SFC Book III – Chapter Twenty – At Thirteen
The cold outside felt like getting punched in the face. Gray thought there might be some way to channel mana into his meridians to handle it, but he didn’t know how to do it. Maybe he could get some of the wrath fire that Settie had talked about. She’d talked about the various abilities tied to resonances but she hadn’t said how you get them. And of course he couldn’t ask. From the little he knew about it, he figured it was a mixture of will and fate. At least that was how it had worked so far.
From the looks of it, Pinch was heading back to the market and then back home to Ruin Manor. No, Settie had called it Sunreach. He was thinking about calling it that again. Would that make it easier or harder on the captain.
Pinch was almost to the bridge over the river when she whirled. “Why are you following me? If I had wanted conversation, I would’ve stayed there.”
“We were worried about you,” Gray said.
“Because you’re all fucking idiots. I’m fine.” She kept on marching.
Gray thought about giving him some extra speed, but his core was so full, he would probably channel too much magic and end up on his face. He ran up to her without mana and caught her arm. They were next to the lamps on the bridge, which gave off a surprising amount of heat. The water trickled below them, barely moving through the ice.
Pinch turned away, but not before he saw the tears on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She paused. “Other than the fact that you’re an idiot.”
Gray laughed. “You love to call us that. Maybe it’s because you feel stupid for joining us.”
“No!” She pushed him. “Joining you was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. It’s just, you make it hard in ways I never thought possible.”
“How so?” he asked.
The fae girl stepped back from him, arms crossed. She was shivering a little. “You had your two wives, which was fine. It wasn’t, but it was. It broke the spell enough for me to make it easier.”
“What spell?”
Pinch closed her eyes. She looked like she was in pain. “The spell I cast on myself a long time ago, before…before things happened with Mother and Father. I had dreams of love and marriage, being bonded with someone forever. Most of the time it was a boy, but I’ve known fae girls happily bound to other women. Friendship and love, sex, lust, someone to enjoy the adventure of life with. I could almost taste how good it would feel. I spent so much time alone growing up. So much time alone. Outside of things.”
She charged forward and shoved him. “And you! You’re terrible for making your princess for feeling bad about herself. Ames is right! You don’t know her life. Money solves some problems, yes, but there are still problems.”
“Leave Lilian out of this,” he growled. He could feel himself losing control of his patience.
“But she’s the problem, don’t you see?” Pinch stepped back from him again.
“I don’t see,” he said.
Pinch sighed in frustration. She had her hood on, but her nose was still red from the cold. “You had this love with Lilian but you were in the Null Breaks, so there was no danger of being bonded. Fine. Good for you. Then you found love again with Rynn. You formed a true bond. I saw that, right away, and I hated you both for it. Good for you, lucky fucker, whatever. Then with Ames? One bonded wasn’t good enough for you. So you’ve had three great loves in your life, and I…I haven’t. I’ll never.”
“Why not?” It was the wrong question.
Pinch’s hands were balled into fists. “For once. In your fucking life. Don’t be an idiot!”
Gray’s first instinct was to grab her and shake her. Instead, he did the exact opposite. He leaned back against the railing, next to the warmth of the mana lamp. It probably kept the some of the ice and snow off the bridge. “Let’s pretend I’m an idiot. Let’s also pretend that I really want to know why you’re sad.”
“I’m not fucking sad,” she said, tears leaking down her face.
“I said we’re pretending,” he said gently. “I had a mentor, a father, really, named Blind John. He—”
“I know about Blind John. And Aunt Florence. At this point, I feel like they helped to fucking raise me. What did he say?”
“That life was filled with all kinds of work. Some of it was pleasant. Some wasn’t. Some of it important and some not. Cleaning latrines. Letting ourselves be known which means talking about our fucking feelings. Cooking a meal. Just the work of life.”
“I don’t need to be known,” she shot back. “I’d rather clean latrines.”
“I believe that. But you also wanted friendship. This is how you make friends.”
She grimaced. “It’s awkward.”
He laughed and nodded. “It is. But let’s not get side-tracked. Why do you think you’ll never fall in love?”
She swallowed hard. “I can’t. I…” Her voice died.
But she didn’t close her eyes. She was staring right at him as if she was praying for him to guess.
Oddly enough, he did. “It was your core oath. You swore that you would never let yourself fall in love. That you would live all the days of your life alone.”
“Not alone,” she said in a whisper. “Just not in love. I’ve never…I’ve never told anyone. I couldn’t. We don’t talk about core oaths. It’s not just impolite…it’s…it’s not done. It threatens the oath itself. There have been times when cores were shattered by just the mention of the oath.”
“And then the fae become husks.” Gray wanted to take her, hold her, and try to ease her pain. He was pretty sure he’d get punched in the face if he tried.
Pinch nodded. “Like the queen. It’s why she hides behind her curtain. She broke her oath and is a husk. Of course, You can’t tell anyone. I shouldn’t have told you, but it’s true. Everyone knows but we pretend we don’t. It’s like Settie and her mask. Eveyone knows it’s her. It’s just…it’s just theater.”
They stood there quietly for a long time. It was a lot to take in. And the worst thing about it, there was no going back. There was no undoing the oath as far as he knew.
“Can I ask questions? Or will you throw mana at me?”
“You can ask questions,” Pinch whispered.
