Dilys gave Ellis a sad quirk of lips and a sigh. “Then p’raps I should’ve gone a fortnight ago,” she said, and took her clothes back.
After Dilys had gone, it was caution and tension, because everything Ellis said or did seemed to be the wrong thing, seemed to make Milo frown or get that thoughtful look in his eyes. And it wasn’t bloody fair that Dilys could make a joke about Milo missing an actual body part and get a real laugh as reward, and Ellis couldn’t even comment on the weather without making Milo go quiet and introspective.
It was nurses treating Milo like he was a tantruming child when he cried out in pain the first time they bundled him into several blankets and set him in a bath chair. It was Milo all gray and sweat-wet with exhaustion when they maneuvered him back out and into bed after a ten-minute stroll up and down the ward.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to play again.” Milo’s voice was low, almost a whisper, but still loud in the silence that had fallen between them once the nurses had retreated. Ellis lay across from Milo on the bed now, Milo staring at his hand on the cushion between them, thick white gauze wrapped around his splinted fingers. “That probably shouldn’t seem worse to me than missing a leg, but…” His mouth pressed tight, and he frowned, as though he didn’t quite understand it.
Ellis didn’t either, not really. “Why did you never tell me you play?” He kept his voice just as quiet, like the boys they’d once been exchanging secrets long into the night. Except this had never been one of them.
Milo blinked at Ellis, bemused. “What?”
“You never told me, Milo. It means something to you, you’re good enough you’ve been playing for a long time, and yet I never knew. Why?”
It was odd that this of all things made Milo smile, soft and teasing, but it did. “If you didn’t know I can play, how would you even know how good—?”
“Not the point.” Ellis rolled his eyes, and the only thing that kept him from snapping it out—because it bothered him, bothered him a lot—was that smile, and the fact that Ellis had caused it. Finally. Somehow. “Now answer the bloody question.”
Milo shrugged, blue eyes blinking slow and sleepy, and words coming softer around the edges now, though not quite slurred. “I didn’t… not tell you. I expect I didn’t think… It’s only… I didn’t realize you didn’t know.” He frowned. “I played mostly at school, when I felt… lonely. Melancholy, I suppose. And then I started to play for the dragons, because they like it, and giving them something makes me feel…” He turned his bandaged hand palm-up then palm-down on the cushion, squinting at it sadly. “I play when I want to feel Seen, feel… better. I expect I just never needed it when you were about.”
…Oh.
“That—” Ellis had to swallow the knot abruptly clogging his throat, and take a deep breath so he wouldn’t blub, and he didn’t even know where the startling onslaught of emotion was coming from. Relief, maybe, because yes, that made sense, or pride over being the one who could give something like that to someone like Milo, or maybe just plain old love that was so deep and so real it felt too big for Ellis’s chest as it pushed against his ribs and made it hard to breathe. “I’m… thank you.”
“For what?”
Ellis puffed out a wobbly laugh. “I’ve no idea.”
That smile again, and Milo met Ellis’s gaze, soft-eyed and fond. It lasted just long enough for Ellis to go all warm and sloppy inside before it slid away and was replaced by one of those thoughtful looks.
“Elly.” Milo moved his hand, skimmed it carefully along the bed until it nudged against Ellis’s breastbone. “I’m not… not the same.”
“Neither am I.” Ellis looked away. “The goddesses only know how my changes are going to eventually leap out and bite me on the arse. I haven’t even had time to identify them yet, let alone figure them out.”
True enough it made him pause. Because Ellis wasn’t the man Milo had left in Tirryderch. And he didn’t know if it was because he’d changed, or because he simply hadn’t been who he’d always thought he was. He’d killed people. He’d barely even mourned the necessity of it. He’d pondered better and faster ways to do it. Catching a life in his sights and triggering its end had been all too easy for Ellis. And he still wasn’t sorry.
There had to be something as broken about that as there was about Milo and his eyes that went distant with remembered horrors too often. There had to be something missing from Ellis, a space inside him just as blank as the space beneath Milo’s knee.
