Did I write once that his face was smooth and arrogant? I don’t know why I ever thought that, why I never realized how handsome he is, with those crooked eyebrows and high, strong cheekbones and those eyes I have trouble looking away from.
I love him, and he despises me. He’s right, I don’t belong here, and if I had something to offer him, I wouldn’t have fumbled around like that in the observatory, I would have known exactly the right thing to say. And I didn’t.
This isn’t the worst day of my life. Not even close. That was the day I came back with the medicine for Bridie, and she was lying sprawled on the bed, dried foam at the corners of her lips from her final seizure. Mam was passed out in a gin-soaked stupor in the corner so Bridie hadn’t even had someone who loved her to hold her when she died. I had to pick up her little body and carry it into the street to find someone who would help me bury her. I was fourteen. Nothing’s ever going to be worse than that day.
So I don’t know why this hurts so much more. Probably because I’m a fool, and I need to stop lying here mopping tears out of my eyes. The world is still ending. There might still be something I can do to—not stop it, obviously, but make it less terrible. Even if that means working with Vorantor. Even if it means giving the God-Empress the chance to expand her empire.
It’s been about fifteen minutes since I wrote that last sentence, and I feel calmer now. I can think about this more rationally. Cederic was hurt, and angry, and I probably looked like an easy target, fumbling around and hurting him more with my awkward words. So I doubt he meant any of what he said. But how much worse is that, that he knew exactly what to say that would hurt me and didn’t even try to hold it back?
Remembering makes me feel small and worthless, because I’m just as bad as the Darssan mages, I want him to respect me and think I matter. I want him to love me. And this all proves he doesn’t.
I’m going to wait here until I’m sure my face looks normal again, then I’m going back to my room, I’m going to sleep, and in the morning I’m going to go to Vorantor and ask him what he wants from me. And I’m never speaking to Cederic again.
Chapter Eighteen
1 Coloine
It’s amazing the difference a new day makes. A new month, a new day, new beginnings all around. I feel as if I could leap from the observatory and fly to skim the ground below.
After I finished my last record, I dismissed the see-in-dark pouvra and lay there in my pile of furs worth more, probably, than the Darssan and every mage in it, at least according to the twisted mathematics of the God-Empress’s mind. I let my eyes go unfocused and my thoughts wander to more pleasant things, like how far Audryn and Terrael’s conversation had gotten, and had they moved on to more physical activities yet—I still don’t know the answer to that, because I haven’t even had breakfast yet, but I feel too invigorated to sleep any longer.
At some point I realized I’d dozed off, and decided I should probably return to my bed. A pile of furs is nice to sleep on in theory, but in practice it shifts too much to be comfortable, and there are very few furs it’s actually nice to rub your face against.
I passed through the wall into the spiraling passage running around the tower, and decided to use Aselfos’s route to leave it. I was feeling reckless, and there was still a part of me that was hurt and humiliated and wanted to feel powerful again. I’ve found dangling off the face of a high wall with gravity trying to wrap its fingers around me gives me a feeling of power that’s like nothing else in the world.
I was halfway up the wall before it occurred to me Cederic might still be in the observatory, even though it was full night, probably just after midnight. I clung there for a minute, wavering between continuing and going back, and decided I wasn’t going to be deterred by the possibility that he might have more cruel words to hurl at me. But the observatory was empty.
I sat on a window ledge and looked out at Colosse in the darkness and thought about what it might look like when the disaster comes, whether Vorantor would be able to save anyone. My thoughts were still bleak, but I wasn’t feeling nearly so much in despair as I had an hour earlier.
The wide passage was clear, with moonlight making the diamond pattern on the floor faint and blue-gray, and I amused myself by tiptoeing through the lighter patches until I reached my room, where I stopped, because there was light coming from under my door, and I hadn’t left anything burning, flame or th’an.
I used the see-through pouvra and discovered Cederic was standing by my window, directly in the pouvra’s line of sight. It irritated me that he knew exactly where to stand, as if he knew I’d use that pouvra, as if he were approaching me with his empty hands spread wide to show he wasn’t a threat.
I thought about returning to the fur room for the night, but I was fairly certain that would only delay whatever Cederic had in mind. So I went in and closed the door behind me. “What are you doing here?” I said.
“Wondering if there is any point to asking your forgiveness,” he said. The drapes were drawn, but he was standing at the window as if he could still see outside, with his hands clasped loosely behind his back.
“You think you deserve forgiveness?” I said. Once I was speaking to him, I no longer felt grief and embarrassment, I felt anger. I’d reached out to him in love and he’d struck at me. If he hadn’t meant what he’d said, he had certainly known the exact words that would hurt me most, and how could he have done that if he truly was my friend?
“I think we need forgiveness most when we do not deserve it,” he said. “I said things I deeply regret and I am—I cannot express how sorry I am.”
He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded dispassionate, the way he always sounded, and it made me want to strike him in some way, physically, verbally, anything that would break through that composure and make him feel pain the way I had.
