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She has lived eons by the time he is born and she sees him for the first time.
.
The first time she sees him, the sun is sick, spilling pale gold over him, hiding under the frost of the morning and the mist breathing over the sea.
It is quiet for a while, blue turning gravel-white under the half-cloak, then it leaves and wind comes with the waves. It crawls over the firepits and covers them, dousing the fire. Over the firepits, the spiced meat lays wet in its blood.
It has rained the night before, she thinks, feeling the grass moist underfoot.
She watches as the men hew stones and chop wood, heat steel in the forge and beat it into the shapes of swords and axes, take mouthfuls of ale to warm their fingers, and then she sees him.
He cannot be older than five winters, she thinks. He is sitting a number of paces away, not far from the camp but closer to the pond where the women wash the clothes, yet his mother is not there. He holds a small hound in his lap that he feds from the plate he was served upon breaking his fast.
He babbles nonsense to it, pets its head, tiny fingers sinking into fur, then his whole hand. The animal yelps and darts away, plays, and the boy runs after it, squeals when he catches it, rolls over a puddle of watered mud, and wraps his arm around the animal again. The hound frees itself with a grazing nip and he pursues it again.
She does know that her sight and the sounds around her have become clouded when steps come closer. Shock rushes to her head and makes her gasp. Her eyes widen when she realizes her attention slipped, anchored to something—someone—else, not of her own volition nor as a result of anything ressembling a sensible justification.
The thrum of the camp is louder yet her legs twist on a path towards the boy, walking just behind the large man who swallows space with long strides, unseen but felt.
His head whirls and he stops to look behind him, then walks again, and stops once more when he reaches the boy. He strikes him across the face and she nearly intervenes, her hand flying to the pommel of her great sword, then remembers that it is not her place.
The impulse remains searing as she waits and waits and looks on, and looks away.
The man snatches the hood by the neck and looks at his son, dares him to protest by means of tears or words. Certainly not deeds, she decides, surveying the strength guiding his wrathful hand and the boy tumble down like he had but moments before, laughing. He is no longer laughing. His lip trembles when his father slits the hood's throat and the arterial blood sprays unto his face. He knows better than to close his eyes, she understands, for he must understand it will only bring down a greater sanction on himself.
His hair hardens from the blood and he wipes at his cheek, smears more blood upon his face and then upon his hands. She halts her final step once she has come too close. She cannot be seen but she will be known if she touches him, if only by himself. He would understand very little of what she is, but the quiver in her hand as she yearns to offer him comfort dissuades her from it.
She stays, for a battle is to take place on the morrow, on the very shore where blood has already been spilled but a forthright before. The shores of Thetford have not been the host of many battles in the past moons, but such things rarely last.
The boy's cheek blackens, purple and red, his lip split and swollen and she notices that he can hardly chew, or drink. The man must have cut the inside of his cheek against his teeth, and broken the tooth in half as well. Were he to die, she shall not carry him to the Hall of the Slain, she rules.
When the battle begins, she stands quite afar and watches, bodies bumping together with force, grunts and screams and blood and piss, and the hiss of steel, the clatter of falling swords.
She wills him to die, that man who has given her offense for reasons even she fails to understand. She favors his opponents and smirks at his rages as they parry his sword.
The gods must favor him, for he does not die, but he lays in his sweat with a fever as they sail back. The healer talks to his eldest son to tell him of an infection and a wound that needs to be drained. She hopes he will die thus, not in battle but alone in a cold bed, dead fish and dead men about the cabin where he sleeps.
The young man—a boy, truly—has no kind word to bestow upon his brother but his kindness is given in other ways. He keeps him fed, he keeps him clean, and he keeps him safe, away from the brawls that break out at night and the riots flaring after moons spent sailing at sea, mead, and meat dwindling and the prospect of spitting the spoils of war souring tempers.
Her rage does not abate.
She wonders why would a young boy be taken on raids so. She wonders where is the boy’s mother and why she would allow it.
She does not remember what mortality resembles, but she feels the boy’s anguish like an open wound. She glances at him once more before she sets to gather the warriors slain on the battlefield that shall join the army of Odin and drink with the gods.
