“No,” I replied. “And it’s a poor wager to lay, if you ask me.”
“But it’s worth considering, and I hadn’t considered it before. Why indebt themselves to the Serafans and dabble in magic they surely aren’t too keen on unless they’ve their doubts? We’ve proven those doubts right.”
“This is quite nearly too comfortable,” I sighed, leaning into him and toward the glowing coals of the fire. Complacency could settle into my exhausted bones here, the promise of warm food and a comfortable bed almost dangerous.
“It is too comfortable. Which is why I’m not staying. The men are encamped on the lawn for now; they’ll be barracked in the military school eventually. I shouldn’t have a feather bed and a fireplace while they shiver.” He stood and tested his stockings and breeches with his fingers, judging them dry.
I gathered myself to stand. “Then I’ll dress and—”
“You will not. Didn’t Hamish say you needed rest?”
“I can rest as well as you can, as well as the soldiers.”
“Which is to say not well at all.” He sighed.
“I don’t want”—I struggled to admit it, even now—“to be parted, even for one night. I—I’m scared,” I confessed.
“No one will harm you here. The whole place is under guard, the estate firmly occupied—why, you can’t be worried over Polly, she’s more snap than blade—”
“I’m scared of what I did.” I quaked. “I—it’s become so natural, when it felt so wrong before.” I folded my hands as I realized they were shaking. “What else might I do?”
Theodor set his breeches down on the chair by the fire. “What are you afraid of doing?”
“I’ve killed people,” I whispered. “I was ignoring that, I suppose, somehow. The Galatine ship that sank, the men on the field under my cloud of curses. I didn’t stab them or shoot them so I felt somehow removed…”
“This is war, Sophie, and it’s not—”
“I know that! But I’ve become comfortable with it somehow, the thing that turned my stomach to even consider last winter. It’s proved itself practical and I’ve made it my companion!”
I struggled to force words past the rising panic in my throat. “I caused people to die. At the very least, participated in their deaths.”
“As did every soldier on the field. As did I.”
“I know! I know, but I… there’s no other use for a musket and bayonet, is there? It’s not like that for me.” I felt a hollowness yawning in me, a blackness staring me down when I considered, truly, my participation. “They died… so horribly. Truly, Theodor, to burn to death? To drown on a sinking ship? What kind of monster am I? The cartoons this summer were right about me. They were prophecy, not propaganda.”
“They were no such thing!” Theodor’s eyes blazed. “You wouldn’t have chosen the manner of their deaths. But they are our enemies, and they would have us all killed.”
“You needn’t lecture me on the pragmatism. I’m an expert scholar in that.” But I couldn’t quite reconcile it, not with the screams of the horses in the fire, not with the bodies of the dead still awaiting burial outside. Not with the men downstairs, who, without their Royalist uniforms, looked identical to our own soldiers. “I know what has to be done. But I’m terrified of what it’s making me into.”
Theodor pulled a silk quilt from the bed and draped it over my shoulders, which were trembling with tears I couldn’t quite manage to shed. “It was unfair,” he said quietly, “to push you into all of this. No—I’m not saying it was the wrong choice or that you were forced. I know you made this choice and I know, practically speaking, it was possibly a very necessary part of our strategy. But no one—no one!—has ever done this before.” He bundled me in the quilt, my shaking body beside his staid one. “You’re bearing a greater burden than any of us. Your brother, me, Niko—no one knows what this is like. We can’t pretend to try.”
My strength went out of me and I wilted into him. His body, more sinewy with muscle now than before, still soft enough to accommodate my form, now racked with sobs.
39
THEODOR WATCHED ME CAREFULLY AS I UNFOLDED MYSELF FROM around him the next morning and began tugging my stockings over my calves. “I’m fine,” I replied to his unspoken question. “Really.”
“I usually feel better the morning after a good night’s sleep,” Theodor hedged, still not convinced.
I forced a smile. “And I slept like a baby.”
“Have you ever been in a house with a baby?” Theodor laughed. “They’re awake squalling every few hours.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Trust me, I remember all too well—Jeremy was colicky and screamed like he was being flayed.” He paused, a strange smile shadowing his face. “Funny, that the next squalling baby in my house will likely be my own.”
I dropped my shoe. “You’re thinking about that now?” I said.
“I suppose. Being here—it brings back memories, happier times. My family was happy, Sophie. My brothers playing together, Polly ordering us around—I make no mistake, she was in charge—and two loving parents.” He sighed. “Not every noble house was like that—unhappy mothers, philandering fathers, siblings who set to fighting early as though preparing for feuds over land or inheritance later.”
I slowly buckled my shoe, the leather too stiff after repeated dryings in front of fires the past month. “You want a chance at having that again,” I said quietly.
“I hadn’t realized how much I’d lost. Polly and I were best friends for years when we were young. I didn’t like the rough and tumble games the neighboring boys all liked to play, and she didn’t like playing tea party with the Pommerly girls, so we would spend hours avoiding them when they visited, exploring the woods. She indulged my silly passion for plants when no one else did—she had this little sketchbook, and when I found a new flower or root she’d draw it and we’d name it together.
“They already had names, of course. We weren’t discovering anything but cowslip and sow’s ear. It was just… it was our way of pretending we were important.”
“Pretending?” I almost snorted but stopped myself. “You were the children of the heir to the throne.”
“But we never saw it that way, not as children.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. “Now we can’t avoid it. I had managed to forget, for a while, that I’d lost this.” I knew he meant more than his grand family estate. “No more pretending for us now.” He cleared his throat. “But yes, someday, I very fondly hope to have a new family.”
“I’m not having six boys,” I countered with a faint smile.
“I should say not!” He laughed in earnest now. “I—that doesn’t frighten you, does it?”
“Once, it would have.” I repeated what I’d said to myself, to my brother, to Jack, dozens of times. “Children would have meant giving up my shop, and my shop was who I was. My identity, my fondest ambitions. I have something more now. I’ve had it for a while.”