It was part of the story of war, he supposed—ordinary people living inside extraordinary moments, doing things within them they’d never considered, and either coming out the other side to another moment, or lying beside a shattered campfire, eyes limned gold, and watching all remaining moments just… drift away.
Rest in shadow
“I’d like it if we could,” Milo said, and there was that caution again. “Figure it out, you know?”
Ellis frowned. “I’m not sure I do.”
“And I’m not sure I know what…” Milo let it trail off, mouth an unhappy line, then tried again. “Elly. D’you… d’you want to—? No, that’s not…” He shoved out a breath, exasperated, apparently with himself. “You don’t know what to say to me anymore.”
Ellis couldn’t really argue with that. Still, something in his chest went heavy, even as his eyebrows shot up. “What does that even—?”
“You extolled the virtues of pushing that bloody chair around the entire time we walked the corridor.”
“What has that got…?” Ellis couldn’t quite follow the hard turn the conversation had taken. “It was only that it made it easier to walk without the cane, that’s all I was—”
“And before that it was a proper treatise on how much better the pears are here. And before that it was an in-depth discussion with my mam about where she bought my bloody blanket.”
“So my small talk needs some work. What’s that to do with anything?’
“Small talk.” Milo’s voice was still quiet, paradoxically intimate. He pulled in a long breath, bracing. “It’s only… I didn’t leave things… well. Between us.”
Ellis narrowed his eyes. “Exactly what are you trying to say here, Milo? Because I’m really not following.”
And if they were back to I’m leaving you for your own good, there was going to be a serious problem.
As though he’d read Ellis’s mind, Milo said, “You’re waiting for an end.”
He was so… calm about it. A fear Ellis hadn’t even known was there, that all at once swamped him now that it had been named, and Milo had just plucked it up and dangled it like bait on a lure.
Ellis couldn’t help but take it. He set his teeth. “And is this an end?”
“I don’t know.” Still quiet, still calm. “This is not me leaving you.”
“Again.”
“…Again.” It seemed as though Milo wanted to look away, but he didn’t. The corner of his mouth twitched up, incongruous, in a shadow of a rueful smile. “Pretty sure you could outrun me now anyway if I tried.” He waited, a glimmer close to hope in blue eyes watching Ellis for… something; when Ellis didn’t give it to him, whatever it might’ve been, the smile faded. “No. I’m not leaving you. It’s only that I can’t See you right now, I can’t See anything, and I need… I need to know.”
Milo sighed, looked at his hand, eyebrows squinched and mouth turned down. “You go where you’re needed. And there you stay. Your mam said that to me, back before…” He looked back up at Ellis, straightforward and open. “And it’s true. It’s who you are. Whatever your changes might be, that’s not one of them. And I don’t want that to be why you’re… I mean—” He stopped. Huffed. “I want it to be all right that I need you. I want it to be all right that I want you to stay. For more than bloody small talk, and what time my next pill is due. So…” He looked down again, then, as though forcing himself, back at Ellis. “Is it? All right?”
And… oh. Oh.
Ellis hadn�
�t understood. From the moment he’d arrived and seen thin and broken and hurt, for the first time ever, he’d thought Milo something fragile and altered and guarded. But it was only that Ellis had been looking and not Seeing, and he hadn’t understood. Altered, yes. Guarded, absolutely. But fragile had never been it. Ellis just hadn’t been looking at Milo’s changes properly, had allowed old fear to blur his sight.
This wasn’t Milo in Wellech overthinking what he wanted because he didn’t believe what was good for him was good for Ellis. This wasn’t Milo in Tirryderch stewing and fretting and trying to find a way to tell Ellis that he was leaving him but it didn’t mean he didn’t love him. This wasn’t Milo saying I’ll always be the man who loved you ’til the end and severing a contract to prove it.
Milo didn’t think he was brave. That was the thing. The man who’d volunteered to walk into a country that was literally hunting people like him didn’t think he was brave. Doing what one saw as one’s duty didn’t equal bravery to Milo; it merely equaled a job that needed doing despite one’s fears. And in matters of emotion? Well. Ellis could see it, that shying away, that unwillingness to take a chance, because an emotional risk to Milo was so much more visceral than any other kind. Walking into machine gunfire was easier than laying his heart in an open palm, offering.