“Sorry because you hate making mistakes?” I said. “Or sorry you haven’t had a chance to correct this one?” He bowed his head, but said nothing. “I don’t know why you care about my forgiveness,” I went on, “since nothing I say means anything to—”
“Sesskia, no,” he said, turning around. He looked anguished, he who never showed anything of his emotions on his face, and it startled me so much I lost track of what I intended to say.
“You mean everything to me,” he said, “and I beg you to forgive my hasty words, because I cannot forgive myself for saying them.”
There was so much pain in his voice I forgot I was angry with him. I forgot the pain he’d inflicted on me. I just crossed the room to put my arms around him and hold him, resting my head on his shoulder. He embraced me, first tentatively, then with a fierce grip as if he intended never to let me go.
His whole body was trembling with the effort to control whatever emotion threatened to overwhelm him, and out of nowhere I said, “I won’t let you fall,” and this time I knew the right thing to say. I held him as he shuddered, knowing he would never let himself cry. I don’t know why he can’t, or won’t, or what happened to make him the kind of man he is, but I wept for him, my heart aching with sorrow even as it was filled to bursting with joy because he loved me, because he trusted me enough to let me see him in his weakness and despair.
I held him, and waited for the storm to pass, and every shred of bitterness I’d felt toward him vanished. It was impossible for me to hate him when he needed so badly for me to love him instead.
When he was calmer, he said, without releasing me, “Tell me you love me.” It sounded more like a plea than an order, which made my heart ache for him again.
“I love you,” I said. “And not because you told me to say it. I love you.”
“Tell me I am not useless and a failure.”
“You could never be useless, and you are not a failure.”
“Tell me I still have something to offer this world.”
“Vorantor’s an ass. You may have to save the world over his objections.”
He actually laughed. I had never heard him laugh
before. I don’t know if anyone ever has. “Denril hates me,” he said. “I wanted to believe otherwise, but the summoning kathana nearly failed because he tried to take too great a role, thinking it would make him look important in the God-Empress’s eyes, hoping it would lessen me. I had to fight him to keep it under control. And then I made him look like a fool, inventing that shield kathana as easily as breathing, something he knows he could never do.”
“Inventing a kathana on the fly, or breathing?” I said. “Because I know he used to be your friend, but I personally would be just as happy if he forgot how to breathe.”
He laughed again. He’s laughed a lot since that moment, enough that I’ll have to stop emphasizing it. His laugh is deep, and unconstrained, and maybe that’s how he releases emotion and he’d forgotten how, under the stress of the last two years. I love his laugh. I love everything about him. And he loves me.
He loosened his grip enough that we could look at each other. “I cannot wish Denril dead, though I do wish I did not have to walk back into that chamber today and submit to his patronizing scorn,” he said. “I have been too proud, Sesskia, and now I will have to pay for it.”
“You still understand magic better than he does,” I said, “and everyone knows it, and this will pass, and you’ll make Vorantor’s kathana work better than he ever could. And we’ll save the world.”
“Part of it, anyway,” he said, and the bitterness was back in his voice, and I couldn’t think what to say to make it go away. So I took his face in my hands and I kissed him.
I’d never kissed a man before, just my sisters, and my Dad when he was alive, and Cederic’s lips were warm and shaped themselves to mine, and it was the most wonderful feeling I’d ever had. We kissed some more, long, slow kisses that made me forget I didn’t know what I was doing. Then they were harder, more urgent, and then we were trying to take each other’s clothes off without breaking that delicious, heart-pounding contact. That’s a lot more difficult than I would have imagined, supposing I’d ever imagined anything like it.
Finally, Cederic removed my breast band, and we stood before each other naked. I had a moment of intense, self-conscious embarrassment, because my breasts are too small and my hips are too wide, and in general I’ve never been happy with the way my body looks. Then I saw how he looked at me, saw myself through his eyes, and I felt like the most beautiful woman in the world, because to him, I was. And his was the only opinion I cared about.
So, naturally, that’s the moment I chose to blurt out, “I’ve never done this before.”
Both his eyebrows climbed nearly to his hairline. “Never?” he said.
I know there’s nothing wrong with being a twenty-seven-year-old virgin, and really, when have I ever had the chance to develop that degree of closeness with someone? Even so, I wanted to run away from his astonished gaze. “No,” I said.
He slid his fingers through my hair to cup the back of my head and kissed me, gently. “Are you ashamed?” he said.
“Afraid I’ll be awkward and terrible,” I said.
He smiled, a real, tender smile, and kissed me again, and said, “You could never be awkward and terrible, and I promise to show you the truth of that.”
I won’t write the rest. I could never do it justice, and really, I don’t think I’ll need this book’s help in remembering. It’s enough to say Cederic was right, and if I thought kissing was wonderful, making love with him was so far beyond that I have no words for it. I cried a little at the end, which worried him, and I had trouble explaining how overwhelmed and happy I was, and how this was the only way I knew to express that emotion. So he kissed those tears away, and then he began kissing the rest of me, and we did it all over again, and it was even better the second time.
Afterward, I lay in the curve of his arm and played with the little dark hairs on his chest. There didn’t seem to be anything to say, and I felt cocooned in the safe space that was our bed, as if there were no oncoming disaster and no Vorantor and no mad God-Empress and no—
“I wonder what Aselfos has planned,” I said.
