“Haven’t thought about it yet.”
“It won’t be the same as it was, but it’s a way back to what you had,” Sesto said. “If the twins both dreamed of you in memories, then it stands to reason Rhiain and Asterin might also, especially if you’re close by. Remember, that’s how Rhiain regained some of her memories of Asterin. She couldn’t stop dreaming of him once they were near one another.”
Sesto had said nothing he didn’t already know.
“No one knows you quite like I do, Jesstin. Not Rhiain. And not even?—”
“If you say her name, I swear on the fucking stars?—”
“All right. All right. I know you. I see what you’re doing. I can almost read your deviant little mind.” Sesto tapped his bald head with a droll glare. “Not everything must exist in the extremes. There is a compromise between feeling everything and feeling nothing. That compromise is the very foundation of life itself.”
“We’re getting philosophical Sesto tonight,” Jesstin muttered. “My favorite.”
“I won’t do it.” Sesto flopped back and crossed his arms. “I won’t watch you repeat your past mistakes because you refuse to learn from them.”
Then leave, Jesstin started to say, and nearly said anyway, but he didn’t want that. “Which part was a mistake? Sending the worst of my bloodline up in flames? Bringing a boy home with me to keep my brother and father from murdering him? Not reacting the way you wanted when you sat my nieces and nephews and great-nieces and great-nephew, most of whom are now older than I am, at my table to share some fantasy without even a warning? Failing to leap with joy at a dinner invitation with two people who don’t even know who the fuck I am? I know you’re not shaming me for having casual sex.”
“To be fair, El—someone else started the fire.”
“What do you want me to say? Do? If you’ll tell me, we can both go to bed.”
Sesto tilted his head in thought. “We could start by giving the boy a name.”
“Me, not the mother and father who will love and raise him?”
Sesto gave him a pointed look.
“Unbelievable.” Jesstin shook his head. Naming the boy implied a level of commitment he wasn’t prepared for. But it was unfair to deny him a sense of identity, especially since Jesstin hadn’t had the time to find him a permanent home. “You told me you had a brother once. You were close, but he died young?”
“The only member of my family who was worth a damn and then some, yes. Oliver.”
“Oliver,” Jesstin said, nodding. “I think that’s a good name for the boy, don’t you?”
“Really?” Sesto twisted in his chair with a tentative glance. “You mean that?”
“Why not?”
“I’m just...” Sesto brushed his hands down his vest with a short, emotive sigh. “I’m honored. That’s what I am.”
“We can tell him tomorrow. If he likes it, it stays.” If that wasn’t compromise, then Jesstin didn’t know what else to say. At the very least, it spared him another hour of enduring a long-winded soliloquy. He gave Sesto another second to counter before standing.
“I thought you were going to bed?”
“I sleep during the day, remember?” Jesstin said as he headed for the door. “I think I’ll take a walk though.”
“In this weather?”
Jesstin grabbed his coat and made an exaggerated show of putting it on.
Sesto sighed in exasperation. “You’re an insolent boy, but I suppose it will take more than a few months in the netherworld to sort that out.”
No one clarified when Elloven asked about a “Jesstin.” There was only one along Mythgarde’s entertainment row, the son of the Jesstin who’d lost the Azure Haunt after he’d been accused of mishandling a Virtue over three decades ago.
Jesstin had evidently bought the old establishment for almost double its value and renamed it the Golden Spiral. The tall barkeep in the Ivory Virtue, the only Mythgardian tavern Elloven had ever been in before, told her the owner had been looking to sell anyway and would’ve taken a fair price for the place, but Jesstin paid to obliterate any competitive bids. It was that one or none, seemed like, the barkeep said. Then the man had offered to cover her drinks all night if she stayed at the Virtue, a free room too, which she graciously but firmly declined.
Back outside, Elloven bundled her shawl around her face and disappeared between two groups moving in the direction she was going. She remembered so little about the small village. That whole evening, and the tense morning that followed, were one continuous stream of blurred fragments. She’d been so annoyed with Taven, and so intrigued by Jesstin, that she’d acted completely out of character in going at all. Compliant was the word Mathias had used when he’d handed her over to the Reliquary for “rehabilitation.” Even then, it had been such a damning description that she’d vowed to be anything but compliant. Then she’d learned they were right after all.
But something had splintered in Elloven the night Fabrien and his friends had died. It had snapped as she’d weighed her own life against Jesstin’s on that windy day as he’d awaited his fate on the dais. And it had disintegrated when she’d thought, at last, I’m where I need to be, where I was always meant to be, only for him to say the one thing, the only thing, capable of pushing her away.
