Underneath all his bravado and awkwardness, he was probably furious with her for her abandonment and her distance, but wanting her approval, too. She was asking too much of him, even having him meet her today.
It took all the bravery in her heart to go straight at the issue, as Gavin would have. “Let’s get this out of the way, shall we?” she said.
“Mother?”
“I didn’t want to leave you, Zymun, but I couldn’t bear to keep you, either. I had no prospects and no friends. Or so I thought. And I was ashamed. Not ashamed of you—but ashamed nonetheless, for all the wrong reasons. But I want you to know it wasn’t your fault. I didn’t leave for anything you did.”
His lip quivered, and he looked away, blinking.
Orholam have mercy. Her heart broke again.
“No, I… I know that,” he said. “I mean, how could it be my fault? I was just a baby, right? I hadn’t done anything yet—good or bad, right? I mean, I don’t know, maybe your pregnancy was really awful? And you blamed me for it or something? I thought about it a lot. I just wanted to know if it had been something I’d done. Or if, or if I seemed like some sort of monster to you for some reason.”
Whatever leash she’d held on her emotions slipped through her fingers. She turned her back.
How could he have thought that?
How could he not?
But he kept talking, quickly, always quickly. “I mean, they told me I was a cute baby, but I didn’t know what you thought of me. They didn’t like that I was handsome, actually. At least that’s one of the things they beat me for. They said I was a burden. They said I thought I was better than them. It was a lie. I just wanted to fit in. I just wanted to be accepted by someone, anyone. It all got worse when it turned out I could draft. I could show you the scars if you want? Did you get any of the letters I sent you? They said they’d send them on. They promised. They lied about so many things, but I was certain they were telling the truth about sending my letters.”
Every dream she’d had for her son. Every hope she’d nourished that he would be protected, loved, that he would grow up knowing both a mother and a father—it all burnt and broke at once. Every nightmare from her long nights stepped fully armed from the waves in an instant, invading the beachhead her fears had captured in her mind and setting up camp along the whole coast.
She’d wanted to let herself off the hook, all these years: he was with a good family, she told herself. The Ashes were her cousins, and had been close with her branch of the family for generations. She’d thought he would be far from wars and danger, that he would be loved and nurtured.
But that was all a fantasy, wasn’t it? That her abandonment had somehow been beneficial to him, and not just a selfish sloughing off of a problem onto someone else. Now that hook eviscerated her, she fell to her knees, barely able to breathe through her sobs.
“Mother, mother, please…” he said, and it was as if he were speaking to her from far away. She’d thought she knew Devon and Karen Ash. They’d seemed to be such good people, but then, the real monsters had an uncanny ability to hide right in plain sight, didn’t they?
“Mother, please don’t turn away again,” Zymun said.
She beckoned him to come to her. He was there instantly, sitting on the floor with her, burying his head in her chest. He was taller than she was, even sitting, so it was an awkward movement, but she thought she understood. He had never been comforted by a mother, of course he would want to act like a little boy.
She brushed his hair with her fingers, and a tiny ray of sweetness penetrated all the bitterness.
He nuzzled his head in against her breast. “Mother, please, I’m so afraid of you rejecting me.”
“No, never,” she said. “Never again.”
“Will you promise me you’ll keep me close? That you’ll never send me away?”
“I swear it,” she said.
“You swear to Orholam? You swear on your hope of the light?”
It was a burden, and it invited future pain. It invited the possibility of the kind of hurt that she’d pushed away when Kip had made his innocent joke, calling her mother. She’d failed Kip then; she’d not fail Zymun now.
“I swear to Orholam, by all that is holy, by all my power and light.” And finally, as that oath passed her lips, as she finally felt that she had done one good thing for him in her life, even if it was only utter some words, something loosened in her chest, and her throat allowed her to say the word that had been denied her too long. “I swear it… son.”
Chapter 7
“Kip, it’s been four days. Four days since our wedding, and we still…”
“I know,” Kip said. He was sitting on their little bed in the captain’s quarters. Another dread night was falling, and the back slapping and jokes about being a sneaky little bugger from the captain and the mate and the squad had been endured already. The public torture ended, the private one begun.
“We don’t have to try again right away,” Tisis said.
“And you wore that because you wanted to wait until tomorrow?” Kip asked.
In her initial excitement and ardor at Getting Married and Not to Some Old Guy, Tisis had packed all manner of lace and silk lingerie. She was wearing a celadon nightgown now that showcased her cleavage and curves. Kip’s new wife was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen—even during the day, when she wore baggy men’s trousers and a tunic too large for her and no cosmetics. Seeing her like this only made everything more painful. “You know the law…” she said.
“I didn’t until you told me!”
She pursed her lips. She didn’t like it when Kip raised his voice at her. “Fine, then. We wait three more days, and it’s over. We’ll just… have to figure it out from there. I don’t think Andross Guile will do anything rash—”
“No, not rash. His vengeance is anything but rash.”
She lowered her head, and Kip saw her swallow quickly. She looked at her silk nightgown. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have worn this, but I didn’t want to tell my sister’s slave to bring me something plainer. She’d ask more questions than they already have.” She mimicked the room slave Verity’s nasally voice: “‘Is mistress’s lord husband gentle enough?’ ‘Does mistress have any… delicate questions?’ It’s not supposed to be like this, Kip. What’s wrong with me?”
“Tisis, quieter? Please?” Kip said awkwardly. “Remember…” Sound went through the walls of the captain’s quarters as if they weren’t even there. Maybe that was where their troubles had started. Maybe if she could just relax…
And maybe this was the stupidest thing in the world to worry about right now. The world was falling apart, and Kip—who had fought an immortal and stolen the master cloak from him, who was a full-spectrum polychrome, who was maybe, just maybe, the Lightbringer—Kip who had killed a king and a god and escaped the Chromeria itself with all the Lightguard after him, who had brought along with himself the best and brightest the Blackguard had to offer—Kip, the son of Gavin Guile, couldn’t make love. With his own wife. Who seemed entirely willing—at least on one level.
It was as if her body itself was rejecting Kip.
It had all been merely mortifying until Tisis had told him that their wedding contract was automatically revoked if they didn’t consummate the marriage within seven days.
“I’m a failure as a woman.” As she stood outside the covers in her barely-there nightgown, Tisis’s skin was covered in gooseflesh.
She bares her heart to you, and you stare at her nipples. Nice.
“Maybe it’s not you. Maybe I’m doing something wrong,” Kip said lamely. Neither of them believed that, now.
They were really great nipples.
She lifted her eyebrows and pulled back the covers he had bunched over his lap. His tunic covered his arousal about as effectively as Tisis’s nightgown covered the fact that she had breasts. He bloused the fabric gingerly and cleared his throat.