.
She does not intend to know it, but on the third day aboard the warship, she hears the boy's name. Niklaus. Victory of the people. It is a strong name. It hails from Greece.
Fleetingly, she thinks of wide, curious eyes inspecting the books discarded, soon to be thrown to the sea, fingers tracing over the loop of words, rolling his fingertips over the uneven parchment thickened by saltwater, wondering at the initials, the etching of Saints along the page, shapes dyed blue and red and gold. These are the richer books, commissioned by Lords, jeweled with precious stones and sewed with fine threads of gold.
They were stolen in the last raid, the monastery and its content emptied. The chieftain’s men dislodged the stones and ripped the cold binding the pages together. He waited until they were gone to collect the cluster of pages.
There are other books, bound in simple leather and decorated with images painted from clay, the lettering unsteady and the margins blank, the pages fragile, sheer from time and use, and his eyes still shine bright when he reads, or tries to.
She thinks that he would like to see it, the wonders of Athens, the arenas erected higher than that of the castles he only watched from afar, tapestries hanging down the walls of temples and villas, and the Senate, its soaring ceiling, the libraries housing scrolls, and tablets, and books, broader than the ones he taught himself how to read, lining the shelves.
She would let him touch the parchment of the books, the clay of the ancient text, older still, and the wool of the tapestries. He would ask questions, she surmises after she heard him ask his brother all manner of things. He would want to know how to weave and spin the threads. A matter of curiosity, even if he did not wish to reproduce anything.
She resolves to avoid his people and his homeland.
Fortune spurns her.
.
Her first error was offering comfort. It was not for her to do so. Her hands had forgotten how to curve in tender assistance. She had lived, and then stopped, but never died. The Gods blessed her with a duty and a reward and therefore she was bound to it and nothing else. She collected the worthier warriors and, many a time, partook in distractions, but knew that she could not lay her heart in the chest of another, for it could be easily cracked open.
She remembers it.
(Her error is a simple thing—her error, is that she brushes a finger over his bruised cheek. It is late and the night is cold, the warship swaying, the air fetid and dank, and he is sobbing, quiet, and her hand dips to a bruised cheek. He blinks. It gives her pause.
He cannot knows, she thinks, but removes her hand all the same. He cannot.
His breath shakes, a deep intake closing in. They are alone. Around them, everyone sleeps, below them, men toil in the rowers’ benches.
What sorrows you? She wishes to ask. She would not receive an answer warranting her attention, certainly. He must miss his mother, or his siblings, the comfort of a bed, or the wolves for whom he has an affinity, something that brings forth his father’s ire.
The man must know, she is certain that he must, although he would not admit to it. He would have to wash such an insult with his wife’s blood, then.
It is an old story, an uninteresting one, and its closure is well predictable. She looks at him and does not see how he will live, or die, what deeds he will have to his name, but she knows he will die by his father’s hand, still young, still childless, with raging desire in his breast, for adventures and glory and blood.
This is no place for a child, she thinks, away from his family, the friends he once had, the comfort of the smoke and the altars where they worship their Gods.
She sighs with welling pity and lowers a hand to his wet cheek where his tears remain, streaks undamaged. She senses his confused wonder, his agitation as his blue eyes, not unlike hers, search and fall upon her, even without seeing her, while he tries to understand what she is.
It is her greatest act of egoism.)
She left thereafter.
.
The monastery is on fire, the stone walls and stone floor smooth with blood. A few hours hence, the floor is black with it, and with wet sand as more soldiers debark along the shorelines of Nantes, boots clicking against the wet stone. More men, more blood, more screams, most, if not all, fearful first, then come the raucous victory, and screams once more.
They met no resistance as they came, no guards at the door and no fortified walls, no weapons inside and none that would know how to wield them.
Someone must have reported the attack; a monk possibly, one that ran as the others were slain, inside and outside, left in their piss and blood, left naked as the men took their robes and shoes, their rings and chains, the cross hanging from it, the iron where teeth had been.
