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May 6, 1204
"Uh... hello."
Aspen had forced herself through the apothecary door, but the urge to turn back remained. Speaking, particularly a greeting, was a commitment. She didn't know Aerina well, but she was kin to her in-laws and therefore not a stranger. Now that she'd spoken, she either stayed, or left with the inevitable consequence of some sort of inquiry on the healer's part.
So she could tell herself, anyway.
"Aspen?" Aerina abandoned whatever root she'd been powdering and swept away from the table. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, I suppose." She was, for now. But her daughter's sniffles and the scrapes of Nato's siblings could only sustain her for so long. If she wanted to keep herself sane--while still keeping herself alive--she needed a more reliable supply of light headaches and slight coughs and minor injuries. And she needed something to do.
"I was just wondering if... you maybe needed any help around here? On a voluntary basis, I mean. You don't have to pay me or anything."
"Free help? From a relation by marriage who's expressed no prior interest in herbs and who has a baby at home?" A little blunt, perhaps--but, Aspen supposed she got the confusion. "Not to belittle your offer, but it's quite... out of the blue."
"Yes, I, uh-- I don't know. I never really had much interest in anything, and I just sort of need something to do. Er, something that's just mine, I mean."
"That's fair." But Aerina's lip retained its skeptical clench. "I get the feeling there's more to it, though. I hope you don't mind me prying, but I don't think it's unreasonable to want to know your motives before taking you on."
It wasn't unreasonable. Aerina needed to know how she could use Aspen, how to keep subtle. Aspen needed to know that Aerina believed her, would help her. And, if anything... well, it was an opening. When it came to the less-than-believable, it was better to be asked than to announce.
"All right. So, you're probably going to think I'm crazy, but..."
NEXT CHAPTER:
June 10, 1203
"So, uh... you can redecorate the room if you want." As he said it, Nato couldn't be quite sure why he'd chosen to start with something so trivial. Aspen had given no indication that she disliked the room as it was, so why had he bothered suggesting she might? It wouldn't have sprung from his own reservations. He had plenty of thoughts, concerns, even fears about Aspen moving in, but the physical state of his home featured in none of them.
As he settled onto the bed beside her, Aspen shook her head. "Your mother has a better eye than I do for that sort of thing."
Nato's vision darkened under the weight of his brow. His mother, the proud daughter of a clan infamous for their love of all things chaotic and scandalous and irreverent, was not a woman of poor taste--but, she lacked both the interest and the attention span to give her home's decor more than the minimal effort. Aspen's comparing herself unfavorably might have answered the question of his non sequitur. He wanted her to have a focus. A hobby. A career, if she cared for one. Something. Anything.
Anything to keep her going.
"If you say so. I just thought you might like that sort of thing. You studied art, right?"
"Textile arts--and I wasn't much good at the design part of it. I studied it for the practical aspects."
"Did you like those?"
She shrugged. He took that to mean 'As much as I like anything', and hated himself for judging her because that was exactly his opinion of his own field of study. "Not enough to make a career of it, if that's what you're suggesting. I know you'll fight me on this, but I still feel like I should be using my... abilities on more than just the occasional scrape or cut my siblings bring. And not just for my sanity."
"All right." But if only because he didn't need Aspen's help to be melancholy, Nato nestled up to her with a teasing grin. "I suppose that makes sense, given that you're a nice person--but you can't expect me to understand that, given that I'm not."
"You're nicer than you think you are."
Nato smirked. "To you, maybe."
"And since you insist I'm not nice enough to myself, that's exactly what counts." She leaned into his shoulder and took his hand, her fingers trembling somewhat in spite of her firm grip. "Are we ready for this? I mean... I know you were at my parents' place often enough that I guess we've been living together for a while now, but we never really did much. Just... talked, sat, slept."
"Don't admit that to Aldhein. He'll make some stupid joke about how we went from not even courting to being an old sexless married couple in the space of a month."
"And here I thought you'd enjoy seeing your sister punch him."
"Hmm. You're right. Do admit that to Aldhein." But he regretted it, adding to the joke, as her lashes shut to hide a green glimmer of an ache. "Sorry. Really, I... I don't know. I'm sure I'll still remember that morning when they're piling dirt on my grave, but I wish I remembered actually sleeping with you."
