Look Beyond What You See

Warmth, all around. A feeling of safety. Where am I? What happened? Doesn’t matter. I could stay here forever, warm and safe.

No. Something is wrong in the universe. Something happened. What happened? The front of my brain begins to throb as the memories come back: a kiss of betrayal, a declaration of war, a broken necklace, a dark purple cloud, a rat’s tail. Yekaterina is gone.

I haven’t had a happier thought since I was sick and Dmitri sat with me.

Dmitri….

I slowly open my eyes to darkness, pierced with flecks of light like glints from a gemstone. I’m outside. But why? The last thing I remember was a swirl of pink, interrupted by crackling electric blue eyes. I turn my head to see plants, and beyond them, dim masses just slightly darker than the night sky. The mountains. I’m on the roof. How did I get here?

“Good morning,” a rich velvet voice intones with a hint of amusement. I turn my head the other way swiftly--perhaps too quickly, for I saw stars quite unlike those that greeted my waking eyes--to find Dmitri sitting next to me, radiating the warmth that I’ve found so comforting. “How are you feeling?”

“Not terrible,” I mumble. It’s so hard to put words together while looking into those burning amber eyes.

“You had me worried. You fainted several hours ago, and this is the first time you’ve stirred.”

Enough memories have come back to indicate that he should not be surprised by that. “Is it any wonder, after all that transpired today?”

That guilty expression that kills me inside. “Aerys....” The way he says my name.... “I never wanted Yekaterina to be here. I certainly never wanted her attentions, and it never occurred to me that she might force such dishonorable conduct upon me as that you witnessed. You had to know, that it was all her--”

“You let her sit on your lap, and you were not sufficiently discouraging to deter her prior to that dishonorable conduct I witnessed.” My head and my heart ache at the memory.

“I know, and I am deeply, most ardently sorry for it, and all the trouble I have caused by not being more firm with her. At first...I did not discourage her immediately because, after our disagreements about the combat instructor and his conduct towards you, I hoped that maybe you would feel about Yekaterina as I did about him. By the time I tried to correct the problem, she was too bent on her goal to be dissuaded by mere words, at least from me.”

“You were trying to make me jealous.” Flashes from what I observed pass between him and his father in the birdbath return to my memory. I knew of this before.

“Fairly ineffectually, until that last, it would have seemed.”

“For that I must apologize. I should have told you right away how much her conduct towards you irritated me. But I wanted to outdo you, childish as it sounds, and so I decided to pretend I was unaffected.” I sigh deeply, feeling wholly my own guilt in the mess that has accumulated between us. “You and she were not the only ones at fault. I should have been honest from the start.”

“And I never should have let the situation arise in the first place.”

“For all we know, Yekaterina might have proved to be just as much of a harlot without any encouragement whatsoever from you,” I point out with a weak shrug, which is also the first of half-hearted attempts to arrange myself in a sitting position. Dmitri’s hands touch my shoulders, guiding and supporting me until I am leaning against him comfortably, with his arm around my waist.

I feel remarkably comfortable accepting this kind of attention, considering that it comes from a man who has endlessly frustrated and angered me for the past several days.

“You carried me up here and made this bed for me and everything yourself?” I ask after a few seconds.

“Malina helped with the bedding. She seemed quite concerned about you,” he replies. That’s not all. The nature of his silence betrays that, and I wonder what he’s thinking. “And, perhaps, a bit guilty.”

“Why should that be?” I wonder aloud.

He sighs as deeply as I did moments ago. “Before I answer that, I would like you to tell me what you were doing in the rose garden, and what happened there before I arrived. Especially, I would like to know what caused our necklaces to break.”

I swallow hard. If I’d had a chance to stop and think, at any point between Giacomo’s ridiculous offer and when I lost consciousness, I would have known that this was coming. Even so, I doubt that knowing would make it any easier to tell my fiancé, who is known to have issues with jealousy and controlling his temper, that a man of whom he was already suspicious wanted me to run away with him.

“After your father took you away, I went back to my suite. Malina was there and, once I had stopped sobbing--” here his arm tightens around my waist “--she convinced me that some fresh air would do me good and took me to the rose garden. I was wholly insensible of where she was taking me. All I wanted was to be left to myself. It mattered not where.”

“I am so, so sorry to have hurt you so deeply,” he murmurs, brushing his lips against the top of my head. My whole body tingles. “I never wanted--”

“I know. Hush, or I won’t tell you the rest of the story,” I reply with a slightly teasing tone. My anger is gone, and I’m on my way to forgiving him. He looks at me with surprise but falls silent. Curiosity must outweigh repentance, else he is anxious not to cross me. I suppose I must enjoy it while it lasts. He will be angry with me again soon enough. “So I was brooding in the garden by myself. I know not for how long, for I decided to start practising a new skill I’ve been learning--”

“Oh? What might that be?”

I frown again at the interruption. “Clairvoyance, of a sort. I haven’t quite determined how to direct it yet. At the moment the water shows me whatever I most want to know. Then, it showed me the conversation you were having with your father.”

Dmitri’s jaw drops--whether from surprise or indignation, I’m not sure--and he shakes his head a couple times.

“I’m sorry...I swear you said--” I interrupt him, repeating verbatim what I’d heard from “Father, I can’t do this right now!” until Dmitri shushes me with a single finger on my lips.

“All right, all right. I believe you. It’s just...with everything else you can do--”

“I know it sounds a little far-fetched. I have trouble believing it sometimes, too. But, to continue: I was interrupted from my eavesdropping when Giacomo came into the garden. Why he came, I don’t know, but he immediately struck up a conversation with me--”

“Malina apologized to me with tears in her eyes for sending him out there. Apparently he was looking for you, anyway. To see if you were all right, she said. She told me he’d overheard everything in the library and was concerned about you.”

