I bite my lip. Part of me wants to tell him the truth: I am just like you. My recovery is a lie: I still can’t transform, and I’ve ended up giving Siegfried more power over me than I ever imagined. But I don’t. ‘I do understand, Aron.’ He doesn’t look up, so I touch his hand. ‘What time do you want to go?’
‘The eighth hour?’ He grins suddenly, and for once I can see the boy in him, the person he might have become were it not for his dreadful father, and the way his future and his dreams have been ripped away from him. ‘As long as Rookwood’s thunderstorms haven’t shown up.’
Despite Aron’s apology, I’m not especially looking forward to our ride. But my cousin is on his best behaviour. He doesn’t mention Patrus, or Siegfried, and saves most of his sarcasm for the queen, whom he accuses – on the basis of nothing more than his dislike, as far as I can tell – of somehow contributing to his father’s illness. When I say that I feel sorry for her, that she may have had little choice in accepting his father’s proposal, he scoffs and waves my words away. But he retains his good humour and invites me to dine with him and his sister.
Apart from the handful of times I’ve eaten with Letya, it’s the most relaxed supper I’ve had since our arrival at the Citadel. Aron seems to be making an effort to be less caustic and not to spend all his time finding fault with people. With her brother there, Odette doesn’t mention Siegfried, or the wedding, and she’s surprisingly witty. Away from my uncle and the oppressive formality of courtly banquets, both my cousins are more relaxed, more normal, than I’ve ever seen them.
As the days pass, and my uncle makes no appearance – although his physician makes frequent predictions that His Majesty will resume his duties the next day, or at the latest, the day after – we settle into a routine. On the days I eat supper with Letya, I ride with Aron. And on the days I ride with Letya, I have supper with my cousins. The only person I don’t see much of is Lucien. Released from the requirement to escort me to formal court events, he seems – from what Letya tells me – to spend most of his time alone. One afternoon, after a letter for him has been included among my correspondence by mistake, I decide to use it as an excuse and go to hunt him down.
Despite Letya’s gift for picking up gossip, I’m a little surprised to find that he is indeed in his room when I knock. He opens the door and his eyes widen.
‘Your Grace. What’s happened?’
‘Nothing. I have a letter for you, that’s all.’ I hand him the envelope and he stands there, staring at it, as if there might be some invisible message that will become clear if he glares at it for long enough. ‘It was delivered to me by mistake.’
‘Oh. I see.’
Now he’s staring at me, and I notice that his eyes are red-rimmed, as if he’s very tired; or he’s been crying.
‘May I come in?’
Wordlessly he opens the door wider and moves aside.
His room is a mess. Smaller than mine, it serves as both bedroom and sitting room. The bed is made – a servant would have taken care of that – but there are papers scattered across the floor, piles of novels and notebooks, loose scrolls everywhere. I glance around, trying to find somewhere I can sit.
‘Oh – let me move those.’ He grabs a stack of books from a chair, searches for a clear space to set them down, and settles for adding them to another pile. The whole edifice totters precariously.
‘Lucien, please tell me all this work isn’t because you’re my clerk. Surely you should have an assistant, or –’
‘No. It’s not to do with Atratys. I mean, some of it is, but –’ he gestures to a painting of a handsome, square-built house propped up on the fireplace – ‘a lot of it is to do with Hatchlands. My mother’s health isn’t good, and my younger brother is busy with his studies. Someone has to take care of the business of the estate.’
Guilt makes me squirm. Why did Lord Lancelin order Lucien to come to court with me in such circumstances? ‘Your father … he can’t be aware of how much is falling on you.’
Lucien’s face hardens. ‘My father is concerned only with Merl, and the administration of the dominion. It is his priority. It always has been.’ There’s a bitterness in his voice; the same bitterness I noticed when I overheard Lord Lancelin and him arguing in the library, all those weeks ago.
‘It’s my fault.’ I look down at my hands, at the Protector’s ring glinting accusingly on my index finger; the heavy gold band flares at the top into a square, deeply incised with the coat of arms of the House of Cygnus Atratys. ‘When my father died, I didn’t want to take over. I didn’t want to have to spend my time judging disputes and negotiating treaties. I’m sorry, Lucien. When we get back I’ll try harder, I’ll –’
‘It isn’t you, my lady. From what I’ve learned, my father’s allegiance was fixed long before you were born. Before either of us was born. When he and your father were both young men …’ He shrugs and nudges a scroll with the toe of his boot. ‘I suppose he shouldn’t have married, but he did. He loves my mother, but never as well as he loved your father.’
All those years when I was growing up, and Lord Lancelin was living at Merl instead of at his own home … I had no idea. Did my father know how Lancelin felt? Did he care? ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again, because I can’t think of anything else to say. Until I hear Lucien’s stomach rumble. ‘Come to supper this evening with me and Aron and Odette. We’ve been eating together in Aron’s apartment.’
‘No. Aron doesn’t like me. It wouldn’t be comfortable. And besides, I haven’t been invited.’
‘I’m inviting you.’
‘But the meal isn’t being served in your rooms.’ His jaw is clenched; I can tell he’s going to be stubborn.
‘Very well. Then I’m going to get you an invitation.’
He shakes his head. ‘Your Grace …’
I point a finger at him. ‘I absolutely forbid you to disappear.’
I send Letya to check the stables first (the grooms don’t take kindly to nobles turning up unannounced and spooking the horses). She returns with the information that Aron came in from a ride about an hour ago – he should be somewhere in the palace. I wander from room to room and through the gardens, and eventually find him in the sanctuary. I’m a little surprised; today isn’t an Ember Day, and Aron has never struck me as particularly religious. He’s standing in the large empty space that is the core of the sanctuary, staring up at the image on the ceiling: the Creator, in the form of the Firebird, flying out of the centre of a star.
‘Beautiful, is it not?’ He gestures up at the glittering mosaic that makes up the picture. ‘“And thus was the world in fire born, and thus will it end in flame.”’
I recognise his words as a quotation from one of the Litanies, though I can’t remember which one. ‘It is beautiful. Though I’m not sure I want to end in flame.’ The shadow of the nameless man burned to death by Patrus shifts restlessly in the back of my mind, mingling with the fire and smoke of my father’s Last Flight. ‘I have a favour to ask, cousin.’