Elloven couldn’t help herself. She laughed. “Choose joy with the man who murdered my brother?”
“Joy,” Esme said, “with a man who killed his closest friend because he believed he’d hurt a woman in the worst possible way. A man who spent the years since saving as many more as he could. Who committed fratricide so you wouldn’t have the stain of it on your soul. Oh, you think I don’t know what happened at the Edevane manor the other night? Word travels, Elloven. My nurses couldn’t stop talking about the rumors of the girl who had opened the skies to save her love.”
“Sesto said the same thing,” Elloven said quietly. “Maybe he does believe he saved me that night, but I can’t help feeling like instead he’s stolen from me—again. Do you know he didn’t even defend himself about Gen? Sesto offered some additional perspective that—” She stopped herself from finishing the thought. “Jesstin made himself sound proud of what he’d done.”
“Jesstin understands that to soften his crime is to soften your pain, and he won’t take that from you. If he believed he could, he would have already.”
“You are his most ardent defender,” Elloven remarked bitterly.
“No, love,” Esme said with a slow, sad smile. “I am yours. And now I need to rest. Now I can rest. I love you, Elloven. I never said it enough, and not because I didn’t mean it. But tonight, as I prepare to journey from this world to the next, I choose peace, and my heart is full. Don’t wait as long as I did, my love. Decide how you want to live and then do it. Without apology. And without ever, ever looking back.”
Chapter 18
The Boy
Jesstin hovered outside the boy’s room. He’d been standing there a while, which made him feel quite dumb... to be scared of a child?
He supposed he wasn’t scared of the child but of the boy’s expectations, whatever they were. Rhiain’s children had been so easy to look after. They’d had stability and consistency and, above all, two parents who loved them more than anything. The same could not be said of the little tow-haired lamb sleeping in his spare room. Until a few weeks ago, the boy had never even seen a bed or had a room all to himself.
The kid didn’t even have a name. The young woman Jesstin had rescued from the fire, Alana, had offered the devastating revelation that the girls in the cellar never bothered naming their little boys until they were next to be rescued, because they could be taken at any time. The girls, of course, had further use.
The boy’s mother, whoever she’d been, had died from influenza before she could even nurse him.
But haven’t any of you formed a bond with him? Jesstin had asked Gertrude the night he’d rescued him, two weeks before the fire. The young woman he’d come for had a family waiting, but Gertrude had urged him to take the boy too. She didn’t believe he would survive until the next visit. Wouldn’t he be better with someone familiar?
We don’t bond with the boys, she’d said with a chary look. He’ll be better with someone who knows nothing of where he came from. He needs to forget, or he’ll never have half a chance at a decent life.
Jesstin pulled himself together and walked in. The boy was sitting on the end of his bed wearing the pajamas Sesto had bought him in the market, his head angled in rapt awe at the snow falling outside his window.
“Hi,” Jesstin said awkwardly. When the boy turned, he waved. The boy waved back.
“Hi,” the boy answered.
“Did you have fun with Daire today, in the village?”
The boy nodded. “There was a big tree.”
“Yeah? They do find the biggest trees for the Jubilee.”
“And we ate too much.” He rubbed big circles across his belly.
“What did you have?”
The boy grinned. “Candies.”
“Good. Yeah. Candies are good.” It was embarrassing how quickly he’d forgotten how to speak to children.
The boy lit up with expectation. “You tuck me in again?”
The only useful fact Gertrude had offered was the boy’s age. She couldn’t say with certainty, but he was closer to three than two, she’d estimated. Rhiain’s children had all been conversationalists at that age, and though the boy was shy—and doubtless traumatized—he’d been taught to speak well enough.
“If you’d like.” Jesstin gave the edge of the bed a pat. “Come on then.”
The boy’s scrambly crawl was endearing. He was a sweet thing, and he deserved so much better than he’d been given. Jesstin pulled the quilt over him and tapped the edges like he was tacking them down, because it had made the boy laugh when he’d done it before. The boy was just as amused this time.
The boy’s gleeful giggles echoed across the sparsely furnished room. The apartment had come furnished, however meager, and Jesstin hadn’t had the compulsion to spruce it up. He imagined the space brimming with toys and color. With life and love.
It was a nice thought, anyway.
