Nothing more.
Then I worried that the entry had taken days to construct–weeks, that he had departed from the world in the middle of the very sentence I longed for him to finish.
“Oh, God,” I said. “God, Father, no. Why? Why would you write this?”
I read the passage over. Then I read his previous notes. They differed in length and in intensity. In one written on my birthday, he confessed that he missed the days I bribed him to carry me to see the ivory horses. Another letter suggested that I had been ‘a royal pain in his ass,’ that day, but there was no meaning behind the date.
Once I had read the entirety of number eighteen, I fled from the desk and took seventeen, then sixteen, then another installment, until I had consumed so much of their innards I could not consume more. It had been hours.Hours. The novels were devoted to me, only me, and they each offered some slice of life advice, or secret emotion that he had buried deep within hiswalls. My chest was tight and I was on the verge of rancid crying when Ser Elías’ shadow dimmed the slither of light in the room. He startled me, which startled him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He looked at the mess of tomes, scattered across the floor. “Miss Jocelyn said you summoned me.”
I nodded, though I did not want to conjure the accusation that I had sent for him to breach. Instead, I wanted to offload the burden of my discovery, to demand he tell me they were lies– he had known my father better than anyone, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t speak.
“Are you alright?” he asked. He stepped closer. “You look faint. Perhaps it’s time for bed?”
“I’ve just read a great deal of my father’s journals,”I professed.
He looked at the one I held and I shut it in self-preservation.
“Do you wish for me to return another time?” he asked.
“No. No, I wish for you to explain something to me.”
“Of course.” He offered me his hand and helped me rise. “Nikolai struggled with expressing how he felt,” he said. “He wrote those letters in hopes that he could one day share them with you himself.”
I frowned. “Wait. You knew? Of course you knew. …You’re just a man of many secrets then, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Am I?”
“I…” I blinked a few times, reeling in my father’s words. Loyalty. Honesty. Faith. “You’ve been hiding these from me. You hid Willem from me, too.”
He didn’t respond.
“Is your silence a denial, Ser?” I asked.
“No, Your Majesty,” he said. “It is not.”
“Then you confess?”
“I confess,” he said.
“I didn’t want you to say that,” I moaned.
“You preferred I lied?” he asked.
“I preferred you hadn’t maimed me!”
He paused, then offered, “Ask me why. I will tell you.”
“Duty,” I guessed. “I can figure it out, but thank you for assuming I could not. My, you must truly think so highly of your Queen and her ability. Hmph.”
“Svana,” he said.
“Please. I need nothing more of you. Leave.”
“I’d like to explain,” he said.
“There’s nothing to explain, Elías. I know how this conversation goes. I’ve played it a thousand times since I first discovered your lie.” He bore a look. “Yes. That’s right. I’ve known for some time that you hid the boy. I know lots of things I don’t necessarily need to share about you.”