“How old were you when you made the oath?”
“Thirteen.” She moved to stand with him next to the lamp, to enjoy some of the warmth. “It was a bit young. Most wait until later for obvious reasons. But that summer, it was when…when my mother became a husk. We never really talked about it, no, never. Because both Mother and Father lived in lies. The truth was also so difficult with them. It was why father cheated on my mother. From what I can tell, his core oath was about living life to the fullest. When he married my mother, he thought that they would have this grand adventure together. He was a fool. Mother’s core oath had to do with the marriage. Sometimes people do that. They combine their core oath with their bond. It rarely ends well. Over a few months, after my mother found out about the women—my father could do all he wanted without fear of being bond. I don’t think he knew that when he married but he soon learned. It destroyed our family. It destroyed my mother. I swore I would never make the same mistake my mother made. So I made my core oath, and it has helped me. I am very powerful because of it. And then…”
They listened to the quiet of the cold night, the trickle of water under them, the ice popping every once in a while at the slightest change of temperature.
Gray finally had to finish her thought. “And then you met me.”
She nodded. “And then I met you, and I saw how your squad was so loving with each other, even with the fighting. I thought it was my chance to break from my old life as the somewhat disgraced duchess, the daughter of the Dukeling Egalis Thornpinch and his new wife, Sweetrose. That’s her fucking name. Sweetrose Thornpinch. It’s as bad a bnam as the Winners. Mrs. Sweetrose doesn’t care that father has fucked everything from the Thistle Mire to Ossareth. She might have a core, but she doesn’t have a soul. Or a heart. Right away, her goal was to cut me out of their life. Well, that wasn’t hard. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Maybe blind John might have said that.”
“Something similar,” Gray said. “But Pinch.”
“For the love of the murdered gods, please, call me Pamalee.” She then walked away from him, to the middle of the bridge.
We walked after her, his boots loud on the bridge. “Pamalee, it might be too hard to be with us. I don’t want you calling us idiots all the time just because you…”
“Because when I was thirteen, I was an idiot, and now I’ll pay for that for the rest of my life.”
She kept her back to him.
He finally threw caution to the wind and gently grabbed her shoulders to turn her around.
She gazed up at him, her eyes so big, so wet with her tears, and so vulnerable. She’d risked her core to tell him about her life. It had turned out okay, but it might not have in the end.
“I’ve never told anyone all that, Gray. Don’t tease me about it. Don’t talk about it with…with anyone. I know Rynn and Ames might know, just because of your bond, but no one else can know. Promise me.”
“I promise,” he said.
She took his hand and finally smiled. It was fragile, but it was there. “Midj sometimes grabs my hand. I want to flig it away and slaper h, but I don’t. I just let her hold my hand because it makes her happy and she misses her family. If we all wanted to envy someone, we should envy her. She had what none of us had.”
“Rynn had a family,” Gray said. “And servants.”
Pinch sniffed. “I had servants. I’d rather have love.”
“And you can.” Gray squeezed her hand.
The anger returned, and her eyes narrowed. “I can’t. I just told you…”
“Yes, romantic love, being bonded, all of that doesn’t seem like it’s in your future. But you can have friends. You have that kind of love in your life. Tomi is deeply in love with napping. Midj loves food but she also loves her family, and there is no lust in either of their lives. They are as happy as they choose to be. That is my advice to you. Stop calling us idiots and look for connection. I’m glad you let Midj hold your hand.”
“It’s rather comforting,” the fae girl said shyly. She then got a furious look on her face. “You and your fucking Blind John were right, and I hate that. I hate that so much. I feel better. I feel close to you. Ugh, feelings. I’d rather cut them out of my heart and never feel anything ever again.”
“From what I understand, that is an option.”
His words sobered her. “That’s what it’s like for husks. Mother was that way. The spark of life was gone from her. No joy. No sorrow. Nothing in between. Just a darkness…a blankness.” Pinch laughed. “I do love to gamble, and I love to fight, and other things. I have my fun in my own my way it comes to love and lust.”
“Do I want to ask?” Gray asked.
Pinch met his gaze with twinkling eyes. “I bet you do, Mr. Lust Resonance. That would be my guess at any rate. I hear you three go and on with each other. Let’s just say I have an active imagination. It’s been enough. It might be enough going forward. And I’ve had some experiences, here and there, where I was careful, and I got to watch…and play.”
He went to say something, but she put her fingers on his lips. “No, Gray. I don’t know what you were going to say, but it doesn’t matter. I’m done talking. I have done my work. You are going to go back to your crazy bitches in that room—and don’t argue. Every woman in there is insane, except maybe for Rynn. But she might be so sane as to be crazy. I am going to walk back to our house, and I’m going to sleep, and be happy you aren’t being executed for poaching.”
“Thanks to you.”
Pinch nodded and wiped her tears away, laughing a little. “Yes. Thanks to me. It was the least I could do back then.”
She then walked away into the night.
Gray watched her go. He stayed on the bridge for a long time, thinking about her and her core oath. It was a hard thing.
Leaning on the railing, he gazed down into the icy river.
The only appropriate response was gratitude. He had known love in his life, a love most dreamed of. If nothing else good ever happened to him, just that would make him enviable beyond words.
That night he knew he would hold Rynn and Ames close.
Because others had no one to hold at all.