Both the males were stumbling, having conversations with one another with their eyes, until finally Tristian declared, "He cannot marry her because Prince A'zur discovered a secret of his."
Rhenan's mouth closed, neither agreeing nor objecting.
She shot Rhenan the same look of expectation as she had done Tristian. "Secrets do not exist around this table. Tell your old Mama."
"Uhhh.. my secret..."
"Yes, Rhenan, that secret."
She suddenly gasped. "You didn't? Rhenan!"
There was such confusion going around that her youngest son officially looked perplexed between both of them.
"He's impotent, Mama," Tristian suddenly said, then, hurriedly, "There's a reason he never takes anyone to bed, keeps only the company of our sisters and has not once pursued a woman of worth in this kingdom."
Rhenan stared at Tristian with a gaped mouth.
She did not believe the excuse of sterility for a second. "And here was me thinking you had bedded the girl. The secret was Prince A'zur finding you rolling around between the sheets with his sister."
"No," Tristian said. "He also prefers the company of men. Right, Rhenan?"
Rhenan was choking, coughing, seeming to find a hard time recalling the way of speech.
"Right, Rhenan?"
Another sputter and cough. "R-right, o-of course. Yes, cock, I-I love it, Mama. And-and my own, it's rather a useless tool."
"See? He'd have never pursued that Misseldon girl. He was after the brother. Ask anyone who had seen them that night."
She did not wish it to be true, but the evidence was all slotting into place. Still, she did not believe it, did she? She took a quick sip of her wine and cursed it for being so mild. "I will love my son whatever he is, but if you are lying about this, Tristian," she turned and gave him that look of disappointment she knew all children hated to receive. "What will I be?"
"Curious why I would tell such a lie and willing to hear me out?" Tristian suggested.
"She'd be disappointed," Rhenan rasped, still unable to properly find his tongue with his supposed secrets out in the open.
"Yes. I'll be disappointed. Do you want me to be disappointed, Tristian?"
The brothers passed another look.
"I would loathe it," her son admitted. "Lying is not a habit of mine, and should I ever do it, I'm sure I would have good reason."
But he was no longer meeting her eyes as he spoke.
"Tristian, dear?"
Her son joined her gaze with the eyes of his father. "Why is it always me you doubt? If I have lied, is it not that Rhenan has done the same?"
"Of course. I doubt you both, and it pains me. For lies hurt me terribly. I know that there is more to this than all these lies you're hurling to and thro. So tell me, my dear, what did you do with Astrid Misseldon?"
He held her stare unwaveringly, and yet there was pain to be seen in his own eyes, perhaps dating back years before the foreign girl had ever stepped foot onto their soils. "Trust runs two ways, Mama. Weigh my answer by the trust you believe I have for you: I did nothing with that female."
"Is that truly all the attention I get in light of my newly exposed love of men?" her youngest son asked. "Or the fact that I've a limp sausage?"
"You know, I always wished that you would get along better. I have hoped it for years and thought it impossible, but you keep each other's secrets like no other I have met. There is love there, between you both. It must warm my heart in a way, as well as infuriate me."
"There will be other women for me, Mama," Rhenan said sympathetically. "No major fuss over the one."
"A woman who will accept your condition?" Tristian asked sourly.
"Precisely," he beamed.
"I suppose I would rather you be happy than forced together with someone. Especially a young foreign girl. You know, I just wish for the two of you to be happy? You have such sweet smiles."
And it seemed this comment wiped away both men's, Rhenan picking at his blade and Tristian watching Jocelyn laugh at something one of her ladies had said. She sighed once more and looked at both her boys in turn. Time had etched all chubbiness from their faces, their voices had dropped to low timbres and they were far beyond the age of being carried. Yet, they were her young and she wished to shower them with all the love they deserved, affection, praise, even if she had to skew the facts to provide it. She knew they were both lying, but they never were the sort to intentionally hurt those they loved. A strange situation, but when was anything normal in their family?
