think we like her having an excuse too.
The sun beats down on Nox’s neck, browning it in areas that once were so pale, sallow.
Nox tries not to think of those times, of the years he spent pent up as the queen’s slave, her son and magister and executioner. He tries not to think of them, so I remember them on his behalf.
I feel as though someone needs to remember.
The little boy who had his childhood stolen from him deserves that much.
Nox turns and smiles at me, wiping dirt onto his pants and smudging the fabric.
His face is tanned, too.
There’s something about it that isn’t right.
Perhaps it’s that he typically wears a hat, but today he’s forgotten it indoors. I gently scold him, warning him he’ll catch sunburn again.
But that’s not right either.
The not-rightness of it all hovers in the air, warping the edges of my vision, of the scene before me.
It’s the way the road in the distance leads to nowhere, or the fact I don’t know where it leads, when we’ve lived here for years and that seems like something I should know. It’s the way Rose is sometimes Theo, and how she’s a bit younger than she should be, given the wrinkles creasing the backs of my hands.
It’s that we’re in Mystral, yet the day is sweltering with heat.
It’s the sun that beats down on Nox’s neck. On his face, his exposed arms.
“Blaise? Baby?”
Confusion wrinkles his brow, and by the time it hits me what’s wrong, I’m too late.
“Nox! You have to get insi—”
My husband bursts into flames. Fire licks up his exposed arms, eating at his flesh, at the lumps of fabric where he’s rolled up his sleeves.
I sprint for him, and the heat of the flames berates my cheeks, but I grab at his hand.
Nox doesn’t scream. He doesn’t move.
“Darling, you’re burning. You must get inside,” I plead, but his feet remain planted, even as the flames encroach on his shirt collar.
“I’ve missed the sun, Blaise. It doesn’t hurt,” he says, and his voice is so confident, so soothing, I’m tempted to believe him. But the smoke is filling my nostrils now, and his skin is beginning to peel back in dark, curling flakes, and I know if I don’t get him inside, he will die.
“Please, do it for me. We can see the sun another day,” I say, like I might to a child in need of coaxing, and when I look at Nox again, he’s no longer Nox but Theo.