My eyes widen with fear for my friend. “Tell me you haven’t killed her.”

Dmitri chuckles grimly. “I was rather incensed. But she convinced me that she only thought to distract you from your woes. She thought he would want to train you in combat skills, since you had missed so much training. I sincerely doubt that is what actually transpired, however, based on what came after--that is, the parts in which I was involved.”

“I sincerely hope that is a cue to continue, and that you will refrain from interrupting me henceforward.” Dmitri mimes locking his lips and throwing away the key, and I narrowly manage not to roll my eyes. “Thank you. As I was saying, Giacomo struck up a conversation with me in which he revealed that he had just received a telegram from his clan summoning him home on account of the declarations of war. He then proceeded to invite me, repeatedly, to accompany him back to Venice...and even...proposed an elopement.”

Dmitri’s temperature spikes and I impulsively grab his arm, in case he should try to go after Giacomo, who might well have already departed for Venice by now.

“I said no,” I assure him softly, hoping my eyes will confirm this and the feelings behind it. He looks at me with absolute surprise, hope, joy, and other emotions I cannot name. “Even after.... I couldn’t....”

His lips cover mine and my words are gone. All of the old feelings--the sparks, the passion, the wild push of my magic towards him--all of it returns in this joyful gesture of affection and redemption of our relationship.

“Thank you,” he says breathlessly when our lips separate. His eyes are fair blazing with a light I haven’t seen in them in too long. “You might be too good for me. After everything, you would have been perfectly justified, if you wanted to get away--”

I silence him with another kiss, this one softer and briefer. “Enough. It’s over. She’s gone, and he probably left not long after. It seems he knew enough of the necklaces, from sources apart from myself, since I never mentioned anything of them to him, to suspect that mine was exerting undue influence over my decision-making powers. He thought that if he could break the necklace, he would set me free to make my own choice. He didn’t realize that my grandmother would show up if he succeeded.”

“I hardly think her arrival is a logical conclusion to jump to, under the circumstances.”

“She felt the disruption of one of her own enchantments, knew which one it was, and felt it important enough to investigate in person.”

“How did he break it?”

“With crushing fog. I tried to stop him, but all in vain. She showed up and nearly killed him for interfering in her plans. I told her he was trying to help me get to a place where I could fight on her side in the war and didn’t realize that in so doing he would frustrate another of her plans.”

“You got her to spare his life?” Dmitri demands. Ah, yes. The part where he gets angry at me again.

“I did not want any bloodshed, and certainly not the kind of death she likes to bring about. Regardless of your opinion of him or his actions, he did not deserve that,” I reply softly. “I had to at least do what I could. She sent him away and warned him to never interfere in her plans again. You showed up not long after.”

“I can’t believe that you would argue on his behalf to save his life, after he insulted your honor in such a way--”

“He phrased it as concern for my happiness, actually. As you so kindly pointed out, I would have been perfectly justified if I wanted to get away, after everything. He was offering me a way out. Is a death sentence any way to repay such good intentions?”

Dmitri is appropriately shamed by these words and his temperature slowly returns to normal. “Fair enough, I suppose,” he mutters. “Good to know that you are able to intercede with her, anyway. It’s no wonder you fainted when my father suggested that you might be used as a weapon to counteract your grandmother. You endured more than enough, and did more than enough, before that to have earned some respite.”

“Is there any to be had, after tonight?” I wonder. “I suspect your father will want to intensify my training, and will be greatly displeased by the leave-taking of our combat instructor. Perhaps he’ll hire a new one.”

Dmitri shoots me a dark look and I giggle girlishly. “Why even suggest such things? We would do just fine training together as we did before the Archduke was assassinated. More likely than hiring a new tutor is that he will start to train us himself.”

“Why didn’t he do that in the first place?”

Dmitri shrugs. “That’s a question to which only he knows the answer. Perhaps he didn’t want to be bothered about it, if he suspected you would be difficult or something, or perhaps he wanted to see how we would handle having another person our age in the house.”

“If that is the case, I hope he is satisfied with how things turned out.”

Dmitri chuckles mirthlessly at that. “Not so bad, now, is it?” he asks, looking at me inquisitively.

“That depends on what you mean. The interfering parties are no longer factors, but I hardly think that my grandmother’s involvement was desirable or called for,” I point out dryly.

“True enough. But as things stand between us, now.... You’ve forgiven me?”

“I’m almost there. You’ve forgiven me?”

“Comparatively, I have nothing for which to forgive you. I probably would have done the same thing you did, in your place.”

I can’t help smiling a bit at that. “Can we promise each other that we shall henceforward refrain from playing games in our relationship, and that we shall henceforward always be honest and straightforward with each other?”

“I can promise that. Can you, much as you love games?”

“I give you my word. After all that’s happened, I’ve rather lost my taste for games of that kind.”

“Then you have my word, as well. Now, to seal our oath--” My lips part to offer a suggestion, but at the same moment he interrupts himself by pressing his lips to mine. Sealed with a kiss...and with the many more that follow as we spend the night together on the roof, sharing thoughts and kisses under the stars. In the back of my mind, I know that tomorrow we will have to face Dmitri’s parents and the other problems of the real world, but I squash those thoughts every time they surface. Tonight I just want to enjoy finally reconciling with Dmitri and to savor the time we have together. It’s been too long, and it might be a long time before we get another chance to forget the world and enjoy each other’s company.