Cederic craned his head to look down at me. “I would ask where that came from,” he said, “but I have learned it is better for me not to know the paths your mind takes at times.”
“It was a tortuous road,” I said. “It’s only that I don’t like not knowing what’s coming. And I don’t know how to find out more.”
He held me more tightly. “Your safety has been uppermost in my thoughts since we arrived here,” he said. “The God-Empress’s interest in you is dangerous, and your nighttime wanderings put you at risk of drawing her wrath, should she learn where you have been and what you have seen.”
“I’m at risk every time she summons me,” I said. “And it also bothers me to know Vorantor has a secret plan we don’t know about. I think I should investigate it.”
He sighed. “Is there any point to me forbidding it?” he said.
“None. And don’t think you can get away with threatening to withhold sexual favors, because I know you won’t be able to stick to that threat,” I said, poking him in the stomach.
He captured my hand and brought it to his lips. “I would never dream of doing that,” he said, “when I could entice you to do what I want by promising sexual favors instead.” So that was the end of that conversation.
Later, when I lay atop him trying to remember how to breathe properly, he wrapped his arms around me and said, “I had no idea, when I woke this morning, that this is how my day would end, humiliated by my former friend and then lying with you in your bed. It seems unreal, except you are so wonderfully tangible.”
“As are you,” I said, and I rolled over to nestle against him once more. He turned out the light, and we lay like that for a while, not speaking, and I was drifting off to sleep when he said, “I dream about you, you know. About this. I have dreamed of you so many times. You have been my foundation, even though you did not know it. My foundation, and my surety in the dark times.”
It sent a chill through me, not of fear but of joy, that I might mean so much to anyone when I have been alone and disregarded for so long. And because he had opened himself to me, I wanted to do the same for him. So I told him what I swore I would never tell anyone, though as I write this it occurs to me this was inevitable, because from the beginning, even when I hated him, I have always told Cederic Aleynten everything.
I told him about the man at the fishery who never stopped watching me.
About the day he forced me into an alley in the warren behind the docks and knocked me to the ground, and tore my trousers and my undershorts down while he choked me with his other hand.
How he forced my legs apart, and I flailed at him and tried to scream, not that anyone would have come to my rescue.
How knowing that sparked something deep inside me, and I worked my first pouvra without knowing what I was doing and he burned from the inside out, burned to ash that filled my mouth and splintered bone that rattled down around me.
I was sixteen, and I had killed a man in a way that could mean my death if anyone knew about it. And even with the horror and the disgust at myself and the terror at what he had almost done, I knew I could not stop learning magic, because it was all I had in the world.
I told him all of this, and he held me and listened in the intent way he does, and said nothing for several seconds after I finished. Finally, he said, “If that is what it takes to make a mage in your world, I am surprised there are any of you.”
“There have to be others,” I said, “and I doubt most of them have been nearly raped. But there are other terrors that can make you fight for your life, or for your identity.”
“True,” he said, and held me closer. “My instinct is to protect you from all harm. But that instinct is wrong. You would not be who you are if you were not willing to risk yourself. Even so—allow me some fear on your behalf, please.”
“It makes me feel loved, that you want to protect me, and even more loved that you
know you can’t,” I said.
We lay together, not speaking, until I finally did fall asleep. When I woke about two hours ago, he was gone.
I’m ashamed to admit my first reaction was fear, followed closely by embarrassment that I’d misunderstood, that he’d only said those things because they were what I wanted to hear, that he didn’t love me. I have no idea why I was so insecure. It was completely ridiculous.
I hadn’t quite convinced myself to stop being stupid when he knocked, and entered without an invitation. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but it isn’t safe for me to be seen loitering outside your door.” Then he looked at my face, and smiled at me with wry amusement. “You thought I’d left,” he said.
“Because you left,” I said.
He came to take my hand and squeeze it. “No one can know what we are to each other,” he said. “If the God-Empress discovers it, she will use one of us to threaten or manipulate the other. So I could not be seen coming out of your room this morning. I shouldn’t even be here now, but after you fell asleep, I went back to my room and lay awake in my cold bed cursing the God-Empress for keeping me from you, when you should have woken to find me next to you. And I had to risk coming now, so you would not misunderstand me. I would have stayed, if not for that danger, you understand?”
He sounded so urgent I nodded, even though I didn’t understand why it was so important to him. He kissed me, then left as soundlessly as he’d arrived. So I’ve been writing for two hours, and it’s time for breakfast now, and I’m trying to work out a way to ask Audryn if there’s some significance to waking up with someone I should know about. But mostly, I still feel like I’m flying.
After breakfast
I had another shock just now, and I’m still working out what to do about it.
Terrael was not at breakfast. Audryn and Sovrin were at our usual spot when I arrived. Audryn looked radiantly happy. I hoped I didn’t. I hadn’t decided if I should tell them what had passed between me and Cederic. Sovrin I could trust not to give me away, but Audryn has an expressive face, and while she would carry my secret to her grave as far as telling anyone went, I wasn’t sure she could keep her face under control.
The Summoned Mage (Convergence Book 1) Page 24