She offered a hand to each of them and gave a soft smile. "My dears, both do what you must, but think of this old lady's heart when you're doing it, yes?"
They placed their hands in hers.
"Always," they said in unison.
She almost believed they were telling the truth.
16
~ TRISTIAN ~
"I appreciate your defence," Rhenan called after him, heavy on his rapidly receding heels.
They'd left Mama to harass their sisters on matters of heart and unions, old and new, while Tristian could not take a moment longer in her presence. His mother, bless her always, was a troublesome woman when she wished to be. And how often she wished to be, indeed.
"Though, I will admit," Rhenan was saying beside him now. "I could have easily done without it."
They walked a long corridor of windows banked high and panoramic to the west wing's outlook onto the lush green gardens.
His brother did not appear entirely displeased in what transpired. If anything, there was eternal amusement spotted when he looked over into those always laughing gold eyes.
"She did not believe me for a second," Tristian said at last.
"Because she is not stupid, and such a devilishly handsome man as myself could never be the things you claim me to be."
Though, Tristian always did wonder. After all, the only female he was ever caught with was Diadara, and such a 'scandal' was intentionally promoted to obscure the true nature of their meetings.
"Why did you?" his brother asked.
"Why did I what?" He already knew.
"Defend me? If I were to marry that ghostly little lily bud, would you not be pleased? You know I'd not be interested and would allow you your way with her if the both of you wished it."
Tristian quickened his pace. "I could ask you the same. Your reluctance is gratuitous, for she is a fine female. Beautiful and kind and her mind would have been easy to mold."
"Ah, those were not the words you shared with Mama."
"She would not approve."
Rhenan gasped and leaned into him shoulder to shoulder. "Yet you sent your warrior to conquer anyway."
"Quiet!" He pushed the man now rumbling with laughter away, as though it could possibly eradicate the notion he implanted.
How could Rhenan have known that he'd bedded her? Why was it his brother cared? Astrid had been but a passing warm body. A warm, tight body whose innocence he had taken out of want and spite. There had not been regret then, and there certainly was none now. Even if that night he had retreated from her, looked down between their separated bodies at the red evidence of what had been done, and felt only satisfaction, a dark prickling of ownership. For whatever lord it was that girl was to marry, his breach of her would never surmount to Tristian's own.
Tristian sighed and whirled around on his brother, who instantly feigned ignorant to his nuisance behaviour by leaning upon the window's ledge and crossing his arms.
Oh how he wanted to push him out of it.
"Must you always?" Tristian demanded.
"I look out for your best interest. As well as this family's. So yes, I must. Always. Besides, was I not born your shadow? Where you go, so too shall I follow, yes?"
"I need no keeper."
"On contraire, you need me more."
Tristian crossed his arms. It was enough to have the man in the castle where he slept, but even more an unjust punishment to have him trailing him everywhere when
he'd rather be swimming in a sea of women, trying his damnedest to rid of his craving of blue eyes and that sweet laugh. "Why have you come to me, Rhenan? Have you not gotten your fill of agitating me for the last week?"
Suddenly his brother's face fell into seriousness, the spark behind his eyes refracting something ancient back at him. "I'm here because I had a bad dream."
Tristian pointed down the hall to the outdoor dining terrace they had just come from. "Mother's that way."
Rhenan shook his head, and perhaps it was the spooked ghosts in his visage that made Tristian sigh and join the male on the window sill just this once. He stared at the gold tiles and the portraits of the Hanson ancestry dating back who knew how far.
"It is a dream which refuses to leave me be as of late. I'm sure it means absolutely nothing, but I'll admit, I have none other than you and a physician girl to share it with." His brother rubbed his palms on his knees, and licked his lips, and Tristian knew it was worse than he thought. "Will you hear it?" Rhenan asked.
He would rather be deaf to it, for his brother had no mind he envied. He would sooner take his own fractured, damaged one than his brother's scarred, haunted one. And yet he inclined his head and lent his ear.
