"Yes."
"I thought I could handle it," he says finally.
I let out a breath, slow and controlled, the tension still there but looser than before. “You have been handling everything alone," I say. "And I have been right here.”
His jaw tightens. "You had already given everything," he says. "I was not going to ask for more."
"That was not your decision to make."
“You are right.”
The silence between us stretches, heavier now, filled with everything that has not been said until this moment.
"I cannot leave without them," he says. "They do not deserve that. And more than that—" he stops, something tightening in his expression before he forces it back. "Ari is a siakar. He will inherit this. What do I give him if I leave those men to die? What does that make me?"
He exhales, slower now, but the strain remains. "What would I tell my son?"
Something inside me gives at that, immediate and involuntary, and I hold it where it is. Outside the room the palace continues as it always does, the world moving forward whether we are ready for it or not.
Inside it, for the first time since we stepped off the dance floor, we are standing in the same place.
CHAPTER 63
The Second Truth
"That is your first truth," I say. "What is the second, Colsar?"
At first he does not answer, his attention fixed somewhere just past me as though he is deciding whether to say it at all.
Then he looks at me. "You," he says.
I do not move. "What about me?"
He holds my eyes, but there is a hesitation in him now, something less certain than before. "Most siakars are taught what happens after they take a wife,” he says. "What it means. What it does to them. Especially after she gives birth."
The healer's words return, uninvited.It becomes difficult for the siakar to be elsewhere for long.
"There is a pull," he says. "A need to remain close. To anchor. It is not only desire. It is instinct, and it does not lessen when there are children involved. It becomes stronger."
“I was not," he continues, "taught any of it."
I wait.
"I did not know what it would feel like," he says. "Only that it was stronger than anything I had known."
"My father told me what it was," he says. "When it happens, it takes over everything. The need for contact. The pull."
"And you were afraid of it," I say.
"I was afraid of what it would make me," he says. "Siakars are not built for this. We are solitary creatures. Cold ones. My mother is proof of that." Something moves through his expression. "And I did not know if you would want to be on the other side of something that consuming. So I held it back. And I hid behind every practical reason I had to do so."
"So you chose distance."
"I went to my father," he says. "I asked him what it meant. What I should do." His jaw tightens. "He told me to create distance. To control it before it controlled me. The soldiers were missing. The undead were spreading. He said to distance myself if necessary, but that I could not afford to let it take me over. Not then."
"And you listened."
"I did not know what else to do." The answer comes quietly but it carries more than anything he has said so far. "I thought it would be temporary. A few days. A week at most. Long enough to understand it. Long enough to make sure I would not—" he stops briefly, then finishes it anyway. "lose control of something that could affect more than just us."
