“Irrith,” she said. “I thought you might like company.”
He went back to his contemplation of the cup. “I don’t need a nursemaid.”
“Never said you did.” Irrith leaned forward and sniffed. The familiar burn of gin reached her nostrils, but she didn’t smell anything wrong in it. Good; he bought the legal kind. “One question, though, and then I’ll hush up and help you drink yourself under the table. Edward says you go drinking every year on this night, but usually someplace nicer than Covent Garden. Why so grim this time?”
She had observed of him before that he often tried to discipline his expression, and also that he was very bad at it. On this occasion, he didn’t even try. Irrith saw the full play of his shame, despair, and hopeless love. Galen choked down a sip of the bitter gin, then said, “Because this year, I am betrothed.”
Since it was Galen, Irrith tried hard to understand why that should matter. True, it was the Queen’s mourning night. Until dawn, Lune would keep solitary vigil in the night garden, grieving for her first Prince, who lay buried in the Onyx Hall. She did so every year on the anniversary of his death. It was a painful reminder to Galen that her love was not for him—but why should his own step toward marriage drive him to cheap gin in a filthy tavern? It didn’t put Lune’s heart any further out of his reach than it already was.
She tried to understand, and failed. Instead she said, “I think you need distraction. But finish your drink first.”
He lifted the cup, paused, and said, “Please, for the love of all that’s unholy—change your glamour before I go anywhere with you.”
Irrith grinned. She’d forgotten she was disguised as a rough young man. While Galen downed the remainder of his gin, she went outside and found an unoccupied shadowed corner; by the time she came back, this time as a woman, he’d given the tavern’s owner a shilling for the best room in the house. It wasn’t a good room, especially for that price, but it was preferable to the Onyx Hall on this night—or Leicester Fields on any night—and if the mattress was home to a troop of bugs, neither of them was in a mood to care.
Afterward, they lay curled together against the chill of the October night. Irrith ran one hand over Galen’s short hair, soft against her fingers. Without his wig and coat and walking stick, she reflected, he was not Lord Galen, Prince of the Stone, nor the gentleman Mr. St. Clair. Only Galen, a tumultuous human heart wrapped up in a body that seemed scarcely able to contain it.
Those absences made him vulnerable; the darkness made him brave. “I sometimes think,” Galen whispered, “that it would be better if she knew.”
“Which one?”
An injudicious question. He curled tighter, like a snail pulling into its shell. But his shell was draped over the rail at the foot of the bed, or dropped carelessly on the floor. After a moment, he said, “Both, I suppose.”
Irrith didn’t know Delphia Northwood. She did know Lune. Before she could doubt her own impulse, Irrith said, “The Queen does know.”
That sent him flying away from her as if propelled by a bow, almost falling off the narrow bed before fetching up against the rail. He said, helplessly, “Oh God, no.”
The word glanced off the protection of the tithe, but Irrith flinched nonetheless. Then she pushed herself upright, studying him. The light coming through the room’s one narrow window was scant indeed, only what filtered in from the inadequate lanterns on Covent Garden square; it was just enough to trace the wing of his collarbone, the line of his uninjured arm clutching the rail, the right-hand side of his face. Not enough to see his eyes.
No way out but through the truth. Some of it, anyway. Galen didn’t need to hear that the rest of the Onyx Court knew it, too. “She’s known for a while.”
He stayed motionless for three heartbeats, then buried his face in his hands.
“You said it might be better,” Irrith reminded him. “Think about it, Galen—if it bothered her, you would know.”
His reply was muffled by his palms. “Except now I must face her. Knowing that she knows. Damn it all, Irrith—why did you have to tell me?”
Because I thought it would help. Because I still can’t tell how your heart works, what will make you happy, what will send you off in despair.
This time, she’d clearly done the latter. Galen dropped his hands and said, “She never should have chosen me.”
The dark hid her second flinch. Irrith hadn’t forgotten what the Goodemeades told her. Would this man have been Prince, if Lune had another choice?
It didn’t matter. He was Prince, and was striving with everything he had to be a good one. This doubt was his greatest enemy. “Lune isn’t stupid,” Irrith said forcefully. “You love her; don’t you trust her? She wouldn’t have chosen you if she thought you weren’t suitable.” No matter what her courtiers said. Lune had ignored them before, when she had to; she would have done the same here.
Irrith wasn’t sure he’d even listened to her. After a moment, though, Galen spoke. “Do you think I’m a good Prince?”
She was as bad a liar as he was. A simple yes would be obviously trite; a longer assurance would give away her own doubts. And she’d always preferred honesty, anyway. “I think you’ve been dealt the worst hand of cards of any Prince I’ve ever known. Comet, Sanists, your own family interfering with your life… and then there’s Lune. The old Princes all had problems of their own, but you had yours from the start.”
“So you think I’m a failure.”
“No. You didn’t let me finish.” Irrith tucked her feet up, leaning forward to seek out his eyes in the shadows. “The Princes have all been different sorts of men, who bring different kinds of strength to the Onyx Court. They’ve all shared one thing, though: they care too much to give up. Whatever trouble the court faces—and believe me, there’s been a lot—they keep fighting. If the day ever comes that you run away, then I’ll call you a failure. But not before.”
His back had stiffened at the thought of running away, proving her very point. Galen seemed to realise it, too. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, then sat thinking. One hand scratched absently at his ribs, and Irrith thought she felt something crawling up her own leg. They might be ignoring the bugs, but the bugs weren’t ignoring them.
“If she knows,” he said at last, “then I cannot possibly tell Miss Northwood.”
“About the Onyx Court?”
He nodded. “I had considered it, but—no. Mere foolishness.”
“Why? There’s always the risk that a mortal will attack us, or tell everyone we’re here, but we risk it just the same. What are you afraid will happen—that she’ll cry off once she knows what you do with the other half of your life?”
His drifting hand stilled, then lowered to his thigh. “I had thought—” Galen began, but stopped.
Irrith waited patiently. This time, she was fairly certain that anything she might say would frighten him off.
Galen sighed, with less of a melancholy sound than she expected. “I’d considered the possibility of telling her after our marriage. But you are right; if I did it before, she might cry off.”
Which he would consider a good thing. He wasn’t thinking of his family right now, Irrith could tell. Only of Lune, and of the voice in his head that told him it wasn’t right to serve two mistresses at once.
On the other hand, this would give her a chance to observe Miss Delphia Northwood for herself. Irrith had of course spied on the young woman a little, because she was curious, but turned up nothing worthy of remark. Seeing her with Galen would be much more interesting.