Glittering Shadows (41 page)

“What’s wrong, Chancellor?” she asked, trying to sound pleasant—but with an edge.

“Marlis Horn, those weapons are still property of the Urobrun Army.”

“And I have always had an excellent relationship with the Urobrun Army. Besides, if not for Sebastian’s sacrifice, Irminau would hold those weapons.”

He tugged his beard. She could see he was trying to think of a good response, but craftiness wasn’t Brunner’s forte. In some ways, she felt sorry for him, because he was just the tip
of the UWP at large, elected for being a hardworking fellow that everyone could agree on. “I see what you’re trying to do here,” he said.

“I suppose you do.”

“It will buy you a few more weeks of attention.”

As if he thought she was just a spoiled rich girl who wanted attention. “Not much, is it? So, I suppose you don’t mind, then.” She smiled, and let out her breath.

T
hea thought, at first, that the wailing and chanting voices were in her dreams. But she woke to see Freddy’s kitten—
my kitten, now,
I suppose
—with her tail puffed with alarm at something before she ran under the bed again.

She parted the curtains. Outside, a crowd had gathered—girls with their hats bent together in mutual support, rustic men with tear-streaked faces. The front of the house was piled with
flowers.

Her stomach twisted oddly. Were they crying for
Sebastian
?

An old Irminauer woman with a shawl over her head was clutching a photograph of young Prince Rupert to her chest, a burning candle in her other hand. Yes, they were holding vigil for Prince
Rupert.
But haven’t they already thought he was dead for three years?

Thea dressed quickly and ran downstairs.

“You underestimate the power of royalty,” Marlis said. “I suppose when the same family rules the country for centuries and centuries, people get funny about it.”

Thea could hardly eat breakfast. It still didn’t feel like Sebastian was really dead, and now all these strangers had appeared to cry over this person he used to be years ago. Marlis went
out to shake their hands and try to comfort them. Thea couldn’t handle the thought that they were crying for her Sebastian. All those people.
All those people
.

How did I ever get swept up in such a thing?

But she wasn’t. He was gone. At least he and Freddy had died together.

She left early for work, battling her way past the crowd, so she could spend some time with her mother.

“Why don’t you just come home?” her mother said.

“I can’t. I need work, and Marlis will keep me employed,” Thea said, but she realized the revolution had gotten under her bones. She hated the thought of not hearing the latest
news as it reached headquarters. “Anyway, I can’t just walk away from what all my friends fought for. And Nan will come back.”

She didn’t tell Mother she had cared for Sebastian—maybe later—but Mother was very sad to hear about Freddy. Thea felt better just having a shoulder to cry on.

At work, Sebastian’s death was all anyone could talk about. Miss Helm tried to send her home early because she looked so pale.

“Please, I don’t want to go home,” Thea said. “There are all these people outside acting like Sebastian was a saint and it’s—it’s going to be like
sleeping inside a funeral. They didn’t even know him.”

“Why don’t you just work with Hedda, then? Keep busy, but you don’t have to talk to anyone unless you want to.”

When she returned in the wee hours, the crowd had thinned but a few loyal people lingered, hands clasped in prayer in the bitter cold. Some Irminauers were very serious about their mourning
vigils.

She woke to a pounding on her door. “Thea!” Sebastian shouted.

For a moment she thought,
This time, it really is a dream
. But the world felt much too real as she rubbed her eyes. She flung open the door. He grabbed her to him before she could even
get a good look at him. His clothes were still cold from the outside.

“Oh god,” she gasped. “It’s really you.”

“It’s me.”

He just looked at her for a long moment, and she looked at him. His face was pale and drawn. She touched his cold cheek, lightly. Her Sebastian.

But he wasn’t just her Sebastian anymore.

“I can’t stay,” he said. “Everyone wants to talk to me.” His eyes were frantic, a little angry, but mostly sad.

“Is Freddy alive, too?”

“He is, though he’s caught a cold. He’ll be fine. I just hope I will.” He scowled at the window.

“Everyone said you couldn’t possibly have lived.”

“Well, they don’t have very good imaginations! Or much patience. You didn’t think to wait a day? A week, even? Give a man a chance to climb out of the damned frozen river and
warm up? I told you not to let Marlis do anything crazy!”

The crowd outside was no longer crying, but shouting his name or “Your Majesty!”

“Truly, it didn’t matter if you had lived or not,” Thea said. “When the men came back with the weapons but you weren’t with them, Marlis had to do something to keep
Brunner from taking them. When she told everyone you were Prince Rupert, the mood shifted immediately and it would have made him look bad to demand them from her right then.”

“Yes, well…” He looked over his shoulder, as if the past were a person hovering behind him. “I see her reasoning, but…” His hands had dropped to her arms, sitting
heavily a moment before grasping. She had seen the way people had simply appeared at the first mention of his name, with pictures they must have kept all this years, and faces of sorrow for someone
they had never known.

