"Yes."
“Perhaps tomorrow I will attend with you," I run my fingers through Ari's hair, smoothing it flat. "Today I want to be with my babies. They have been stuck in the transport, traveling through cold and danger for days." I look down at them both. "We will bathe and then go to the gardens."
A pause. "The weather here is far warmer."
"Yes," I say. "It is."
Ari latches onto me without warning, his small mouth finding what it is looking for, and I adjust him without thinking. Kiss watches and immediately wants the same.
I smile, still relieved that she is finally agreeable to milk.
"Arthen smelled strange when he greeted us," Colsar says.
I look up. In the chaos of deathmages and Yvara and the Yorali princess, I did not even remember greeting Arthen. “In what way?”
"Wrong," he says simply.
I think of Matron Oramin, of what she had been underneath everything. Of the particular wrongness of something that looks like a person and is not. My hands are trembling slightly before I realize it. She had always been stoic. She had also always been kind in her particular contained way, the kind of kindness that does not announce itself and does not need to.
My eyes burn as I think of how her eyes would have brightened at the sight of Kiss and Ari. How she would have looked at me with approval as she saw how well I cared for them, how strong they were. But then Aunt Petunis’s words rang in my ears.“The dead have no use for your tears, Asharin. And the living even less.”
I exhale and looked at Colsar. “Kiss me,” I say quietly.
He leans down and presses his mouth to mine, brief and certain. Then he straightens and moves toward the door.
He gets there and stops, then turns back. He begins removing his clothes and I watch him step into the large tub behind me andlower himself into it with a sound that tells me his body is more tired than he has let on.
Ari has fallen asleep on my breast. Colsar reaches for him without asking and lifts him with extraordinary care, settling him against his own chest where he stays without waking, one small fist curled against Colsar's skin.
We sit in the warm water with both of them and neither of us speaks for a while.
"I wish to bathe," he says eventually, "and then walk in the gardens." He looks out the window at the light beyond it. "Now that it is warm there will be things planted, not just in the gardens but the greenhouse." A pause. "If we are to be here for any stretch of time I would prefer to see it now. So I can picture what you're describing when you give me your updates at dinner."
Something warm moves through my chest.
"I never got to see the silver ash drop its leaves while you were gone," I say.
His face changes. Something darkens in it, old and certain.
"I know," he says. "No one will ever stop you from seeing it again."
He shifts in the bath and pulls me and Kiss toward him, his arm coming around us both. We sit like that for a moment and I look at the light through the window.
"Asharin." His voice is low. "I will be patient. I will play the game of strategy. We will have Kiss named heir. We will figure out Morrath." A pause. "But then I will take his throne. And then hewill pay for every single thing he has done. Just when he thinks all is forgiven."
I turn to look at him.
"I love you," I say.
He presses his mouth to the top of my head. "The red brethil birds will be here soon," he says quietly. "They hate the frost but they come back at the first sign of warm weather." Something that is almost a smile. "The children will like the colors.”
"I never understood why they call them red brethil when they are so many different colors."
He makes a quiet sound of agreement.
"Ari will like them," I say. “But your daughter will only find them interesting if they are making noise or in a large flock."
He laughs. Low and real. "My little princess has very little patience."
