CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mira found herself alone with Cyrus the next afternoon after Tarquin had disappeared with a vague explanation of meeting contacts. She sat next to Cyrus in the room with the miniature river, and was pleased to roll up her pants again and let the stream wash over her feet.
“You love him, don’t you?” Cyrus asked her, breaking the comfortable silence they’d slipped into.
Mira raised her eyebrows, surprised. “That’s very blunt.”
“I’m an old man, dove. I don’t like to dance around what I mean.”
“You mean you don’t have time left to not be blunt?” she asked, not meaning to be unkind, but regretting the words as soon as they were out of her mouth.
He surprised her by laughing. “I mean you don’t have time left,” he said. “There’s no end to my time.”
She studied his face for a moment, wondering about his meaning. She sighed and resigned herself to the depressing truth. “Is it that obvious?”
Cyrus shrugged. “It is to me.” His voice was slippery smooth, still, but the more he talked the more she enjoyed listening to it.
“I’m an idiot,” she said. “He misses Aurelia.”
“His mate? He was so reluctant to talk about her.”
Mira nodded miserably. “I only even know her name because—” she trailed off, realizing what she was about to say.
Cyrus politely ignored that. “It’s natural that he misses her,” he said.
“Yes, of course it is,” she said. “It’s not that he misses her. I expect him to do that. It’s that he seems to live like nothing could possibly come after her.”
“Hmm,” was all Cyrus said.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, but it was a silence that was full of potential.
“This is prying,” he warned her. “May I ask the nature of your relationship?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I love him. He hates me. We have sex because I want him and because he can pretend I’m her.”
“That sounds mutually satisfying and emotionally nourishing.”
Mira couldn’t help it; she snorted. She eyed Cyrus beside her. “Why do you care?”
“I’m a wealthy man,” he said. “And an old one. I want for nothing. I can simply imagine something and it appears for me, the mages in my employ are that skilled. But I get bored, and living vicariously through these ridiculous dramas occupies me for a bit.”
“I’m glad my life is fodder for your boredom,” she said, but she smiled as she said it.
Cyrus bared his bright teeth at her. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I don’t think he hates you.”
Mira raised her eyebrows at him.
“Like I said, little dove, I’m a very old man. I’ve seen this play out over and over again. He doesn’t hate you, he’s just… uncomfortable with what he’s feeling.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He seems more relaxed here than he ever has at the palace. Maybe because he’s not surrounded by everyone he knows? He was nicer to me last night than I think he’s ever been when we’re not in private. And I just sit here and put up with it because I’m stupid and childish and crazy about him.”
Cyrus leveled his gaze at her. “Being in love isn’t stupid, dove, but he shouldn’t treat you that way.”
“I know,” she sighed, and she couldn’t help her chin wobbling. “I’ve just gotten to this point where I… need him, and I’ll take whatever pathetic scraps he throws to me. I avoided him for a month before we came here, and as soon as he asked me to come I said yes without a second thought. And as soon as I was in a room with him I fucked him. Because I’m sad and lonely and pathetic and I don’t know how to say no.”
“Is this how he sees you?” Cyrus asked.
“I don’t know why he’d see anything else,” she said.
“Well then,” he said, “don’t you think you should stop that? Maybe take control of the situation a bit more?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I disagree with your assessment, Mira. I don’t know you well, but I’ve known Tarquin for a long time. I don’t think he sees you as some pathetic thing that he can treat however he wishes. I do see him as a very insecure man who has lost a precious loved one and is feeling guilty about moving on.” He leaned forward to reach into the water with his fingertips. “I think that you should make your own feelings perfectly clear. I think that you need to take a leap of faith, here, and I think it will pay off. Tarquin is a good man, I think, but he’s a terrified man, and I don’t think that he’ll be the one to take that first step.”
She bit her lip as she watched him, her mind swirling with possibilities. She hadn’t admitted to even herself that she loved Tarquin, not until Cyrus had somehow effortlessly pried it out of her. She eyed him with renewed suspicion, but admitted that his advice seemed to have merit. Of course Tarquin would be skittish after losing Aurelia.
Mira bit her lip. “Can I ask you something that I’m sure is terribly rude?”
He chuckled darkly. “You don’t strike me as the type who worries about whether your questions are rude.”
“That’s true,” she admitted. “I’m universally reviled for it.”
“As we’ve been discussing your sex life, you may ask me what you wish.”
She took watched her feet in the water for a moment. “What are you?”
He watched her thoughtfully for a moment. “Would you believe me if I told you that I didn’t know?”
“I’m not sure I believe anything you tell me,” she said, smiling slightly.
“That’s a good idea,” he said, leaning back in his seat. “But that is the truth. I don’t know because I don’t remember.”
“Don’t remember?” she prompted.
He paused and took a deep breath. “I’m very old, little dove. Your entire life has been a second in the span of my own. You’ve noticed my way of speaking?”
Mira shook her head.
“You don’t need to lie to be polite. It was obvious that you were… listening to me, when we first met. I wasn’t born knowing how to speak— I wasn’t born in a time when speech existed.” He leaned forward to study her face. “My earliest memories are as I am now, fully grown. But they are not here. I remember a time and place so far removed from here that it might as well have been another world. I remember the time before cities and towns and villages. I remember a time before carriages and horses and livestock and farming. When humanity learned to speak, I was already ancient. I learned to speak alongside mankind.”
