He turned his hand over, equivocally, then looked back at Medair. She tried to summon some sort of meaningful response, but first had to take a deep breath and let it out. It seemed important not to let her voice wobble.
"You…he is trapped in you? Can he be…freed?"
"I am as much trapped in him as he is in me," Illukar replied, flicking a glance back at his hands. "At times, I can hear his thoughts. Sometimes there is nothing to distinguish between what is Ieskar and what is Illukar." His eyes shifted to blue and it was Ieskar who met her gaze directly and, not trying to soften the blow, said: "There is no going back."
How do you reconcile two things which shouldn’t exist together? She truly did hate Ieskar. Impossible for her not to. He had invaded Palladium, he had been the aggressor, the one in the wrong and it was no lie or prevarication when she had said she despised him for it. That was true.
The problem, the reason she had run, had been because he was not hateful enough. His war had, by his terms, been necessary, and he had prosecuted it according to the rules of his people. An enemy should be wrong, should be detestable and greedy and loathsome, but Ieskar, though alien, had waged his war honourably, had minimized deaths, had acted out of what even she had to admit was a belief that it was necessary for the Ibis-lar. And he had held his brother’s child in his arms and shown that he could weep.
She had been attracted all along, in a way. But watching him comfort Adestan had made Medair all too aware of her desire: to touch the untouchable, to comfort him in turn. She had glimpsed something in herself, and she had hated her response to him so much that her reaction had been to seek out the Horn of Farak in the hopes of destroying his entire race.
Five hundred years could not help but alter things, but it did not change the fact of Ieskar’s invasion. He had made that choice. The war was over, and he had shown them how to stop the Blight, and saved Illukar, but that did not make him any less Ieskar. The White Snake she hated most. The one she could never forgive.
They were just sitting there now, silent. Illukar, only a few feet away, was as distant as the sun, because he was Ieskar. She couldn’t remove one from the other, any more than she could separate true Palladians from Ibisian invaders. Hating Ieskar would mean turning her back on Illukar, because would not be possible for her to ignore the fact that he was simply Ieskar cleaned up, because he now was Ieskar. Every word, every touch she shared with Illukar, she would be sharing with Ieskar, and she hated him, so she could not stay with Illukar. It was impossible to have one without the other.
She had run from her feelings for Ieskar, she had run from the disaster of her belated return, and the schemes of the Decians to include her in war. Could she run from Illukar?
But how to do anything else?
Could she do what Islantar was trying to do with those who tore at Palladium from within? What Ileaha had said she would do with Avahn? Could she forgive Ieskar for being on the wrong side? Can anyone just choose to forgive?
For all she had said to Tarsus, Medair did not see how she could simply stop hating. She had not known if Ileaha would succeed in trying to forgive Avahn for something as innocent as not seeing what was under his nose. She was not certain it was in any way possible for her to make that angry hating part of herself simply close the book on the invasion. The part of herself that said Ieskar should pay for his crimes, no matter the cost.
"Medair." His eyes were grey, watching her face, but she could not read what they held. "I do not hold you to the understanding we had," Illukar said, carefully. "I know very well the consequences of this."
Making an indistinct gesture at himself, he rose to his feet, looking very much as if he was only just able to keep himself upright. "Islantar was to leave a small detachment on guard near the foothills."
He began to walk, summoning fragile poise with such effect that she was reminded of the time he had shown her around Pelamath. Even wet, exhausted and bedraggled, Illukar could be beautiful. And his shield of Ibisian courtesy could not begin to hide the effort it cost him to walk away.
He was trying to make it easy for her. Such unbearable grace. She had to blink hard to stop tears when she saw through the web of his unbound hair and his thin, wet shirt the mottled pattern of the bruises he’d earned during their arrival at Finrathlar. It was like seeing straight through to the pain beneath that determinedly upright carriage.
"Wait," she said, catching up, not quite able to touch him. He paused and she faced him, feeling like the world was not really there as she said through a strangling throat: "I’m not willing to simply give up."
His face was a mask as his eyes flickered from blue-grey to grey, to icy blue. It was Ieskar who lifted his hand, his right hand with that thin scratch across the back of the fingers, until it brushed her stomach. Medair took a deep, fluttery breath as he settled his hand against her ribs, below her left breast. Her heart was racing as if she had run all the way to Athere, and she had to struggle to hold that icy gaze. And he just stood there while her body betrayed her feelings.
"You have hated me for years," he said, in the most obviously controlled voice she’d ever heard from him.
She felt tears sting, because it was true. Her own argument. She refused to give in to it, to the part of her which could not believe what she was doing. "I hated you for a reason that no longer exists."
His only reaction was the tiniest drop of his eyelids. "I will always be the one who ordered Palladium’s invasion."
"And the one who made it possible to save Farakkan. And Illukar. Yes, I hated you. And wanted – wanted more of you. Those two things couldn’t exist together, so I gave into one and ran from the other. I thought I would kill every single Ibisian in Farakkan, given the chance."
She felt her face heat and took a deep breath. "I don’t have the right reasons to hate you, any more. Habit is not enough."
The hand on her ribs shifted, sending shivers all through her chest and stomach. She straightened, an involuntary reaction not entirely negative, and his hand dropped. The blue eyes flickered to grey, then blue again, but not a muscle shifted. Ieskar gave so little away.
"Medair." He said the name with the conscious awareness that she’d never given it to him to use. He even took a breath before going on, a near-hesitation she’d never seen before. "You cannot even bear my touch. How can you think to marry me? Hold me each night in your arms? Bear my children? Can you truly tell me, you with your heart leaping over itself in fright, that you can be my lover? My friend and helpmeet, my comfort and passion? Because I would not accept less."
His eyes were frightening and she realised it was because he held them so fully and absolutely on her, never wavering. She had every scrap of his attention.
"I’m telling you that I want to try," she said, in the faintest of voices, and his eyes flicked suddenly to grey. Illukar, frowning, took both her hands and led her to a pair of rocks. He was fighting exhaustion to have this conversation, and as they sat down it showed as clear as morning.
Before letting go of her hands, he squeezed them tightly, then asked: "Are you saying this for my sake?"
Her throat tightened, but she thrust back the wholly inappropriate sense of insult. There was still a little of the proud herald in her it seemed. "I have never spoken more truth in my life," she said, steadily. "I mightn’t be able to simply choose to forgive, but I can work at it. And I am going to. For you, yes, but also because–" She looked down, then back at him and watched as they shifted back to blue. "For my sake, don’t you see? I have loved you for as long as I’ve hated you, Ieskar. I wanted you and I could not stop, though I tried. Now – it’s long past time for me to acknowledge that you did what was best for your people instead of mine. And let myself do what’s best for me. I don’t want to lose either of you."