She had already understood why he didn’t want to be Prince Rupert, but she hadn’t grasped just how scary it could be to have people love you. Not when they wanted something. Not when
they loved the idea of you, and not the reality.

A
warm bed had never felt so good. Freddy was dull-headed with fever. His throat was scratchy, and piles of blankets couldn’t stop him from
shivering. Climbing the stairs to his room had been an effort, but now he was safe in familiar surroundings and someone had handed him a letter from his parents.

They were alive and so was he. He didn’t want to think about where to go from there, how to close the immense gap of unfamiliarity between them, but it was enough for now to know he had a
chance.

Still, the sickness only added to the feeling that he was weak. Of
course
he caught a fever while Sebastian came back unscathed.

When Thea walked in his room with a tray, he barely opened his burning-hot eyes to see her before closing them again.

“Freddy? I brought you something.”

“I don’t want anything now,” he said, figuring it was tea or soup, but then he heard a tiny peep of protest and opened his eyes again. Thea put a kitten on the bed and took a
step back, looking nervous.

“If you don’t want her, I’ll keep her. But I was thinking about how you had brought your old cat back from the dead—”

“Amsel,” he said. The kitten was stumbling over the covers now, wiry tail in the air. He couldn’t even remember when Amsel had been this little. The kitten let out another
small cry, and he slid his finger under the covers. It immediately developed an interest in the mysterious motion, getting very still, eyes riveted.

“Does she have a name?” he asked.

“Of course not, I got her for you. Do you like her?”

The kitten certainly wasn’t Amsel, who had been big, black, and lazy. “I like her,” he said. “Thank you.” He coughed, and the kitten dropped off the bed in blind
terror at the sound.

Thea laughed and scooped her up. “She’s shy, but she falls asleep on my lap now. She’s already been in your room a lot because I wanted her to be comfortable here. I brought
you some tea, too.”

“Thanks.” He sat up a little more. He wanted to say something to her, he just wasn’t sure what. “Thea…”

She was lingering, too, her pose pensive, ankles and arms half-crossed. “Freddy, I’m so glad you’re safe. I need to talk to you.”

“Sebastian told me about you two.”

She looked at the floor. Then at him again, with a slight frown. “I should have been honest with you. But I didn’t know how. I still don’t. Marlis said I don’t even know
you, but I don’t think that’s true. I think I’ve seen your essential character, and based on that, I’d trust you with my life. We shared things that no one else will know or
could understand.”

“Yes.”

“But I shouldn’t have kissed you. I feel like I misled you. I mean, I wanted to kiss you.” She scratched her head. “Hell, I don’t know how to say it. I kissed you
because I wanted to feel like something good came out of all those terrible things.”

“We’re both new to this,” he said. “Life’s too short to feel bad about this. I almost died. And so did Sebastian. So, really. We’re fine.” Everything he
said was true, but she was also so sweet to have brought him a kitten and so beautiful that he felt like he’d swallowed shards of glass.

She stepped closer and put a hand on his head. “I don’t have a lot of people in my life either. I think that’s why this is so hard. I’m really scared to lose you,
Freddy.”

“You won’t.” He gave her a slightly pained smile. “I mean, now you’re the mother of my kitten.”

She laughed. “I hope so. We’ve gotten close, kitty and I.”

He dropped his head back onto the pillow, trying to cover his hurt with exhaustion, and she left quietly. He tried to sleep, as best he could with a kitten who decided it was now time to jump
all over him, climb the curtains, and swat all the objects off the desk, just like Amsel used to do.

Marlis came to check on him some hours later. She didn’t bring kittens and tea, but she did look worried. “How are you feeling, Freddy?”

“I’ll live. You don’t have to check on me.”

“Well, someone should, in the absence of proper servants. Has anyone taken your temperature?”

“Right,” he said. “I forgot you’re Miss Hospital Volunteer.”

“I thought you were dead,” she said. “I thought—” She stopped.

He sat up again and tried to rake his hair into a semblance of respectability. Marlis was not someone he wanted to see when he was sick in bed.

“I never told you I was sorry,” she said. “For forcing you to revive my father, and treating you the way I did.”

He shook his head. “You were grieving—”

“No. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry that—when we were growing up together—I knew my father was killing you and I didn’t tell you. You were one of the
only kids who would play with me, and I didn’t treat you like an equal—I treated you like a servant. I shouldn’t have even treated the servants like servants, but especially not
you. Please forgive me.”

“It’s fine.” He felt uncomfortable at this declaration. “I appreciate the apology, but we were also kids, so don’t beat yourself up.”

“I’m not a kid, I was never a kid, I’m hundreds of years old!” she cried, and then her face crumpled slightly.

“You didn’t remember being hundreds of years old. You had a tantrum when I grabbed your trains, you pretended the sofa was a horse, and you slid down banisters. You
were
a
kid.”

“I had a tantrum because you
broke
my train.”