“No,” Roy said, “never that. To Gabriel, jealousy was weakness. It was poison. If you weren’t content with the role you were expected to play, then you were undeserving ofanyrole and were better off dead. I envied the Radiant Droves for that very reason, for though they may be ruthless, they have apurpose. The Governor had given them a future, a portrait of glory they could step into if only they bent to his whim.”
“And Gabriel interpreted your studiousness as a shortcoming,” Percival said, a knowing, dark look in his eyes. He, like many other secret students of his profession, had heard this old story before.
Roy shrugged. “Shortcoming, transgression; whatever you wish to call it. He couldn’t fathom a world in which I, the outsider, was unaware of my privilege. He thought I believed our elevated status would make an exception for me, that I would be exempt from all of the obligations Northgard had forced its citizens to endure. I wasn’t blind; I knew my defiance was treason. I had escaped the repercussions of my proclivities for many years, but Gabriel wanted me to see differently, through whatever means necessary, so that I could accept my destiny, so that I could see my scholarship for the sin that it was. I was sixteen the first time he found me reading under my covers, and he nineteen. That night, I lost consciousness more times than I can remember. I’m shocked I can remember that night at all.”
Percival let out a soft, broken cry and bowed forward, wrapping his hands around Roy’s waist.
Roy spoke into the crown of Percival’s head, his voice slightly muffled. “He hit me with his hands at first,” he went on. “The palm, though sometimes he backhanded me. Initially, I did not know why. I thought myself immune to the consequences of my actions. I was wrong, so wrong it hurts now. Your family knows where it hurts most. Gabriel and I never got along too well to begin with, but he was the troubled one among the three of us, and I the timid one, so I took this to be why he went for me.
“He would most always stand when he used his fists on me. It gave him power over me, even though we both knew he didn’t need more to make me submit. It was around then that I opted not to linger at our family dinners, always the first to leave the table. Seeing him using a knife and cutting into his meat was more than I could bear, and it almost convinced me that death by my own hands would be swifter and gentler than by his.”
Percival raised his head from Roy’s lap. “Didn’t your family do anything about it? They must’ve suspected something amiss.”
“My sister and my mother knew he was ill-tempered, and everyone—including the maids and butlers—knew he tended to misbehave. He wasn’t two-faced. But as I grew older, things changed. He became more violent in his attacks, yes, but also more desperate to see evidence of his progress, while also more circumspect in his abuse. One week, when my mother was away, he conducted an experiment and struck me to unconsciousness for every book I finished. I didn’t realize what he was doing until the week was done. Once Ididrealize it, I began to think it was my own way of showing him I was stronger, that the light of knowledge will always outshine the shadow cast by violence, but there’s no point idealizing what he did. It was just easier to tolerate the pain.”
Percival gripped Roy’s leg, brushing his thumb across his thigh.
“It wasn’t a month before the war when he gave me my last scar,” Roy said. He could barely get the words out. He was coming upon the end of it now, nearing the present, and he wasstilltoo afraid to retell it. “There were weeks when he wouldn’t hurt me. Other times, it was all he could do to keep his fists away from me. Once he barred the doors to my chamber just to stop himself, to tamp down the urge. And some nights, while he was using one of his knives on me, he kept telling me that I was nothing, no one. I was a mistake, an outlier in a society bred for struggle. So eventually he... he wrote it on my chest, in my blood.”
Roy moved before he could change his mind. He shucked off his sweater vest and tunic, then cast them both aside. His black and silver hair curled down over his shoulders, framing the muscles of his chest. There were several other scars, burn marks and gouges overlapping one another, but H-I-S-T-O-R-Y stood out, prominent. Fruitless though Roy’s resistance had been, the lettering of the scar was slightly lopsided. TheOwas distended, and the horizonal line of theTwas disconnected from the vertical. But it was still as legible as it’d been on the night of its making.
“If I had it my way,” Percival said, his voice rough and low, “if I could have my hands on him—”
“I would stop you,” Roy whispered. “I would stop you before you could even lay a finger on him. Because that’s not who you are, that’s not what you were born to do, and damn it, I’d rather go through it all again than let this—anyof this—happen to anyone else, but especially you.”
Percival’s face reddened. “I just want to help—”
“You want to carry this burden?” Roy said. “Then carry it elsehow. Bear it with your mind, not with your hands. Help me through this and I’ll help you through whatever keeps you awake—because Iknowsomething does, Percival, as hard as you try to hide it—but if you expect me to stand aside and watch as you bloody your hands, then just forget it. Have me as I am or have me not at all.”
