"After that, I could not contemplate another contract. There were heirs in other branches of the family, though if I had anticipated the pressures which would be brought to bear on some of my younger cousins, I might have arranged matters differently."
His voice trailed away and he sat watching his hands. She could feel his anguish and lashed herself for making him relive such a horrible discovery. She did not know whether to hate Amaret or pity her.
"Illukar," she said, barely managing to get the whole word out. He looked up quickly, the movement wholly disjointed. He had laid himself bare, scoured his reserve because he loved her and she had asked. It was impossible not to reach out in return. "I will never find this easy," she said, and her throat was full of tears. "But I want to try. I want to stay, to–"
She kissed him so he would know how much she meant it. Passionately, frantically, as if she could wipe out the memory of Amaret with her touch.
The room was lost in shadows, the candles reduced to guttering flames which danced countless reflections through a spider web drift of hair. Medair let strands slip through her fingers, and shifted so she could better see Illukar’s back, and the blue line which ran down his spine. She had discovered how very sensitive he was there, and traced the line now, down to the small of his back, watching his reaction. He turned to catch her hands.
"We will not sleep at all, if you follow that path," he murmured. She answered this by kissing him until his heart was beating faster, but she knew that tomorrow would be inordinately wearying, so she eventually subsided. It should feel wrong to be so happy, but she did not.
"I am content to keep Avahn as my heir," he said abruptly, and she guessed that, like her, his head was too full of thoughts of the future to let him sleep. After hearing the truth of Amaret’s miscarriages, the question of children had become impossibly daunting. The association alone would be soul-destroying, and she desperately wanted to protect him from hurt.
"I would like settle into this role before thinking about taking on another," she said, touching his arm. His skin was velvet-soft.
"It is not an issue." He could not quite manage a reassuring tone. Moving back, Medair looked into his eyes, at the ghost destroying the contentment of a moment before. This was a part of his past which would not rest quietly while she put off thoughts of tomorrow. They couldn’t hope to just push it to the back of their minds.
"It is an issue," she told him, her voice shaking. "I’m probably the worst woman in the world for you to love. Because I can’t pretend bearing an Ibisian child will not be complicated for me." She shook her head. "But your child, Illukar. I do want that. I am not ready for it, but I want it. Fiercely. I want to spend all my life with you and I want to have children by you." She swallowed any hint of tears, refusing to be so selfish as to cry on him again. "I never find my path a clear one, but I know that I don’t want this decision to be made for us by Amaret."
"Then it will not be." His voice was breathy, and he touched her face delicately. A stark acknowledgment that children would never be a non-issue with him, and he was overwhelmingly glad that she did not reject the idea. "When this hunt is over, we will talk of what comes next," he went on. "Children are something we need not embark upon for many years, but I would like to marry you soon, Medair."
"When this is over," she agreed, almost without quaver. Naked in his arms, marriage seemed only a small step further, and she was light-headed in the aftermath of finally giving up chasing her own tail about what was the right path.
"I am still sending you to Athere tomorrow," he added.
"I have a feeling there might be almost as many people in Athere inclined to kill me as there are in Gyrfalcon Castle. Falcon Black." She touched his face, revelling in her freedom to do so, and the pleasure such a tiny act gave them both. "The purists on top of everything else. At least I think I know, now, why Keris las Theomain tried to kill me."
"Because of this." His eyes were grave.
"Because of you. When you sent her to make sure I didn’t leave Athere."
He closed his eyes. "I was not unaware that Jedda had ambitions centred on me. If she hid purist sentiment along with that, then it may well be that her ambitions were mixed with the whispers that the Cor-Ibis line should rule because the Saral-Ibis line has been corrupted with Farak-lar heat. Foolishness."
"I see we will make possibly the most unpopular marriage of the century," she said lightly, and then had to grip his hand hard, because all her doubts hadn’t gone away just because she was trying not to listen to them.
"Medair–" he began, but she shook her head. It wasn’t the moment to air her fears.
"I wonder if and how the purist cause has been changed by the Conflagration," she said. "With the cold blood less…liable to dilution, they might not care so much."
"Difficult to say. Those within the shield wall of Athere have not been changed." He paused. "I do not…I do not know what, in this remade world, became of Amaret. With the reason for her self-destruction altered, did our marriage run a different course? I am not equal to asking Ileaha that."
The wound left by Amaret cut to his core. And Medair doubted she could find any response which did not sound wrong, so she simply pressed closer to him, thankful that she had spoken to Ileaha long enough to be confident that Illukar would not find himself still married. Any remnant of contentment lost, they held each other as if locked arms could keep back all threat of hurt.
Gradually the rigidity of Illukar’s muscles eased, until Medair felt he was ready to move through painful territory. "I don’t know if I will ever truly grow used to the world being remade," she said. "Let alone the possibility of further changes. I suppose it’s unlikely Ileaha’s will be the only transformation."
"No." Control regained, Illukar shifted back, and held up a hand, frowning at it. "I have been casting spells which I do not have set, without any preparation, without any incantation at all. A change more subtle than Ileaha’s, but quite as profound."
World-shaking. Casting time was an adept’s greatest weakness. Without the need to prepare in advance, an adept’s effectiveness would be ten-fold. They looked at each other and didn’t need to name the implications. Nor was Medair slow to wonder if she, too, had been changed and simply didn’t know it.
"I don’t yet control it consciously," Illukar went on. "Merely find myself casting some of the simplest spells as if I have never needed to prepare them. Something for me to experiment with, when time permits."
"When we get home," Medair whispered, preferring to focus on another aspect of their shared future. She had meant to move them to a less difficult topic, and she was surprised to see Illukar’s eyes darken.
"I don’t even know if Finrathlar exists," he said. "Or what form it takes in this new Farakkan." He gathered her closer. "You had to do that, didn’t you? Go home, to find out if it was still there and what it looked like?"
"Yes." She struggled against the inevitable plunge of spirit that memory conjured, but succeeded only in worrying herself further. They were not even close to home territory, problems with purists, or the frightening prospect of Medair an Rynstar going so far as to marry an Ibisian. She remembered her strange feeling of certainty regarding Vorclase, and it obligingly revisited her. Vorclase was still in Falcon Black and they would see him yet.