The battle begins like they often do, the two armies—or something of that effect—line up and, arms held high, prepare their weapons and shields, prepare to die. The disciplined formations spilled into uncoordinated bloodshed.
It would be of little interest—the sight seen again, and again, different battles in different cities, different faces and names she cares not to learn, the weary and the eager, all meant to die, on this day or another, and it would be her choice. She does not control fate, not even the Gods do, but she can favor the worthier warrior and allot rewards either in life or death.
She sees one and wills his opponent to fail. His boot slips and his knee meets the wet sand just as he was raising his axes. She sees another, who is not skilled with a sword or admirable in anything else, and spares him too for he worships her Gods and fights for them.
She waits, intervenes, and waits. She closes her eyes.
It is nigh on sundown when the battle ends. It took longer than she anticipated, but the thrill of a battle and the valor found in the certitude of finding glory in blood and absolution in death subsides as the battle continues.
She recognizes him, even before his brother yells his name in a warning. Another brother, she notes, his eyes and hair darker and face rounder, who as he fights, turns and searches for him.
He cares little for the warning, the fool.
He ducks as the sword almost touch the top of his head, guffaws, and strikes back at his enemy who doubles over, his knees bloody although the bone is not yet severed. He spits on him and leaves, finding someone else to meet his blade.
He is much older than he was then, taller and broad of shoulder and quick, his hair a few shades darker when it used to be pale gold, and the sun behind him turns them copper, and Caroline remembers he liked sitting on the front deck when the sun was out so that he would not have to squint his eyes to read or hold a candle they couldn't afford to use for those frivolities. His eyes are the same, after all those eyes. They can change, though not always in shape or color, but they can. His shine brightly, still.
Caroline knows when it is going to happen. His adversary is skilled but he is fierce and young enough to be hungry for glory, to enjoy a battle not easily won. And he is going to win that battle, she sees it. She knows it and she knows what curse will befall him if he takes that man's life. His or anyone's else, it matters little.
What she suspected before, that although he is his father, the man she watched devote an unequal fervor to hurt his son the most, must not have fathered him, must be true.
He suspects it, Caroline remembers thinking, but what is suspicion without proof. He blinds himself and what he does sees, he can forget when the woman he loves welcomes him home and strives to protect him and their family. In this, she was always true.
She does not think he would persist in that endeavor, should he have to bear the shame of watching his wife's betrayal every moon. She betrayed him to couple with a half-beast, and that is too much of a slight.
She is worried and knows not why. Back on the ship, while the men celebrate, his brother tends to him and reassures him that, soon, they will reach the shores of their homeland where their mother will heal him and soon—and he keeps repeating this, the measure of time meant to give him hope and it rings out false, to her and to the man who looks up with a wince—soon his only worry will be that he will be harried by their younger brother, Henrik, who loves him best and loves his stories.
Maybe it was the rust, or maybe it was treachery, poison spread across the blade, but the fever that follow is distinct.
His skin becomes pink, his cheeks and forehead red, and the sheets drenched in sweat. He shivers and doesn't eat. He shivers and talks to people not with him, not here on the ship, talks with people who are dead, as she learns from his brother—Elijah—who is worried and tries to convince their father to make halt to find a healer. His father denies him.
Caroline runs a hand over his matter hair, moist and darker with his sweat, and wonders if he can see her now, as he had then. He cannot.
She breathes out and sits by his side, hums a song she heard a long, long time ago, sung when she could still take ill. She hums, and she prays. She rarely does. She worships and makes sacrifices to their Gods but never ask for anything. What power she has to decide upon the tilt of fate, she wishes could extend beyond the battlefield.
His eyes open wide, like the first time—again.
He tries to talk but his voice is hoarse and too faint, and his mind must be addled by the fever or the concoction his brother gave him, purchased with all the gold he reaped in the last raid from a soldier.
He persists and she inwardly castigates his stubbornness, and returns to the hair she smooths against his temple. There is an inquiry in his mien, however, and it will not disappear. He will die, she thinks, as if it were a justification, when she rashly, selfishly reveals herself to him. He will die, thus what does it matter if he remembers her or not. He cannot search for her face in death.