“I’m sorry,” Percival mumbled. “I crossed a line. I went too far.” He sounded so brittle, like he could crumble away at the slightest touch. “I can’t undo what I said, I know that, but maybe I could make amends.” He regarded H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, his mouth pressed into a shaking white line. “Maybe I could lighten the weight.”
“How?” Roy exclaimed, clutching at his chest. “Heruinedme, Percival. I’m stained, dirtied. I’m an aberration. You can have my forgiveness, but you can’t restore what he stole.” Tears dripped off the tip of his chin.
“No,” Percival said, “I cannot. But if I can have you as you are, then that comes with the scars. And while mine can’t be seen as clearly as yours, darling, that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. A tired expression, sure, but true all the same.” He laid his hand flat on Roy’s chest, an inch or so to the left of his racing heart, but his eyes were fixed on his most recent scar. “You lie to yourself. Have I not told you as much?”
“Percival—”
“You’re beautiful, Roy,” Percival said, resolute. “You’re gorgeous, and I wish I had the words to properly articulate it, but I’ve always said the wrong thing around you, so I suppose I’ll just keep trying until something sounds marginally better. And I wish, sometimes, that the sun shone more in this blasted place. I didn’t notice until our second week here that you had these silver streaks in your hair.” He ran his fingers through them, a smile playing around the edges of his mouth. “I understand, as much as I can, that it’s hard to take my word as gospel, but I wish you could see what I see. I know that’s a long time from coming, though, and so in the meantime, I promise you this.” He hung his head and reticently placed a kiss just beneath Roy’s scar. “I promise to hold your hurts.” He looked up at Roy, took his hands in his own, and squeezed his fingers. “And I promise my hands are yours to hold.”
Roy held Percival’s gaze, and all his previous anxieties and reservations, his worries that nothing good would come of this, dissipated like mist under summer sun. “Would you kiss it? My scar?”
Percival stilled. “You’d let me?”
Roy would, but this wasn’t only a matter of allowance. “Iwantyou to.” Percival nodded and lowered his head again, then stopped immediately when Roy held Percival’s neck and blurted out, “It might be more comfortable in my chamber.” He glanced out the window and added, if a little reluctantly, “Midnight is drawing near, anyway, and I’ve been a tad short on sleep.”
Percival widened his eyes, giving Roy a look of mock amazement. “You use your bed forsleep? I’m astounded, Dawnseve. I thought that was your second workspace.”
Roy smiled. “Tonight, it’s not.” As the unspoken request settled in the air around them, he found himself looking at Percival’s lips, though this time—unlike in the catacombs—Roy wasn’t called out on it. This time, as never before, the quiet that grew and stretched between them was alive with an affectionate vow, not the aching desire they’d shared in the dark. He chuckled. “You can kiss me whenever you like, by the way—”
Percival rushed in, clasped Roy’s cheeks, and kissed him on the mouth. Roy inhaled, parting his lips instinctually and then capturing Percival’s with his own. Percival seized the back of Roy’s head with a hand, his slender fingers cradling him as though Roy were made from carefully spun glass. On another night, Roy would have been eager to show Percival that he was not, but he was still spent and disorientated from his visions of Gabriel and the long hour of confession thereafter, and a great part of him just wanted his bed, and Percival there with him.
When Roy pulled away, his lips damp and tingling, Percival whispered, “Do you trust me?”
“Not completely,” Roy said, then, seeing Percival’s face drop, went on, “But trust is hard for me. I’m not opposed to taking the first steps, though. I’d like to give myself that, because if I don’t now, when it feels like—orsomethinglike—the right time, I’m worried that I never will.”
Percival nodded and, with tender adoration, clasped Roy’s cheeks. “Then I’ll make every second last and every moment worth it.”
Throughout the night, Percival held true to his word. As they lay shirtless in bed, he kissed Roy’s scar, the only one he still dreamed of, like it was a beauty mark. He wrapped his arms around Roy’s chest and held him in a passionate embrace. Roy kept waiting for Percival to cower or grimace, to touch his scar for a second time and finally see the ugliness of it, but he did no such thing. He was warm, kind, whispering assurances onto Roy’s scarred skin. His lingering touches were glimpses of tomorrow, his soft lips a dream from which Roy wished to never wake.
