Hen reflexively shook his head once more. So it was a temporary measure? If not, they were going to need more blooded families. He thought of Kajja and her intended and swallowed hard. “No, sir.”
“Is Kaspar ready to inherit his godhood, Hendrik?” he asked again.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Hen licked his suddenly dry lips. “Nothing, sir. I just—I’m curious about how things work, from the inside.”
Brecca sat back in his seat a little. “Well, that’s natural. You could be a priest guard this time next year. Or up here in one of these offices. There’s talk that a few corps might fight for you.”
Hen nodded again.
“If the river isn’t restored, we’ll have no natural barrier between us and the dark forest. Our walls are strong and broad, certainly, but water’s a better barrier against evil than anything men could construct. So the priests say, and so it is.”
“So it is,” Hen said automatically. “What have we tried to restore the river so far?”
“Tried? Against that foul magic? Boy, you’d have us all stark raving disordered, sending us out there. Have you considered being an outlander, by the way? Great prestige but no cushy base in the High City.”
“I’ll go wherever I’m told, sir,” Hendrik said flatly.
“Good boy! That’s what I’ve been telling everyone about you, Hendrik. You’re just the kind of recruit the Academy needs to be searching out.” Brecca paused. “You’re sure you don’t want me to put in a good word, somewhere? You’ve earned the right. What you’ve accomplished with Kaspar—and I don’t mind telling you, a few of the mentors thought you should be sacked, when it came out you were sleeping with him. But I told them, Hendrik knows what he’s doing, and I was right. That boy has been eating out of your hand from almost the first day we put you in his cell.”
A wave of nausea nearly overcame Hen. He swayed in his seat, digging his nails into the armrests to keep from falling over.
“Alright, Hendrik?” Brecca asked.
“Fine, sir. Just didn’t have time for breakfast,” Hen lied.
“Go and have something before you return to your charge. You’ve earned it. And tell him the good news. Though no doubt the masters have beat you to it, this morning.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Good lad, good lad. Proud of you, boy.”
“Sir.” Hendrik practically tripped down the hall, through the entryway, and out the door, ignoring the friendly calls of the guards behind him. When he turned the first corner of the switchback, his breakfast—which he had in fact eaten with Kass at his side—violently made a reappearance.
*
“I can’t go back to him. Not now.” Hendrik scrubbed at his face with both hands. “I can’t.”
“You must. We have to prepare them,” Piret said gently but firmly. She sat on the bench next to him in the courtyard, no doubt keeping alert for prying ears and eyes. Kass was the fifth Child of the Blood who’d inherit this moon. Lyla was the sixth. “They need us.”
“I can’t, Piret. I’m not ready.”
“Hen. Can I be brutally honest right now?”
Hen nodded. Someone had to, after all.
“You’ll never be ready. We all like the way things are now. I like the life I have with Lyla too. But, and this is where it gets brutal: you like it more. Because you let it go too far.”
Hen pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to stop them burning.
“And it’s too late now, but it’s not too late to save Kass’s inheritance and your career. And if I let you fuck this up, I’ll be a terrible, terrible friend. Not to mention a terrible guard who doesn’t deserve her own career to go anywhere.”
“I can’t,” Hen repeated. “He’ll be so happy. He’ll be so excited. And all I want to do…”
“What?” Piret asked after a moment. “What do you want to do? It’s okay, you can say.”
“I don’t want to know what it’s like without him.”
“But you won’t be without—”
“Stop saying that. Everyone needs to stop fucking saying that,” Hen interrupted with a wet sniffle. “I know he’ll be there but he won’t be here. Right here.”
There was another pause as Hen regretted vocalizing that particular sentiment. It sounded so childish, so silly. So obvious.
“Lyla’s my world,” Piret said more gently. “But she was never mine and mine alone, like I was hers. We can never forget that.”
“I know. I know he belongs to everyone.”
“Do you know, though?”
“Intellectually, yes!” Hen insisted. “I know!”
“But you don’t believe it, do you?”
Hen looked up, shocked to hear her say it.