She heard the tales of old, things even she cannot recall, of men and women who saw gods and tried to find them in the short duration allotted to them on earth. Others who saw them, and were frightened by the vision, and fell to madness. She thought it unfortunate. She saw it happen a handful of times, although whether it was a God that had appeared in truth and not a dream too striking to believe it could be anything but that, Caroline does not know.
She is not divine herself. She was once human. She was once a child, and she bled, and Gods never do.
"Give me your name," he demands instead of asking. She breathes a laugh at his impetuosity, even as she knows would have left him bereft of an answer, was he not on his deathbed. “Give me your name,” he says, the words barely articulated.
He touches her hair, the roll of her curls, and wraps one around a finger. It must be a demanding feat. Knowing this gives her an indication as to how he will fare in the next few days.
The journey to his homeland will take two moons, and she doesn’t think he will survive more than two nights. Unbidden, she sobs. She knows not why. Out of pity, surely. She must see him as that child, friendless and eager to see the world she has already seen a thousand times, every country, some that existed and no longer do, some that were swallowed by the sea and left only legends.
He touches her hair again. “Gold,” he says.
She knows it is not a simple affection that guides her, then. She frowns for she does not know what else it can be, not love, or what she remembers of it, nothing very impressive anyhow, the rush of the beginning and the torpor and the middle and the pain of the end, when she was young and mortal. It is not lust either. She has taken lovers since she was changed, and never felt so much as a tingle of sadness when parting from them.
She removes her hand, turns her head to the side so that he will have to let go of her heir. She remembers other stories now. Gods driven to folly not even the oracles could explain, causing wars, cursing millions with calamities, razing countries until nothing could grow from the earth. She is weaker for she is not one and knows she should depart.
“Gold.”
.
Gods can live together, until one swallows the other.
When the Gods die, nothing is heard or seen. She had foreseen that none would, but envisioned it would be by virtue of the silence after the battle, the screams amidst a carnage, the world blooming red, and then dark, and silence.
The predictions said this—at first, there would come the biting cold of winter and nothing would grow, and cattle would die in hunger and men would eat men, volcanoes would split and frozen water would burst forth. Foes of immeasurable might would rise and do battle and the Gods, each, would die. The sky would turn to nothing and thereupon, the stars would scatter like pebbles and fall into the sea but the sea would disappear too.
In the end, everything would seep into nothing. What would come after was obscure. Some said the world would become like it once was, untainted, and others that the world would be coated in obscurity and maladies, that those left alive would never again see the light.
As a young girl, she thought very little of it. She would rest her chin in her hand and thinks of the tales, a selected few that made her sigh and yearn, and fly to lands for which she had no name, tale of heroes and glory and love. Everything else was akin to the winter trickling underneath the door and into the warmth of the house. She would feel it sweeping around her ankles if she stood too close. If would run back to the fire on bare feet and ignore it.
After she was changed, she thought about it often in the burgeoning immortality offered to her. She thought it deceitful, for anyone, even immortals, to trick her in such a manner, to say that she was to live forever when all knew it was not to be so. She was preoccupied with it, what would come, when, how much it would hurt. Centuries melted together and she no longer had a care. She would one day see the fierce battle between Gods and titans. She would certainly see nothing of what would come after, but the end of that fabled battle would be a splendid thing she would behold.
The Gods die not killed by steel or magic older than words, Gods die not fighting and bleeding like pigs under the butcher's knife, Gods die soundlessly, quietly. They die when people stop believing. The tales become legends, become stories, become nothing.
Caroline was there when the worlds between which she journeyed crumbled like bread after the entrance became ever narrower, the magic and words of the land dim. She saw how the Gods were no longer worshiped and cried bitter tears and burned the idols of the false Gods and their holy books. She awaited dead, for if even Gods died so would she.
She doesn't.
She was human once, and it is why she lingers, like a scar, in a world too different to be called her own. How had it been, the shy wonder sometimes stirs, since she had been alive? They did not remember dates, then, and she had been too recklessly unobservant after she was changed. She chased pleasure and stories and power and by the time she stopped to ponder, too long had passed to do anything but speculate. She has lived long enough to see what happens to her Gods happen to other Gods.