It wasn’t cowardice, at least Ellis had never seen it that way; it was merely a man who’d been told from the time he was a boy that he must hide himself. That everything he was, everything he loved, depended on it. It was why, after all, Ellis had sent a contract offer—because he’d acknowledged the want rising between them that fortuitous night in Wellech, and he’d known Milo wouldn’t. Milo was forthright and to-the-point in most everything, but he didn’t take chances when it came to his heart. Ellis had known for a long time, before he’d even had cause to define its shapes, that it was because Milo didn’t really know how.
At least, he hadn’t before. Not when he’d left Ellis in Tirryderch.
This was, consequently, a change Ellis hadn’t known how to see until just this second. Strength grown resolute; self-doubt turned to daring; a core of steel tempered by things Ellis would probably never know, and made adamant.
And there Ellis had been, walking on eggshells, chattering nonsense to fill up the quiet spaces, being careful, because yes, he hadn’t known what to say, and all of it had made him so blind he hadn’t even known to look. And all of Milo’s cautious quiet had merely been a wounded soul waiting for Ellis to See the broken places, and decide if he might love them too.
A smile bloomed, profound relief and misery shattered aborning, and Ellis’s eyes went hot. “Is this you asking for a cariad contract?”
The look on Milo’s face wasn’t the hope intertwined with despair it had been in Wellech when Ellis had asked that question. This look was surprise, then resolve, and a quick, decisive “Yes.” Firm.
That heaviness in Ellis’s chest lifted, all at once. In its place, a soft burn ignited, glowing warm and soft as the heart of a dragonstone.
“Milo.” Ellis dipped in close, dropped his voice even lower. “I never signed the dissolution paperwork.” Stern. Serious. “In point of fact, I never even opened it, you massive git.”
Milo pulled back, startled, frowning, until he caught Ellis’s badly hidden smirk. The confusion cleared, and Milo tried to glare around a begrudging smile, said, “Oi!” and shoved at Ellis’s chest. It only took a second for him to remember why he shouldn’t—he barked out a sharp “Ow, bloody blighting—” and jerked his hand back, eyes shut tight and breath hissing out through a pained grimace. Ellis sat up with a dismayed yelp, but he cut it off when he realized Milo was laughing through all the hissing, bulky hand held protectively to his chest but shoulders shaking with mirth and not sobs.
“Get back down here, Elly.” Milo’s voice was rough and hoarse, but the laughter was still trying to dominate the involuntary injured gasping, so Ellis did. He lay back down, carefully, and waited for Milo to get his breath back enough to say, “I’m not through with you yet.”
And all Ellis could say was, “Great goddesses, I hope not,” thick and all at once so intensely grateful he had to sigh it out and shut his eyes tight.
Calm now, more comfortable in his skin than he’d been in two long years, Ellis pulled the stone from its home in his waistcoat pocket, and set it on the cushion between them.
“I’m still clan.” He paused, remembering a sunny day and a razorback calf and Milo crowing out declarations that still made Ellis’s stomach swoop. “It saved me, Milo. Twice. Your heart, entwined with theirs, and still loving me so hard that dragons could feel it. They say I’m yours, you stonking great numpty. And who wants to argue with dragons?”
Milo pulled in a shaky breath, stared at the stone, said, “Oh, Elly,” subdued and windless, then looked at Ellis. “Only.” Milo’s gaze turned sad, and he blinked. “I lost the key.” His mouth trembled, and his eyes filled. “They… they took it, and I don’t—”
“Well, then.” Ellis slid his hand into his trouser pocket, awkward with his still healing arm and the way he was twisted on the bed, and laid another key on the cushion beside the stone. “Good thing they’re not as rare as dragonstones.”
Milo’s smile came back, softer now, warm but still rueful. “The Sisters.” He shook his head. “They’ll still never approve it.”
