Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [28]
Therein, I thought, lay true strength.
Dusk was falling by the time we returned to the City of Elua, the long shadows tinting the white walls of the City with blue. We were all of us cold and hungry, blowing on our chilled fingers as we rode into the narrow courtyard. All the windows of the townhouse were ablaze with lights, awaiting our return. For the first time, I felt a strong sense of homecoming; here, in this place. We poured through the open door into the welcoming parlor, set about with warming braziers and the bust of Anafiel Delaunay on its marble plinth, smiling his subtle smile.
"Well?" Phèdre set her hands on her hips, eyes sparkling. I could see so many things in them—relief, concern, curiosity. And love; always love. So much it made me dizzy, so much it made my heart ache. "How was it?"
"Good." I smiled at her; at Joscelin, who stood beside her, his Cassiline stoicism not hiding his own vast relief at my safe return. It had cost him, letting me go without his protection. "It was good. I'm glad I did it."
We celebrated that night with a long meal around a crowded table. What exactly it was that we celebrated, I could not say. I only knew I was glad to have gone and glad to be back, and I felt lighter in my heart than I had since setting foot in Lombelon.
I held on to the moment, and wished nothing would ever change.
* * *
Chapter Seven
That winter, in the City of Elua, I grew.
It was as though I had crossed some invisible threshold in giving Lombelon to Maslin, crossing out of boyhood and toward manhood, and my body sought to keep pace. My bones seemed to lengthen daily, and betimes they ached. My voice, which had been breaking for the better part of a year, settled into a deeper register.
I felt strange to myself. Though I had longed for it, when it came, I felt uneasy in my own body. My limbs seemed too long, my hands and feet outsized. Never in my life had I been clumsy; now I found myself bumping into objects, careening off balance.
Joscelin laughed at me.
We kept up our practice in the Cassiline drills, training in the chilly inner courtyard. Although he still had the advantage of me in height and reach, it had lessened; yet now I found myself overreaching, flailing and floundering, my feet slipping on the frosty flagstones.
In contrast, Joscelin never made a misstep. Every move was controlled and precise. Time and again, I measured myself against his fluid grace, and found myself sorely lacking.
"This never happened to you," I complained.
"Oh, it did." He grinned, his summer-blue eyes crinkling. "Colts' Years, we called them in the Brotherhood. Everyone goes through it. Don't worry, you'll grow out of them."
It was a good term. It was how I felt; half-grown and gangly with it. It gave me a shock the first time I looked at Phèdre and realized I was taller than her. I saw the knowledge reflected in her face, along with a bittersweet sorrow.
"Ah, love," she whispered, touching my cheek. "Don't grow up too fast."
It is an awkward thing to be caught between one state and another. When I went to court, I felt newly self-conscious. I was no longer a child, and people looked differently at me, speculative and assessing.
In the self-absorbed way of the young, I had supposed the news that I had given Lombelon to Isidore d'Aiglemort's son would be on everyone's lips; but that had passed without remark. No one, it seemed, was particularly interested in the fate of a minor untitled holding, and a nobleman's bastard get was hardly news in Terre d'Ange. If d'Aiglemort had lived to acknowledge and adopt him, it might have been different, but he hadn't.
After all, it wasn't as though Maslin were a Prince of the Blood.
Not like me.
There was no news of my mother, which was a mercy. Wherever it was she had gone to earth, she showed no signs of resurfacing. There were no further letters from her, no correspondence. Phèdre exchanged a regular correspondence with her