She remembers the Battle of Badon and the fabled King Arthur and his sword, the spirits of the lake being drowned in its water, the Holy Isle, the Holy Mysteries, the proprietresses and their rites, the kingdom that much was fought over and that became only ink. She has seen such things happen. She thought it painless for it was bloodless. She was young.
When the Gods die, she feels it, what it does to her, the magic in her marrow cracking, the magic soaked out of her flesh like a sponge. She is left shivering, holding her knees to her chin, a naked girl who couldn't have seen more than seven and ten winters because she became something else. She is no longer formidable. Her skin does not glow with crushed gold and the sheen of the blessed, and her powers are diluted to a mist of visions and her will cannot save anyone anymore. She is left with time and no purpose.
.
Men want to be Gods and have the world move to sprawl at their feet as they shape themselves into legends.
There are strange whispers moving like smoke everywhere as she goes, across countries and continents, where she finds places swarmed with primeval magic once dusted by something stronger, sublime.
She does not make a habit to reveal herself, even now, but she discovered that a stabbing combination of solitude and lack of purpose could lead her to the torpor she watched take her sister for they no longer feed or moved and turned to stone, in clearings or altars or keeps, laid in bed or across the grass, glanced at sometimes, admired sometimes. They dissolved into nothing.
She did not want to die.
She blood coursed, wild with her decision. She arose, she blinked, shreds of granite fells from the corner of her eyes to her hands, her hands that were graying, immobile, fingers stiff and that was no longer skin cracking. She moved, imbibed herself with magic, pursued knowledge she could never employ for she was not a priestess nor a witch and nature, its new equilibrium, refuses to bend.
She makes allies, she makes enemies, she kills them when they become bold in their threats, she makes friends, rarely, and mourns when they die, and the white-hot burn of pain she bears, unseen, is cause for reserve the next time she surfaces, in another country, in another city, after decades of rest, to see the world twisted again, to see it will never stop.
She hears of a man and his family, a cluster of brothers and a sister, that move, like her, across continents and don't grow gray of hair or weary from time. Like her, they cannot remain a long time wherever they reside, a peripatetic life for it is what it becomes when time shifts, the perception of it strangled.
Years are minutes, she hears that man who pretends to be a God—or worse believes it—say to his beloved sister who is wailing over her lover who died and, for once, not killed by her brother. How strange, the way matters stand now, he says. She surveys the harsh pleasure he finds in his sister's grief, how the corner of his lips tremble with mirth. He instructs her to breathe, his voice drawling over his counsel, almost bored, almost chuckling. You knew it would happen. Time means nothing now. Did we not speak about the cost of loving one such as him? He did not want to become like us.
That was why he allowed his sister to pursue him and then to stay with them, she guesses. He croons that she should not cry and Caroline wonders how the woman could mistake the mockery for concern.
They will move again, now that they are no longer impeded by their sister's ill-fated dalliances, Niklaus tells his brother who stares at their sister and her muted voice, pale skin, eyes downcast, shaking shoulders. He kept looking at her pain for at least he won't have to see his brother reveling in it.
Caroline follows, her interest growing into blunt curiosity when she sees what he is, that boy who was once easy to break, that young man who was reckless with his life. A bargain must have been struck, she concludes when she sees elongated teeth—fangs—descend into a woman's neck, the lower row of teeth pushing into the flesh as well as he feeds, gluttonous, and doesn't spill one drop of blood. The stench of death is heavy in the stifling-hot air, their hosts and their guests slaughtered after the food was served and eaten. He rolled the wine in the glass and tilted his head as he considered them all and listened to the chatter, some addressed to him, without replying, before he sprang to his feet, and bemoans that it was another sort of nectar he wanted to taste.
The bloom of power must have made him light of head, for that butchery will be noticed.
He is hunted. His father is giving him chase, in possession of a weapon that will kill him with ease. She uncovers the secrets his family has kept tingly locked, swallowing the key, letting it rest underbone. What happened after he was returned to his family and homeland, how he managed to survive the journey and how his mother would later lament that he did when he returned with his brother’s corpse in his arms, ripped apart, and all because of his foolishness. Her child died, another died again, and she would brook to see it.