Ellis rather thought they might do. He wasn’t sure yet how things were going to work out when they got home, but if there was one good thing this war had done, it was to open some options for them.
Whether Milo recovered enough to run Old Forge again or not, Ellis didn’t think Aleks would be going anywhere. Not if Glynn had anything to say about it. Ty Dreigiau was big enough for six families; there was no reason it couldn’t house two dragonkin. And there was no reason Ellis couldn’t make a home among clan for at least part of the year.
Wellech needed a Pennaeth, it was true, but it didn’t necessarily need Ellis. He’d taken the position from his tad because he’d had to, not because it was something he’d aspired to. The only job Ellis had ever really wanted was Warden, and he could do that in any parish, provided he healed enough to one day sit a horse again.
Petra, on the other hand, was clearly better at being Pennaeth than Ellis had ever been, doing the job in his absence because she was good at it, because she loved it. And Ellis didn’t think it would take much to get the council to change the bylaws by the time he got back. Not after he’d blatantly abandoned Wellech and left Petra to lead it through the aftermath of a war. It was past time for positions of power and responsibility to be earned rather than inherited anyway.
“Maybe they won’t approve it.” Ellis reached up to brush dark hair from Milo’s brow. “But I remember an old rumor that my mam somehow twisted the collective arms of the Sisters so you could inherit. I don’t know what she could possibly have on them that might bend them to her will, but it would be only fair that she do the same for me so I can have the love of my life for my cariad.”
Milo chewed his lip, said, “Elly?” small and tentative.
Ellis slid his fingers down over Milo’s fuzzy jaw, thinking distractedly that he was going to find out if he could scare up a razor in this place, give Milo a shave, do it right, with hot towels and everything.
“Yeah?”
“Only…” Milo twitched a self-conscious smile, there and gone, and swept the stone and the key off the cushion. “Only I’ve not had a proper snog in two years. D’you think you could—?”
He didn’t get to finish. Ellis didn’t let him.
Epilogue—Coda
: a concluding section appended to the end of a work
Life was not a play. It was not a novel. There was no one clear beginning that could be recognized as a beginning except perhaps in hindsight. There was no discernable middle where one could judge the number of pages left and be confident the hardship was nearly done. There was no distinct end, only a continuation, a steady, sometimes reluctant journe
y onward into more unknowns.
This, Ellis decided, standing on the edge of a clearing outside Werszewa, the collar of his coat held tight against the biting wind with one hand, and extra blankets in the other, this he was going to mark as a beginning. Milo didn’t know it yet, sitting in the middle of a wide stretch of autumn-pale grass, grin on his face and eyes shining. Someday Ellis might tell him that he’d written Once Upon a Time across their pages as he watched a dragon glide into a soft landing, tuck its wings, and make its way toward Milo. Eager, though stepping more lightly than Ellis would’ve thought possible, as though it knew Milo needed the caution. Dipping its nose as it got near, smoke curling from its nostrils, thick limbs folding and great eyes closing as it carefully laid its immense body in the grass and rested its head on the ground beside Milo’s bath chair.
Ellis couldn’t tell what Milo was saying to it—the wind was too loud and Ellis was too far away, giving Milo privacy for this renewal between a creature that was clearly much more than what most people thought it was, and the man who saved its clan. But he could tell Milo was saying something, and he could tell Milo’s voice pleased the dragon, because it purled out a song, smooth as a string beneath a bow. Its tail curled around the other side of the bath chair, protective almost, and it sighed when Milo laid his bandaged hand to the side of its snout, leaned in to rest his forehead next to it. A communion of sorts, the nuances of which Ellis could never hope to be privy to, but he didn’t need to be.
Once Upon a Time he jotted in lines that were not chiseled flat and stark into marbled history but laid soft and malleable as a sonata within the liminal spaces between the beats of his heart.
Once Upon a Time there was a man whose story was jarred out of true by a torn and ruined page, moments splotched in blood-red ink, and eternities—
No. Ellis shook his head. No, that wasn’t right. Too woebegone and bleak for this moment of brilliance. A note out of tune.
Sonata Form Page 47