Rhenan's gaze dropped to the floor. "Do you have a feeling something wicked awaits our fate in the near future?"
"Fate implies a higher hand arranging the pieces in our lives." He looked to Rhenan. His brother was dressed in all black attire, looking regal and feral all at once. "Why, have you bent your knees and consulted with Him?"
"Aye, I'd sooner consult with a donkey's arse, but that's beside the point. It's the dream, brother. What I saw within it."
"Dreams are dreams, nothing more." He could feel the tide of superstition dictating his brother's thoughts, placing meaning where there was but human nature. Humans dreamed. That was that.
Rhenan shook his head. "Do you remember the old church house we found when we were small—the one where the guards hung that priest and the little girl?"
Could he ever forget it?
Already he disliked the direction of the conversation.
He'd been chasing Rhenan with a wooden sword out on the woodland path of their uncle's demesne. Then they had owned a large hairy beast they called Tukit, a white dog who'd barked constantly that evening when the brothers had veered off the paved path, elated and high off of a rare, precious moment of bonding. Tristian had been nine, Rhenan six. It was around the time Tristian had decided he much rathered play with his brother than hate him.
Rhenan was always a quick bastard, outdoing him in everything. Beating him everywhere with those fast legs of his. So it was no surprise when his little brother had disappeared far ahead of him.
Until it was he could not find him anywhere.
It hadn't been a game anymore. Tristian had dropped his sword and dashed into the underbrush with his heart climbing up his throat and tears springing into his eyes when minutes passed of his shouting his brother's name only to be mocked by the true to name mockingbirds. He remembered the lush green plants everywhere, the trees ten times his height, dancing and swaying the shadows of midday all around as he struggled to stay calm enough to listen for his brother's sound.
He'd called for the guards, no one came.
He'd called for Tukit, no one came.
I'm right here. I'm right here. A voice lilting through the verdure.
He remembered the red camellia imprisoning the treeland he walked, sprouting everywhere he turned, and he could never forget how they smelled heavily of blood and rot.
But then he'd stumbled upon it. The church house.
A deformed structure eaten and misused by the forest trees surrounding it, their roots and vines digging into the cobble of its foundation. Lichen peeled away from moss patches growing out of the crevices. A wooden door hung crookedly ajar, its dark mouth waiting to be fed anything oblivious enough to enter.
He'd known without having to think a moment longer, that darkness was exactly where his brother would have gone. Blindly, ecstatically—anything to not be caught by him. Anything to not lose to his older brother. He would not have stopped and looked to the weary two ropes dangling from the nearby tree, or the bug eaten corpses swaying from their hoops.
Death had never frightened Tristian. But his mother's wrath certainly did.
If he ran home only to deliver the news that the haunted church had eaten Mama's precious second born boy... He'd shivered to contemplate how brutally his mother would dislodge him from her heart.
And so he'd stepped into the old place of worship and held his breath to ward off the powerful stench. The Sirista's circular marks greeted him in the dim light cast from outside. Painted all over the grey walls and cobweb pews. The pulpit and altar were torn down to shambles, loitered down the nave, its wooden splinters stopping at his feet. Above it, at the far back where prayer was to be held on knees and devotion, his young sight had spotted the partially lit stairwell, where he could barely make out the dark boots and brown trousers of his brother's legs.
Relief and fear were vicious rivals. He'd found him! He's probably dead! Mother will hate you forever.
Tristian had run forward, and it wasn't until later that he had read the bloody writings on the wooden panels and termite devoured floors—'God does not believe you', 'To bear new life is to bear the pain', 'Love not thee, love not at all', 'Forgiveness is forsaken, as are we all'—instead rounding the staircase to find his brother fallen, his head cracked open at his right temple.
Now, sitting here with him, Tristian grimaced. "I remember."