The spell was not made by her. It was not even the first of its kind to be made. To understand magic, his mother had to understand that nothing is given and that to receive something, she had to give in return. She must have known. For life, eternal life, life must be given. The life and blood of one single woman who had the misfortune to smile too prettily at both brothers and welcome them both in her bed, would not be enough. The spell had to be maintained. It required blood.
He is no God, Caroline thinks with distaste, drifting around the room to inspect the corpse and returning to him, always, and is it not very pitiful that she would when he is nothing to her. He is no king or emperor and will rule over no land. He is a cruel lord, but he has no noble blood to legitimate such a title. He stole it, he lied. When his lies were not enough, he compelled people to believe him. He adopted the speech and manner befitting one of his rank—if it were his—and dressed richly and feasted grandly and that was sufficient to convince most.
He wants more. He believes he can acquire more. With mild terror, she realizes that it is possible. when she returns to him again, he created prophesies from nothing and made two factions of creatures fight on his behalf in a mad search for a stone that will deliver him from his curse and angers dormant spirits He wants an army. He wants to rule blind soldiers, and doesn't care for loyalty. It is a lie, like most of what he utters, it is a lie, a charade he insists on continuing. He wants loyalty, indeed, and knows he will never have it.
Men who want to be Gods are fools. The most dangerous of them are those that are adept at duping even themselves.
.
He is in a foul mood that has the servants scurrying into his chambers with the wine he demanded and leaves immediately thereupon. The castle is nearly empty. The beautiful Katerina and all his guests have gone hawking and his brother joined readily when she beseeched him for she was bored and alone and away from home and would he not take pity on her. She had said it all with an array of laughs and fluttering her eyelashes, as if it was a jest. Elijah Mikaelson had smiled, softly, something aching in his eyes, and said he would. He returned early, before the others. His steps were heard in the cavernous castle and in his brother’s chambers.
“What is this?” he asks.
There are drawing scattered around the hearth, a line of black against the thick paper, and her face drawn with startling care. She gasps. She had not expected him to remember the woman he saw in his feverish dreams and would have gone back to scrub the outline of her face from his memory if she had, but he must have retained something of the moment she knelt next to his bed and dipped a cloth the basin of water left at his side to then press it against his forehead and hair.
In his drawing, she is attending to him, as a mother or a wife would, and as she studies the attention given to her lips and eyes and hair, she thinks he must have wished for her hand to move in passion, not kindness. If he had presumed to ask, she would have had nary an answer to entrust to him but she does now. She does now, even as she considers that immortality must have robbed him of such concerns as it did her. She has no use for words and vows and the Gods she could have sworn them before are gone.
It was selfish to reveal herself to him once, and twice, and stay, watching from afar but long enough to see his family, his younger brother trailing after him, by whom he was loved or despised, what slights he must bear in the house of his father.
She moves to the room where he entertains his artistic pursuits and sees herself a hundred times, a thousand times. Her surprise morphs into a sense of dread for the first time and she contemplates what she tangled herself into. She walks back and sees her face curl, shadowed along the rim, burns in the middle. Again and again. She summons all her detachment whilst she watches. This is her doing. She filled his head with memories of herself he could not keep but would chase. She cannot take offense.
Niklaus snarls at his brother that he wants to be alone and he must know him well enough to consider it a courtesy, lest he be served with the full blow of his brother's temper. He leaves without a word and by nightfall, Niklaus has moved to his bedroom where he emptied even the drawers to burn every iteration of her face. The room is soft with warmth. He shreds one last page, one last time, murmurs something about genuine beauty, tracing the curve of her hair—longer, then—down the slope of her back as she bent to grab a soaked cloth. Her surprise hisses softly past her lips.
This burns as well.
.
She never talked to him, not when he was a child whom she wanted to shelter or a man scalded a curse rotting in his veins and a mother's guilt souring her love into disregard, the stiff curve of her neck when his father sent him to the ground, the manner she had to still when she heard words meant to pain him as soon as he could understand them and the manner she would she return to the task at hand with alacrity. He did not deserve
“You ought to be careful,” she says.