"You ought to be glad of that. I hadn't done that before, so I couldn't have been worth remembering. I'd never even kissed a man before that night." She cocked her head to the side, possibly under the weight of her grimace. "How pathetic is that? It takes me so long to finally kiss a man, and then I don't even remember it. I don't remember my first kiss."
He nudged her upright with an arm behind her shoulder until their noses met and all he could see were green eyes and thick lashes. "Remember this one."
NEXT CHAPTER:
June 10, 1203
"Welcome... dear." Riona had meant to say 'welcome home', but it felt somewhat presumptuous to be calling her castle Aspen's home just yet. Her daughter-in-law had only recently resolved to move in, and both she and Nato had been so hesitant about it that Riona and Isidro had agreed to treat this as a trial stay. With a vested interest in said trial going well--a happy home life would give Nato some incentive to take better care of himself--Riona didn't want to jeopardize it.
She hoped a hug, at least, wasn't stifling. Not greeting Aspen with a hug would have been aloof, and neither extreme would have made for a promising start. "How was the ride?"
"Well enough, thank you." Aspen held her breath, as if sucking in her stomach would have been enough to free their discourse of baby subtext. That... was another trial. Riona knew better than to impose her will on that either. "My parents will be by later with some of my things."
"Of course." Some of her things had already been brought. It would be a gradual move, which Riona didn't mind. She could gauge her expectations by the number of deliveries.
"Riona had your room prepared. Just let one of us know if anything's been overlooked." Isidro, as Riona might have guessed, had opted for diplomacy over familiarity. Between the two of them, perhaps they could strike an ideal balance. "I think it goes without saying that where Nato sleeps is up to you."
"He can stay." A soft request, a quiet one, but sure enough in conviction. "I don't want to be an inconvenience."
"Never a need to worry about that. If your stay here can grant you and Nato any clarity--separately or otherwise--then your presence is the exact opposite of that."
"If anything, this castle's been a little empty since our older three left home," Riona added, again substituting a phrase at the last second. 'Started their families' might have set in an acute dread about the two of them starting their own. "A great big place like this needs young people to keep the candles on in all corners. Old folks like us just want to stay curled up in one cozy little wing and leave the rest to ruin."
"You two aren't old," Aspen offered, never mind that they were older than her parents. "Thank you, though. Do you mind if I go lie down?"
Riona shook her head and watched her as her son took Aspen's hand with a slow reach. He found his haste as they touched, and the two whisked away to the castle's interior. It wasn't the usual newlywed impatience. Each of them no doubt needed space to hear themselves think first, then a little less to bounce thoughts off each other. In any case, Isidro and Riona made for two people too many in the room, and it was to their credit that they'd made sure the children had been occupied.
And with greetings out of the way, maybe they needed their space for a while too.
"Just curled up in one cozy little wing, are we?"
With a swiftness she hadn't known he still had, Isidro looped his arm about her waste and pulled her into him. How long had she known him, now? Dear Lord, they were old.
But it wasn't all that often when they stopped to consider that. "As long as I'm curled up with you."
NEXT CHAPTER:
May 4, 1203
"Oh." Based on the tread from the hallway outside, Aspen had braced herself for Darry. Of the other adult males likely to be present in her childhood home--and those had been an adult male's footsteps, the floor's response had made no secret of that--her father mostly respected her need for space, and neither Medur nor any of the manservants would have any particular reason to talk to her. So, she'd risen from her bed, fully prepared to tell her brother not to bother, that they had nothing to talk about, or at least nothing that she knew how to tell him.
She hadn't considered Nato. Nato hadn't called on her since she'd returned to her parents' castle. She hadn't seen him since their morning after. She hadn't minded. She'd assumed that he, just as she did, wanted to be left alone.
But the sands in his hourglass might have run down sooner than hers had. He, after all, had had the luxury of actually being alone.
"I wasn't expecting you."
"I wouldn't have been, in your place. I wasn't expecting to be here either." His icy eyes settled on the couch behind her. Some trace of her perpetual presence in the room must have caught his eye, a clump of red hair on the fabric or a lingering indent in the cushion. She didn't mind much if he judged her for it. Before her covert excursion of a few nights prior, she'd only left to collect the occasional scraped knee or paper-cut, just enough to hold off the assault of woes and delusions. "I guess we should talk."