Rhenan ran a hand through the loose strands of his braided curls, and there it was, that permanent gash marring the landscape above his brow. "Then you remember the paintings we found."
Tristian nodded.
Tristian had shouted his brother's name in his face, dropping onto the step beside him, clutching him as though all of him depended on it. It was too dark to see how serious the wound was, but he'd known it was indeed serious enough to warrant no response from his younger brother.
He'd tried to lift him, stupidly calling for the guards yet again, but no one came and his brother's body was too heavy—no, he was too weak. There was no choice but to drop back down, yank off his shirt and place it to his temple and pray ferociously, for they were in a house of worship and they were of God chosen blood. Rhenan absolutely could not die then and there.
Hours had passed. At least, that'd been how it felt. Hours and hours lazily traipsing by, until he felt his brother jolt back to life so abruptly Tristian nearly screamed. Rhenan insisted he had screamed. Tristian denied it to this day.
When his brother was lucid and capable of explaining what happen, he'd insisted an unseen force had pushed him up the stairs. Tristian denied it to this day.
However, Rhenan had remained unconvinced and unabashedly fearful. He'd insisted they leave and return to Uncle Hew's estate, but the fact that his brother was no longer on Death's doorsteps had instead struck Tristian with a desire to unearth that forgotten church.
Even as of now, where he still rejected his brother and wished him far away from him, he also wished he'd not insisted they explore further. Wished they had never ventured down below, his brother clutching his shirt to his head wound as he tried to keep pace with Tristian's 'courageous curiosity'.
Because then they would have never found those black, dusty bones or the rotting, demented paintings.
Back then, he'd never understood why they'd hung the priest and that little girl.
"Those paintings," Rhenan began slowly and he could tell by the shadow in the gaze, his little brother was not here in the castle, perched upon the window sill, but back in the hole of that church house, clutching Tristian's shirt and crying soundlessly as they both stared up at the painting, the image of the pregnant woman, kneeling, her back torn open by the thick corded whip attached to the priest's hand. "I keep seeing that woman in my dreams, Tristian. Except she's there, on the steps where I
was pushed—"
"Where you fell."
"—and she's squatting there, on that third step, her hands behind her head, and her eyes refuse to run out of tears." Rhenan sat back against the frame and looked at him blandly. "Blood running from between her thighs, so much that it's like a fountain down the stairs. And the smell is awful, and from the fount of blood, the unborn child's attached cord trails all throughout the church house, down to the basement, to those bones."
Tristian failed to draw an interpretation.
"She's begging for him to stop. Begging, please, please, I'll be so good. But he laughs, and he leans forward." Rhenan mimicked it. "And he says, 'God does not believe you.'"
Silence came and went.
Tristian didn't know why it disturbed him as much as it did, but he swallowed tightly, and asked in a guarded tone, "This man, was he the priest?"
His brother gave him the longest, strangest expression, before kicking to a stand, his face splitting into a grin. "You tell me, brother. That's 'bout the time I wake from the horror."
Frowning, he followed suit and stood. "Perhaps it is you who should have your head examined if your dreams are of that nature. Now, if you are done pestering, Father wants me to help draw up plans for an Oreum trade festival." Tristian shook his head. "For the ninth time."
Rhenan pounded a hand to his chest, then put two fingers to his temples and saluted his heart the way their knights and warriors did. "Until next time."
The two of them parted abruptly, as they tended.
But as he headed to his father's study with renewed determination, Tristian could not shake the memory of that kneeling woman.
~ RHENAN ~
Telling Tristian it was him he saw in his dreams was not acceptable. Even if his brother claimed dreams were nothing more than dreams, Rhenan didn't believe for a moment he would tolerate being the face of evil, even in a dream.
So, amongst other things, he kept it to himself as he made his way towards the front gate of the castle, mounted on Kanter, a small surrounding guard following his voyage through Thornhall towards its rural villages and farmlands.
Bonds: A Cursed Six novel (The Cursed Six Book 1) Page 24