Only the living do that.
“I said I wasn’t leaving you. I meant it.” He sat on the bench behind me. He must be exhausted after hauling me and my father’s remains up a flat-topped mountain, and then lifting a heavy box and trying to jam it into a hole.
I wished I didn’t find so much solace in his presence. After all, the next time I come down here for the night, it will be me going into a stone niche, with no one to sit and mourn my death. Mine will be the last name inscribed upon this wall, unless I change my stance on having a daughter.
Fear of one’s own demise is not a good reason to inflict this life on someone else, though. Besides, I would need a partner if I decided to do it, and I don’t have one.
All I have is one broken knight and a shattered heart.
“When you came here for your grandmother, what did you do?” Lorcan asked, softly, from behind me.
I shrugged. “I was younger then. My mother was with me. She told me stories until I fell asleep.”
“About?”
“My grandmother.” I wish he’d shut up and let me contemplate my failings, but I can’t bring myself to ask him to be quiet. “About…about her adventures when she was a girl. Mariel was very spirited, even after she had my mother and my aunt. Just…you know. Memories.”
All I have left of my family, now. Memories. Dust. This mausoleum in a broken temple. A ruined castle and a demoralized kingdom. Freedom, for as long as I can hold onto our independence. It all feels so precarious. An impossible task lies ahead, and I am already so weary.
I wonder whether I would feel more alone, or less, if I were engaged to Sohrab right now. Whether it’s possible to feel lonelier than I do in this moment.
“Tell me a memory of your father. A good one,” Lorcan clarified, and the weight of loneliness lifted fractionally.
“I…” A good memory of my father. Gods know we had our battles, two stubborn people who loved one another but couldn’t get along. I had to search back. Years.
“Tell me about the bicycle,” he prompted.
I couldn’t restrain the tiny laugh that burst out of me. Inappropriate. My father would be appalled. If my father hadn’t brought me a bicycle from one of his early trips to the outside world, Lorcan and I wouldn’t be alive now.
“I would have been six, maybe seven. He had it carried all the way up the pass between Chioni and Vatira, then strapped to the back of his coach for the trip home. You could see it shining as he drove through The Walled City. My mother took me up to the ramparts to watch him coming home. I was so excited.”
Swallowing, I let the memory take me. It hurt, but it helped a little to remember, like lancing a boil. “He was so proud of his gift. He—he…” I shifted my weight on aching knees. “He liked me better, then.”
Lorcan said nothing for a moment. “Because you were little.”
“Because he could control me. And because…because I was happy then. Easier. More like my mother. Not so”—sullen and sad—“difficult.” Before Lorcan could say anything, I continued, “He stopped the coach in the middle of the castle courtyard and had the bicycle brought down. He tried to show me how it worked, but he was too big. It made my mother laugh to see him try to demonstrate how to use the pedals and the brakes. I loved that bike. Rode it until I was too tall to ride it anymore. He always…” I swallowed. “He always said he would bring me another one, someday. But instead, he gave me a horse.”
“Sky.”
The horse I rode in the Olympics three years ago, in Beijing.
I nodded. “When I was twelve. I think he hoped the horse would give me something positive to focus on, since nothing else was going well for me, and it did. For a while.”
“I’ll get Sky back for you, if you want.”
It’s a nice offer. A nod to what we once were to one another. I’m sure he’s sincere. But when my lips parted, what came out of my mouth was, “Let him be free.”
Subtext:I can’t be, so let my horse roam. Sky escaped during the sacking of The Walled City, and he seems happy enough with his herd. At least one of us should have a good life. It won’t be me.
“The offer stands, Princess.”
“Thank you.”
Together, we sit in vigil to await the dawn.
* * *
We returned to the castle late the next day, once again covered in dirt and sweat, but without incident. Lorcan and I retired to the makeshift royal living quarters. Immediately after I bathed and changed, Ifran arrived.