Aspen nodded. She didn't want to talk to anyone, but she'd have to before long, and Nato was the logical starting point. "Let's sit down."
She made for the couch, not offering him a chance to say he'd rather stand, because he probably would have. But he joined her on the couch, because it wasn't a battle worth fighting and they weren't enemies, most of the time. "I, uh... I'm surprised that you're still in Naroni, to be honest. I thought you'd have left by now."
Her toes curled within her slipper. She'd thought the same, once. She'd only returned home for a few days recovery, but that was a month ago now. "I wouldn't be of any use there now."
Nato frowned, brow furled. Confused, no doubt. He wasn't sad that she wasn't going. He might have gotten some relief if he'd swiftly become a widower, but she didn't think him cruel enough to hope for that, not given his opposition before. "Why not?"
"Because I'm pregnant."
Her fingers twitched themselves to a white-knuckled fist, as if the words hadn't been true until she'd said them. She hadn't told anyone else. The closest she'd said was that she thought she might have been, when she'd stolen away to Lady Arydath in the dead of the night. Even the old woman's confirmation hadn't been quite enough, even her own recent caution in what she did or didn't take.
If the lack of visible reaction was a reaction in itself, then she'd sentenced Nato to a similar state. "Um... have you decided what...?"
She shook her head. "I don't know."
"Do your parents know?"
She shook it again. "I don't want to get their hopes up."
Sighing, Nato slumped forward, eyes shut in some form of proto-agreement. She didn't know if she liked that. Some part of her wished he'd swoop in and take charge and fix everything, just like some part of her wished he'd just go away forever. "I'll follow your lead, then."
"So you have nothing else to say?"
He must have, surely. She did, even if she didn't want to. She didn't want to say she didn't remember the night they'd made their baby, sleeping with him at all, what sex even felt like. She didn't even remember kissing him, if they'd even kissed. She'd never kissed anyone else, not expecting to live long enough to bother being interested. How many things there were to say about that--knowing what it was wake nauseous as some would-be person laid siege to her body, but not knowing what a man's lips felt like on her own. It was tragic and pathetic and the last thing she wanted to tell him, but it was a thing to say, and he must have had things to say too.
If he wanted to. "Nothing that would make a difference. I don't want to ruin your life. I'm sorry if I did already."
"You didn't ruin my life. I never really had a life." And why would she have had one? It was a fact she'd learned when she'd been very young, that her life was for everyone else. "Not one I could do much with, anyway."
He stared at her, one eye ice and the other blue fire, within an inch of her own, distant as the dimmest star. "Is there anything you want me to do?"
She shrugged. "Stay with me a while? We don't have to talk." She just didn't want to be alone, now that she'd said it.
Alone, to think about how she wasn't alone.
"All right."
NEXT CHAPTER:
March 3, 1203
"So." Dress donned and hair tidied, Aspen yanked the blanket over the telltale stains of the night before. Not that Nato remembered having any part in making them. "As soon as you walk out this door--this never happened. Agreed?"
"Agreed," Nato muttered as he finished lacing up his boots, his own voice too much for his throbbing head. As if either of their lives weren't complicated enough without their apparently having fucked in a mutual state of black-out drunkenness.
At least--he hoped it had been mutual.
"Um... I know this never happened, but I didn't...?"
She shrugged. What did that mean? If he'd traumatized her, she'd surely have been more shaken up. Unless she was repressing it, that was. Fuck. "I don't remember anything. You don't remember anything. For all we know, maybe I did to you what you're afraid you did to me. If one of us is a criminal, maybe it's better if we don't know who it is. If it's someone's fault, then it happened. But it didn't."
Right. It hadn't happened. As far as anyone had to know, all he'd woken up to was the headache to end all headaches. No doubt the only reason Aspen hadn't robbed him of that was that doubling her own hangover would make the non-event less of a non-event. "What time do you think it is? Am I safe to leave?"
Aspen winced as she glanced back out the window. Nato took the hint not to look for any sunlight himself. "It's day, but I think it's still early? My housemates should still be asleep."
"Good." Nato cracked his knuckles, caught off-guard by the cold touch of his own fingers. Damn hungover senses. "Um... so, that was not a thing I expected to not happen."
"Ah, but since it didn't happen, there's no sense in discussing it." Aspen asserted herself with a grimace and gestured to the door with a jerk of her head. "And you were never here, so you'd better get on that."