Mira shivered in her seat but didn’t take her eyes from him.
“I don’t remember because my memories don’t stretch back that far. In truth, I believe I’m human. I have no magical capabilities, nothing setting me apart from you or any other human. Nothing apart from the fact that I cannot die.”
“Can’t die?” she asked. “You’ve tried to?”
“Not intentionally,” he said. “I enjoy life too much for that. But I’ve been in my share of accidents through the millennia. If it were possible— I would be dead.”
She paled at the thought. To be unable to die— how trapped he must feel. She again considered her feet, and the way the water moved over them. “So you like to use your ancient wisdom to dispense love advice to a selfish spoiled girl and the brooding dragon-man she likes to fuck?”
He grinned at her, baring all of his teeth in a smile that made her stomach turn. “In five hundred years,” he said, ignoring her question, “you will be dead. He will be dead. None of this will matter. In a thousand years, no one will have even thought of you in centuries, except maybe as someone they read about in a book, if you have any particular accomplishments.
“I will wake up in a thousand years and for me it will be as if no time has passed between today and that day. I will remember this well. And I will still be hoping for the best for you, before I remember that you’re dead.”
She looked at him and shivered.
“I would like very much,” he said, “if when that day comes, I can remind myself that you had a fulfilling life. It would be very kind of you to do that for me.”
“That seems as good a reason as any,” she said.
Cyrus paused. “I don’t think he pretends that you are her. I’ve seen the way you shrug off his… affection. I don’t think you should.”
Mira nodded and considered it. It was hard to ignore advice with the experience of civilizations behind it.
It was late when Tarquin returned. Mira had already bathed and was in her pajamas, but wasn’t tired enough to attempt to sleep. Her mind was still buzzing after her conversation with Cyrus.
She spent some time reading and some more time copying the letters that Lily had written for her. She copied them all three times, and examined her work critically. She didn’t seem to be getting any better, but she wasn’t sure what good writing the same letters over and over would do for her. Lily had been blessedly silent when Mira had asked her to write the alphabet for her, before she left, with none of her usual prying questions. She supposed that Lily probably suspected Mira’s inability to write, but found that she didn’t care as much as she thought she might.
Tarquin looked angry when he returned, and when he stalked through the door she wasn’t sure if his mood had turned sour because of her, or if it was related to whatever he’d been doing all day. He scanned the room, and when he saw her, his look softened. Not about her, then.
She didn’t know how to behave. Her instinct was to scornfully ask him how his day was, or to ignore him entirely until he forced her to acknowledge him. She’d been following her instincts up until then, though, and that had only gotten her into a mess that she couldn’t see a way out of; so she turned to face him and smiled.
He looked as surprised at her behavior as she felt. He opened his mouth to say something, seemed to think better of it, then crossed to the sitting area in the room and watched her from there.
“I’m sorry I was gone for so long,” he said. “I know you don’t like to be bored.”
She shrugged. “It’s not so bad here. I spent the day with Cyrus.”
There was an expression on his face that she didn’t recognize. “Is he… treating you well, then?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, still sitting in her little chair at the desk.
“What did you talk about?” he asked.
It was an odd question from him. “You,” she said, a sly smile on her face. “And him. We talked about what he is.”
He laughed out loud at that, then stopped when he noticed her puzzled expression. “He told you what he is?”
“As well as he could explain it, I think.” She shrugged, then rose from her chair and crossed the room to sit on her side of the bed. “What did you do all day?”
His face darkened. “I can’t really talk about it,” he said. “I would tell you, but— Helias was quite specific about not sharing any details.”
She smiled faintly. She wished he would hold her and kiss her and tackle her to the bed. This normal, civil conversation was so far from normal that she had no idea what to do or say.
“I should—” he trailed off and then disappeared into the bathroom.
She breathed a sigh of relief and flopped back onto the bed. That had been uncomfortable. She didn’t know how to behave when she wasn’t being mean to him, and he apparently didn’t know how to react to her when she was being anything less than awful. She heard water running, so she tucked herself under the blankets and waited for him.
She watched him silently as he emerged and dressed for bed. He blew out the candles and the room plunged into darkness, with no light even from a fire. The magically heated room made it unnecessary.
When he climbed into bed, she waited for his touch, waited for him to reach for her and run his hands over her, like he always did. She held her breath as she heard him shift, held her breath as he silently stilled, and then— nothing. She thought about Cyrus in that moment; she thought about her impossibly short life.
She reached a tentative hand out and rested her palm on his bare chest. She could feel his heartbeat, and as she did, she could feel it speeding up. That was strange. She didn’t think she’d ever made anyone’s heart rate increase before. He was always the one in control.
He gripped her wrist, gently, but holding her to him. She scooted closer and pressed the length of her body against his, chest to chest, her hand in between. The warmth of him against her was lovely, even in the sweltering house; she didn’t know if there was anything that would make the sensation less pleasant. He didn’t move, but he sighed softly, so she moved her other hand to his cheek. She pressed her lips against his jaw, enjoyed the rough feeling of his stubble there, and then his arms went around her as they’d done countless times before. She rested her head on his bicep and moved her hand from his chest to circle around him and rest on his back.
She didn’t say anything, and he didn’t say anything, but they stayed like that until morning.