“You have a strange power over me, Lia. No one else has ever impressed me so deeply. In your presence, I have been my worst self as well as my best self. I have retched all over you. I have shouted at you, scolded you. I have wanted to clamp my hand over your mouth more than once. But I dare not touch you, because when it happens, it makes me feel things so intensely. It makes me forget who I am and what I want to be. When I was a learner at Billerbeck, there was a girl who tried to win me, despite my efforts to shun her. I am sure she was a worthy prize – from a good family. She knew languages and had the patience for engraving. But I did not care for her. My heart was secretly longing after Demont’s missing niece, even though I did not know who she was.” He chuckled darkly. “But now that I do know her, I cannot love her. She is too simple. Too biddable.”
Colvin looked her in the eye, his mood shifting again. His voice was grave. “When I care for someone, it runs deep. It becomes a firm part of me, like a stone. When I awoke in Muirwood in your kitchen, when I saw you peering at me with worry and concern, it brought out feelings that I had never experienced before. They were so powerful and so overwhelming to me that I thought it must be a kystrel…that you were some het…some girl who had found one and was using it to control my emotions. When the Medium obeyed you and you lit the fire, I believed violently that I was right. How could a wretched be so strong in the Medium? Especially as young as you. But the thread around your neck only concealed a ring, not a kystrel. I wanted to be away from you as quickly as possible, because the feelings were so impossibly strong. The way you savored life…even mocked its unfairness by taking such pleasure in simple things.” He laughed at himself. “I cannot hold an apple without thinking of you. In my mind, I see you smelling it before taking that first bite.” He leaned closer, his hand resting near the orb…near her fingers. “I do that myself now. Every time. The flavor of apples reminds me of you. The smell of purple mint. So many little things in my life remind me of the time we have shared together. The memories are cutting me apart like knives.”
He sighed in frustration, squinting at the light coming off the orb. “I am still not being plain enough. Your very presence here tonight is a torture and a comfort to me. Part of me wants to tell you that we cannot leave each other again. Never. That I cannot live without you being near me. But at the same time, I know we cannot. That if we are near each other, it will cause irreparable harm to us both. All my life, I have had duty prescribe to me the appropriate action to take in any circumstance. But right now, my feelings compel me to tell you that I love…” he swallowed, his voice thickening, his eyes seeking hers again, “that I love you. That I have concealed it from myself since you sheltered me in the kitchen and cured me. I did not recognize what the feeling was then. I thought I had mastered it by staying away. I let myself believe that when I returned to Muirwood, I would be able to control my thoughts and feelings as I should. That I would grow to only love you as as sister. I have failed miserably. I should not even be telling you this – not now when we are alone in the mountains. But we are not alone. It must be the Medium that pushes me to tell you, to trust you with my feelings.” He stared into her eyes deeply, full and unguarded at last. “To trust you with a most dangerous secret. To trust you with my heart – my whole heart. Not holding anything back. We cannot be together, Lia. But I had to tell you how I truly feel. And trust that you will not use it to harm us.”
He had said it. Lia was so relieved to hear the words…to understand she had not been imagining his feelings all this time. She trembled, knowing she would savor his confession for the rest of her days. It brought a strange feeling of calm over her. A feeling of safety and warmth.
She looked back at him with an impish smile. “What were you afraid of, Colvin? That I would throw myself at you? Twist a promise of marriage out of you if you told me that?”
He looked at her, bemused.
“Thank you for telling me your true feelings,” she continued. “They are sacred to me. I will treat them so. Yet I am troubled by something. You say that we can never be together…”
“We always have a choice in our actions, Lia,” he answered blackly. “But we cannot choose the consequences those choices will produce. I can forsake my heritage. I can forswear my oaths. But I would be miserable if I did. The part of me that longs to live out my days with a brood of children, away from wars and violence clashes with the fact that every maston is being killed and it would only be a matter of time before we were discovered. In giving you the key to my heart, I am asking you to set me free. To not bind me in any way that prevents me from fulfilling my oaths or my duty. You will always know, to your last moments, that it was you that I loved. No one else.”
It was gratifying to hear the words, but Lia was nothing if not stubborn. “But why, Colvin? Why must the future be as you say? I do not want you to forsake your duty. Not for me. Why insist that it must end like that?”
He sighed heavily and gazed down at the floor.
“Look at me,” she said. He obeyed. She met his gaze. “You are right about something. I am not a hetaera.”