"Right." He sidled past her, their parting little more than a pat he dared land on her shoulder. It was probably the last time he'd see her, if her plan really was to leave the country, probably heading off to her death. But no--the last time he'd seen her had been the last time, he'd have to remind himself. This time hadn't happened, after all.
Or so he would have spent the rest of the day, the week, God knew how long convincing himself if his plan to slip away from Capricorn House unnoticed hadn't been an instant and spectacular failure.
"Good morning, Nato."
Oh fuck me. "...This isn't what it looks like."
"I think you're right about that." Darry smiled, the impossible sparkle of his teeth more than Nato's sore eyes and the brain behind them could handle. The oddity of such a wide grin on a man who'd just caught someone he barely tolerated leaving the bedroom of his virginal sister didn't exactly ease the strain. "You needn't worry about last night. I saw the two of you heading in there, you know--and believe me when I say you were both most enthusiastic."
And a statement like that might have been a dagger to the forehead. "What are you playing at here?"
"I'm not playing at anything, Nato. Everyone who knows my sister knows just how much she needed a good lay."
"And if you've been standing here with your ear to the door, then you'll know she'd rather people think she still did, because no one else is going to find out about last night."
Darry snickered. "My God, Nato, I didn't realize the two of your were that drunk. Everyone already knows. You kept the whole building up all night, for one--like my poor little sister. She's asleep on the couch in the sitting room, and she'll probably still be out for hours before she has to wake up to her first ever hangover, and to the memory of Aspen and Nato making the floor vibrate. And even before you got back here, you two were all over each other; I'm fairly sure you licked her out under the table at the inn at one point."
And yet, that knife-twisting smirk didn't waver in the slightest. "For a concerned older brother, you seem to find all of this much too amusing."
"Concerned older brother?" Darry laughed again, practically spitting needles into Nato's skull. "Christ, you two really do remember nothing! You and Aspen didn't go right back to Capricorn House after you left the inn, you know. A few of us followed after you two got thrown out, and none of us were ready to call it a night just yet, so we ended up dropping in on the biggest party animal in Veldorashire."
"Who the fuck is the biggest party--?" Nato cut himself off, the flash of a face in his mind's eye twisting his throbbing brain to the halt. That face, the mingled smells of wine and incense and jimsonweed, the acute awareness of a foreign object against his finger. "No!"
"Kind of sad for the rest of us, given his age and all. But, no sense in judging." Darry shrugged--now a much less flattering gesture than the one Aspen used to deny having slept with him. "That's the Lord's job, after all, even if Father Sextus wasn't one of his own men."
Father. Fucking. Sextus.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.
His mind a swirling mess of spirits and obscenities and horrified realizations, Nato would never quite know how he'd summoned the presence of mind to shuffle back to Aspen's door and nudge his fist against it. The only thought he'd have in focus when his father arrived to collect him some hours later would be the repeating assurance that--at the very least--neither he nor Aspen were at fault.
"Aspen? I think there was something else that didn't happen last night..."
NEXT CHAPTER:
March 2, 1203
"Oh my God! Aspen! Can you believe it? I finally get to go to an actual university party!"
Celina's older sister, as she'd expected, gave no hint of finding this impressive. Aspen had less than a month left at the university; she'd been able to attend an actual university party every week for four years. And Aspen didn't like parties much anyway.
Celina, however, did. Quite a lot, actually.
And a university party! With guests who were--well, a little older than her, maybe, but closer to her age than her parents'. And no one who was liable to rat her out to her parents if she happened to have a little more wine than she was typically allowed, or if she happened to bring her acquaintance with some handsome young man to a lip-on-lip level. Not that she made a habit of that, mind.
But oh, to keep the possibility open!
But Aspen pursed her lips. So unfair, really. Celina understood that Aspen didn't like parties. Why couldn't Aspen understand that Celina did? "Do Mother and Father know you're here?"
"Of course they do! Darry brought me here, in case you haven't noticed him standing there!" Though, now that she thought about it, he hadn't said all that much since they'd arrived on campus. Had he even spoken at all on the ride over? Here she'd thought they'd had such a nice conversation. "Darry made the convincing case to Father that it would be better for everyone if I attend my first university party while I still had two siblings on campus and one who still had friends there. Wasn't that sweet of him? Darry, you're my knight in shining armor!"