He cannot hear her voice. She does not wish him to, but hopefully he can sense her intent, her warning, as she tries to dissuade him from his plans. In a bid to soothe him, she presses a palm against his knuckles. It lets the fury that set him ablaze boil over and he turns, to look at her, to understand what she is but glimpses nothing. His face is awash with frustration, his shoulders coiled and his eyes blurring red.
His hand unsheathes his sword, for all the good it would do him, and his chest rises and falls flat with his quick intake of air, the corded muscle there alerting her that he does not want guidance but blood. He always did. She would spill his, should he attempt to hurt her. She sighs. She plucks visions flocking behind her closed eyes and finds that each is vapor and wind, even as he hurries his downfall. He will slaughter that poor girl’s family, that is certain, and the doppelganger will still escape again and again for a long time by his will and in one of his absurd, vicious games. He will anger his brother. He will make an enemy of him. His mistrust cuts into his eyes and he fumbles, looking for deceit where there is none and accepting hesitation as treason.
He leaves and does as he wishes.
The shapes of a clearing and the burst of flames, a witch's chants and Niklaus’ screams as he writhes on the ground, and then his brother striding closer, closer and killing him. She winces and curses him but it is only one vision. One among many. One that may not become true.
What will happen depends upon his choice. She feels the sharpness of rising anger for the warning she sent him in a way she had never bothered to help anyone until now only to be ignored in turn. Like he ignores all else. And here it is, the cause of her pained resentment. She expected him to value her signs more than the words of his siblings whom he had come to see as his subordinates, not his equals, in that invented war he wages but may soon mold itself into a threat. She releases her worries for him and leaves.
.
She is in Italy when he comes. She is tired and retiring for the night. She leaves the feast rumbles behind her, she is taken with fatigue for the festivities she has attended far too many times, the abundance of wine and goose, deer and wild boar, pastries and sugared fruits and sweeter conversation, still, insipid. She loses herself in the waves of words and, in her inattention, she responds to memories superimposing on the present. She realizes her mistake and blushes, makes apologies, excuses herself and gets up. She ripes off the ridiculous mask the host who invited her tonight insisted everyone wear, an extravagance he and his wife loved above all else, happy to show their wealth and judge that of others.
In the hallways, she hastens, hushed giggles and laughter slipping around her, doors slamming and voices muffled behind. She thinks of her featherbed and only wants to find refuge in sleep. She's tired. Worse, she is bored, not out of worry or anger, but lassitude.
Her back hits the ice of the marble behind her before she can blink and her hand grips the wrist of the hand that is gripping her neck, his thumb stroking her chin. His eyes are victorious. His eyes are tender as they were that evening on his father's warship.
“I found you,” he says but there is no pride in his voice, which instead he busts in relief, and his other hand touches one of the curls left free from the closely-woven hairdo. His hand sinks into her hair and unknots laces, pins and jewels and they clang on the floor. “I knew you existed,” he says and what can she say to that.
He strokes her hair the same way he did back then, with reverence, curiosity. A man about to be hanged—and not knowing he will die—touching the noose around his neck. She has forgotten all about love and he is of the mind that love is akin to punishment.
Reason commands her to put an end to this farce once and for all and erase the mark she left on his life since boyhood, from the first meeting until the last when she dared to speak to him, for herself if not for him. But the problem lies in this certainty, all the finest capitals in the world and all forms of pleasure known to mortals and creatures of the night, all amusements, jugglers and minstrels and poets and knights killing each other to entertain her cannot compare to his presence in her life, disrupting it, invading it even when she does not want it to. She admits that it is foolish, that she didn't understand why his pain was felt in her flesh on that first day, the waning, resting, sick, but no one managed to fracture the monotony of her days.
“You found me,” she says and doesn't close her eyes as his falls, his long lashes grazing her cheeks as he places a kiss on her chin, close to her ear, chastely, then his lips take hers and only then does she close her eyes and kiss him back. She found him too. Temporarily. But what needs to be done will wait until later.