Queen of Air and Darkness
Not on the eve of battle, not with so much on her mind, not while she was worried about Gwyn and trying not to think about where he was or what he might do tomorrow.
And yet. She’d been on her way to tell Emma and Julian precisely what they were asking about now when she’d found out she couldn’t reach them. She recalled her disappointment. She’d been determined then.
She didn’t owe them the story, but she owed it to herself to tell it.
They both sat quietly, looking at her. The night before a battle and they had come to her for this—not for reassurance, but to let her know it was her choice to engage or not to.
She cleared her throat. “So you know that I’m transgender. Do you know what that means?”
Julian said, “We know that when you were born, you were assigned a gender that does not reflect who you actually are.”
Something in Diana loosened; she laughed. “Someone’s been on the Internet,” she said. “Yeah, that’s right, more or less.”
“And when you were in Bangkok, you used mundane medicine,” said Emma. “To become who you really are.”
“Baby girl, I’ve always been who I really am,” said Diana. “In Bangkok, Catarina Loss helped me find doctors who would change my body to represent who I am, and people who were like me, to help me understand I wasn’t alone.” She settled back against the rolled-up jacket she’d been using as a pillow. “Let me tell you the story.”
And in a quiet voice, she did. She didn’t vary the telling much from the story she’d told Gwyn, because that story had eased her heart. She watched their expressions as she spoke: Julian calm and silent, Emma reacting to every word with widened eyes or bitten lips. They had always been like this: Emma expressing what Julian couldn’t or wouldn’t. So alike and so different.
But it was Julian who spoke first when she was finished. “I’m sorry about your sister,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
She looked at him in a little surprise, but then of course—that would be what would strike a chord with Jules, wouldn’t it?
“In some ways, the hardest part of any of it was not being able to talk about Aria,” she said.
“Gwyn knows, right?” Emma said. “And he was good about it? He’s kind to you, right?” She sounded as fierce as Diana had ever heard her.
“He is, I promise,” Diana said. “For someone who reaps the dead, he’s surprisingly empathic.”
“We won’t tell anyone unless you want us to,” Emma said. “It’s your business.”
“I worried that they’d find out about my medical treatment if I ever tried to become Institute head,” said Diana. “That I’d be taken away from you children. Punished with exile.” Her hands tightened in her lap. “But the Inquisitor found out anyway.”
Emma sat up straight. “He did? When?”
“Before I fled Idris. He threatened to expose me to everyone as a traitor.”
“He’s such a bastard,” Julian said. His face was tight.
“Are you angry with me?” Diana said. “For not telling you before?”
“No,” Julian said, his voice quiet and firm. “You had no obligation to do that. Not ever.”
Emma scooted closer to Diana, her hair a pale halo in the moonlight streaming through the tent flap. “Diana, these past five years, you’ve been the closest thing I’ve had to an older sister. And since I met you, you’ve shown me the kind of woman I want to grow up to be.” She reached out and took Diana’s hand. “I feel so grateful and so privileged that you wanted to tell us your story.”
“Agreed,” Julian said. He bent his head, like a knight acknowledging a lady in an old painting. “I’m sorry I pushed you. I didn’t understand. We—I—thought of you as an adult, someone who couldn’t possibly have problems or be in any danger. I was so focused on the kids that I didn’t realize you were also vulnerable.”
Diana touched his hair lightly, the way she often had when he was younger. “That’s growing up, isn’t it? Figuring out that adults are people with their own issues and secrets.”
She smiled wryly just as Helen stuck her head in through the still-unzipped flap. “Oh good, you’re up,” she said. “I wanted to go over who’s staying behind tomorrow—”
“I’ve got a list,” Julian said, sliding his hand into the pocket of his jacket.
Emma got to her feet, murmuring that she needed to go find Cristina. She slipped out the door of the tent, stopping only to glance back once at Julian as she went, but he was deep in conversation with Helen and didn’t seem to notice.