She turned around to pay her eldest brother a grin and a squeal, whipping back to Aspen just in time to see that her sister wasn't quite so enthused.
"Two siblings on campus? It's not enough that Darry and Dally go with you, but I have to go as well?"
"What can I say?" Darry swooped in before Celina had a chance to answer--possibly a first. "Father insists that she'd be better off if there's a responsible big sister around to balance out her two big idiot brothers."
"But it's my last term! I have so much work, and I have to prepare for the island, and--"
"And you're running out of time to spend with your family! That's partly why Father let Celina come."
That... was probably true. Celina forced herself to keep smiling. "That's true. If you insist on leaving, you can't expect us to just stay away."
"But--"
"Nato will be there." Darry smirked. "Falidor made sure of it."
"I'm not talking to Nato. We agreed that we both have our own problems and it's easier if we don't have to deal with each other's--and that was no big deal, since we weren't friends anyway." Aspen tugged at her braid, agitated. "Nato hates parties even more than I do."
"But he's there, since it might be his last chance to see you before you leave. Isn't that sweet?"
She snorted. "He's probably only going because it's the last place his mother would think to look for him."
"And it also happens to be the last place he'll get to see you." Celina widened her eyes and swayed about in search of that oh-so-important balance between adorable little sister and nearly-grown woman desperate for her first taste of independence. The Nato argument might have been something Darry made up in his head, but sisterhood was real. "And it might be the last place I get to see you too. Please? I never ask you for anything."
"Ugh. Fine." Her sister curled her mouth to a short-lived scowl, then took Celina by the arm and yanked her inward. "But the second somebody throws up, we're leaving."
NEXT CHAPTER:
January 13, 1203
"Didn't your mother ever teach you that it's rude to barge into someone else's bedroom?"
Not that Aspen, from the looks of her, had any intention of actually going to bed. She was fully dressed, hair still pinned at the side, and not hint of fatigue in her voice or face. Nato would take that, at least, for a break from her borrowed maladies.
As for his reply, he'd take a different approach. "This isn't your bedroom. This is a guest bedroom--and not even your guest bedroom, I might add. You weren't going to spend the night here, but you said you were tired, so Yvanette took pity on you and Sevvie will spend the night in Sir Neilor's study."
"So I'm to believe you were looking for Yvanette and Sevvie, then?"
"Don't be stupid. Your idiot brother figured you'd heard about some ill servant, so he sent me off to find you--because apparently his sweetheart has it in her head that he pays you more attention than he does her."
"And apparently he doesn't know about your fits, if he'll send you in his stead."
"And I have half a mind to tell him if he'll leave me alone! I have problems of my own, you know; I don't have to take on yours as well."
"Good. I never wanted you to."
"Good."
"Fine."
"Great."
"Right."
Good. He'd never asked to know about Aspen's powers. He'd barely had anything to do with her before he'd found out, and his life had been that much easier. Why the hell had he gotten involved in the first place?
Oh. Right. "Why do you keep doing this?"
Scowling, Aspen's crossed-arm hold on her own chest tightened. "It feels worse not to."
Bullshit. People like Nato and Aspen didn't live in a world where worse existed. It couldn't exist, not without a better to compare it to. There was bad, and there was different bad, but there was no worse. Aspen was kidding herself if she thought there was.
But, she did this to herself. She could have claimed a land of better if she wanted to. "What, morally? Do you really think--"
"No! Not morally! Morals are incidental!" Her arms had dropped to her sides, fists clenched to the point of redness. "If I don't use my powers, then they use me. If I see an injury, or an illness, I'll take it--because it's better. If I don't use my powers, then the things they'll take for me are the invisible things. And you have no idea how many invisible things there are. And you can't lie in bed and wait them out, or bind them for a few weeks and hope they heal. How can you cure them if you can't see them?"
Invisible. Invisible, until they weren't.
Pain that no one saw. Screams that no one heard. Prayers to gods that were dead or indifferent or had never existed at all.
He understood, now. Or, he thought he did.
"Aspen--"
"Shut up, Nato. You get it. You're the only one who knows who gets it.
"You said I didn't have to live like you did. Well, this is me doing that."
NEXT CHAPTER:
