MB Chapter 19

“Goiyo, your dress today is a little different—you look neat!”

“I don’t like standing out. It’s embarrassing when people look at me. But this dress—it’s similar to the one you recommended before, Therio. Is it all right?”

“Yes, it’s very pretty!”

The boy's face was bright with it, his grin wide and uncomplicated.

Goiyo's fingers worked at her sides, a small, furtive motion. She was ten years old, standing among children draped in lace-heavy, fairy-tale skirts, and she was the only one wearing a plain dress without a single ornament on it. That had been the choice she made—because being admired in something elaborate made her feel embarrassed and exposed—but now, standing here, even this felt embarrassing somehow. A contradiction, and she knew it, and she still felt it.

Then Therio had said what he said, and all of it dissolved at once. She was glad for a moment, then embarrassed at herself for being glad so easily.

"My mother used to wear things like this, apparently."

"You remember that?"

"No. I saw it in a portrait. I don't remember much of her."

Ah. Goiyo nodded.

Therio smiled, certain of himself in the way of someone stating a fact he's already verified.

"But I would have known even without the portrait. Alte people are all knights—they don't like anything showy."

"Why?"

"A person's interior is what matters. All that outward display and extravagance—it seems a bit empty-headed, doesn’t it."

"Empty-headed is too harsh… Liking pretty things isn’t something you can help.”

She wasn't the type to think badly of things for being showy. She just didn't like standing out. Therio's words felt like a finger pointed at her anyway.

He tilted his head. Is extravagance pretty?

"But Goiyo's pretty even without it."

"Don't say embarrassing things like that."

"I mean it, though. Plain and neat suits you. It looks better, I think."

Does it. Goiyo glanced down at herself.

"Goiyo. Could you keep dressing this way from now on?"

"Well—for birthdays or large parties—"

"You only need to be pretty. Can't you? Please?"

He was asking twice, leaning toward her a little. She gave in.

She'd never wanted the elaborate clothes anyway. If this suited her better, better was better.

"All right."

"You promise?"

"I said all right."

Therio lit up like the sun coming out.

Then the brightness went out.

The wide, warm smile closed off into nothing—a blank face, flat eyes—and when he looked at Goiyo again he was no longer a child.

"You promised. So why."

"What?"

"Why did you marry the Marquess?"

Therio reached for her. She had no time to move. His hand closed around her throat—and then his hand was a grown man's hand, and he was grown, in a single instant, though she had grown too, and still she couldn't move, couldn't push him away.

"You said you didn't like showy things. Why did you marry someone showy. Why won't you listen to me, Goiyo?"

"Therio—!"

“Why won’t you do what your mother said, Goiyo. Why didn’t you listen when I told you not to marry him. You’d be unhappy, I told you. Why won’t you listen to your mother, Goiyo. Goiyo… I loved Melishi. You insisted on marrying, and Melishi died. She died in your place.”

It felt like a dream even as it was happening—no physical pain, just the fact of it. And that, by itself, was enough to be terrifying.

"Why won't you come back. I needed you beside me. You were my only friend, my only love. All of it—it was just me, always me, and then you left."

"Let—go—!"

"You have to take responsibility, Goiyo. How can you run away like that and not think of me, left behind here? Why wouldn't you listen. I was the only one who ever stayed by you. Your friend, your love—I was both."

"Ugh—"

"Come back. Come back, come back, come back, come back."

Still strangling her, still, Therio tipped his head sideways. He was smiling—the wide, happy smile from before—and he brought his face close.

His lips were on the verge of touching hers. Contempt surged through her as she struggled against him—and still she couldn’t move.

It isn't too late yet. He shaped the words without sound.

"Goiyo!"

A sharp gasp.

She came awake.

Her chest lurched. Her hands reached for something that wasn’t there. 

The dream broke away. Therio Alte was nowhere. But her heart wouldn't slow.

Entzi, who had woken her, didn’t know what to do with himself. After a moment, he gathered her carefully—her body drenched in cold sweat—into his arms, keeping no pressure in them so she could pull free at any moment.

The warmth of another body, the pace of someone else's heartbeat—faster than average, she noticed, faintly—did more to settle her than she would have expected. The rigid tension in her shoulders let go by degrees.

Once he was sure she wasn't pulling away, Entzi closed the loose embrace and held on with quiet steadiness.

Her breathing slowed.

"…I'm sorry. I should have woken you sooner."

"No, it's—I'm all right."

She pressed her eyes shut. Dark either way, but this way she could hear the heartbeat more clearly. That helped, a little.

The fear and the distress from the dream were real, but they were losing force now in the open air, the way things do when you wake. As they dissolved, the space they'd left filled with something less useful.

What did she ever want, that she should be allowed to want it. Why, even having decided to die, having given everything up, was she still made to suffer like this. Even with an ending already set, she still has to be wounded here?

Why did she have to dream that face, and hear those words thrown at her, and be unable to do anything?

She had known this aggrieved ache—this particular grief, the kind that comes from being wronged and having nowhere to put it—many times before. From her family, sometimes. From strangers. From Therio Alte, more than once. It rose, then it receded, because nothing had ever really soothed it. Her father had been a family in name only, and Therio hadn't known what to do with her grief when it surfaced. So she'd learned to deal with it herself—and later, the brief surges of feeling would pass almost as quickly as they came.

But it wasn't passing this time.

Because of the warmth. The unhurried listening. The hand patting her back in that slightly clumsy way.

Because of Entzi.

It's his fault. Her damp eyes were held carefully closed.

"The nightmare—the scrap heap came into my nightmare."

"I see."

"You were right to call him that. He grabbed my throat and told me I wouldn't listen—come back, come back—"

“That bastard ought to have his throat grabbed in return.”

"It was so frightening—wait, what?"

"Nothing. Go on?"

"That's all. That's—it. He was cursing me for marrying you. Told me I'd be unhappy. Told me to come back."

The more he heard, the more Entzi's back teeth pressed together. Goiyo had her face tucked against his chest, so she couldn't see his expression—which was why he wasn't doing anything about it.

His hand kept moving on her back at that same slow, unhurried pace. It had no force in it at all.

Not knowing what his face looked like, Goiyo finished saying what she needed to say, and then felt the embarrassment arrive a beat late.

It was a nightmare. Barely more than that. What was there to pour out over a dream? He listened so well that the thought of stopping never once occurred to her.

The counterfeit tenderness is too effective. That's the problem.

Her closed lips opened again, reaching for some form of qualification.

"The dream was very vivid. I have nightmares often enough, so I'm generally fine—but tonight's was too vivid."

"You have nightmares often?"

"Yes. A little." She paused. "…Anyway. I'm sorry for the fuss. You must be tired, after everything today."

"Not particularly—I wasn't sleeping. And it wasn't a fuss. Even if it's only a dream—you live it fully before you wake. The fear is real, the sensation is real. All of it happens to you."

She blinked at that.

She couldn't find a flaw in it.

"…That's true."

"You experienced it. Of course it hurt. That means the scrap heap committed a crime, even in the dream, and it counts."

"Pardon?"

"The courts won't process a dream-crime, I imagine—so I'll have to take care of it directly—"

"—That's a joke."

"Of course."

"And the throat comment?"

"Humor."

"…It wasn't very funny."

Goiyo gave a small nod. He was probably joking, even if she wasn't entirely convinced.

The words stopped. In the natural quiet that followed, with only their breathing in the room, she felt sleep edging back in—earlier than she would have expected, which surprised her.

Is it because I'm in his arms?

She thought about asking him to let go, then decided not to. He'd let go on his own when he got uncomfortable. And if she was being honest with herself, it was warm, and she didn't want to move.

"The rose garden. Not burning it was the right call."

"Was it."

"I think I want to try liking roses."

What she'd dreamed of—Therio's voice, Therio's injunctions, that long-ago extracted promise:

Your inside is as shabby as your outside, Therio Alte. Don't push your preferences onto me. A promise you never kept yourself—why should I keep it?

She didn't know whether the conversation in the dream was something that had really happened, or whether she'd dreamed it that way because she'd been talking about showy things and tastes with Entzi earlier in the evening. The memory wasn't there.

But just as she’d grown used, without meaning to, to the particular scent of Entzi Betelgeuse—maybe the things she thought she disliked were only things she'd been afraid of. Unfamiliar, so she'd kept her distance.

Maybe she didn't actually dislike them at all.

Her voice was already beginning to dissolve.

"Maybe I don't actually dislike showy things—"

"That's fortunate."

He'd somehow caught the muffled words, and she was almost asleep and still she smiled at that, just faintly.

"Entzi."

"Yes, Goiyo."

"Thank you."

The hand on her back went still.

Her breathing evened out. The rhythm deepened into sleep, and held there, and then for a long moment there was only quiet in the room.

At last, the man's voice came out of it. Very low, too low to have reached her even if she were awake.

"…Yes."

It resonated in his chest before it quite became sound.

"Good night, Goiyo."

He pressed his lips to the top of her head. His face, half-buried in the dark of the room, looked nothing like the face of someone wearing a mask.