Something was going on with that girl, Diana thought. Once they’d gotten through tomorrow, she’d have to find out what it was.
29
TEMPT THE WATERS
“Cristina! Cristina!”
Voices rang through the woods below. Surprised, Cristina stood up, peering down into the darkness.
It had been too painful at the campfire, looking at Mark and at Kieran, knowing she was counting down hours until one or both of them left her life forever. She had slipped away to sit among the trees and grass and shadows of Brocelind. There were white flowers here, among the green, native to Idris. She had seen them before only in pictures, and to touch their petals gave her a feeling of peace, though her sorrow remained beneath it.
Then she had heard the voices. Mark and Kieran, calling for her. She had been sitting at the top of a green rise of grass between the trees; she rose, brushed herself off, and hurried down the hill toward the sound of her name.
“Estoy aquí!” she called, nearly tripping as she rushed down the hill. “I’m right here!”
They burst from the shadows, both white-faced. Mark found her first and swung her up off her feet, hugging her tightly. After a moment he released her to Kieran’s arms as they tried to explain: something about Magnus and traps and being afraid she’d fallen into a pit lined with knives.
“I would never do that,” she protested as Kieran stroked her hair back from her face. “Mark—Kieran—I think we were wrong.”
Kieran let her go immediately. “Wrong about what?”
Mark was standing next to Kieran, their shoulders just brushing. Her boys, Cristina thought. The ones she loved. She could not choose between them any more than she could choose between night and day. Nor did she wish to.
“Wrong that it’s impossible,” she said. “I should have said it before. I was afraid. I did not want to be hurt. Isn’t that what we all fear? That we will be hurt? We keep our hearts in prison, in terror that if we let them go free in the world they would be injured. But I do not want to be in a prison. And I think you feel the same, but if you do not—”
In his soft, husky voice, Mark said, “I love both of you, and I could not say I love one of you the most. But I am afraid. The loss of both of you would kill me, and here it seems I am risking having my heart broken not once but twice.”
“Not all love ends in heartbreak,” said Cristina.
“You know what I want,” Kieran said. “I was the one to say it first. I love and desire you both. Many are happy like this in Faerie. It is common, such marriages—”
“Are you proposing to us?” said Mark with a crooked grin, and Kieran turned bright red.
“There is one thing,” he said. “The King of Faerie can have no human consort. You both know that.”
“It doesn’t matter right now,” Cristina said fiercely. “You are not King yet. And if you ever are, we will find a way.”
Mark inclined his head, a faerie gesture. “As Cristina says. My heart goes with her words, Kieran.”
“I want to be with you both,” said Cristina. “I want to be able to kiss you both and hold you both. I want to be able to touch you both, sometimes at the same time, sometimes when we are just two. I want you to be able to kiss and hold each other because it makes you happy and I want you to be happy. I want us to be together, all three.”
“I think of each of you all the time. I long for you when you are not there.” The words seemed to burst from Kieran like undammed water. He touched Mark’s face with his long-boned fingers, light as the brush of wind on grass. He turned to Cristina next and, with his other hand, caressed her cheek. She could feel that he was shaking; she put her hand over his, pressing it to her face. “I have never wanted anything so desperately as this.”
Mark placed his own hand over Kieran’s. “I too. I believe in this, in us. Love wakens love, faith wakens faith.” He smiled at Cristina. “All this time we were waiting for you. We loved each other, and it was a great thing, but with you, it is even greater.”
“Kiss me, then,” Cristina whispered, and Mark pulled her close and kissed her warmly, then hotly. Kieran’s hands were on her back, in her hair; she leaned her head against him as he and Mark kissed over her shoulder, their bodies cradling hers, their hands linked in each other’s.
Kieran was smiling like his face would break; they were all kissing each other and laughing with happiness and touching each other’s faces with wondering fingers. “I love you,” Cristina said to both of them, and they said it back to her at the same time, their voices mingling so she was not sure who spoke first or last:
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”