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But really... what difference did it make? In a few days, he would be gone, back home to soak up the adulation of a grateful city. And the prince would be nothing but a fading memory. Just one of the many other men that he had bedded.
“How did you know?”
“You don’t live in the land of passion for this long without being able to see such things.”
Aurelius sighed. “Yes, then. It is better for everyone that I leave. Even though I love him.”
“I would have thought you beyond such self-sacrifice? No intentions to make a big romantic gesture? Run in and steal his heart?”
“Go to the Great Grove and pluck a rose, you mean?”
“It is the done thing in these parts.”
“I think... I think we have taken quite enough from each other, Ramuna. The roses of Ardor will live on in my memory. Not in my hands.”
After a moment of hesitation, she shooed him out the door and shut it. When she came out a few minutes later, she was fully dressed.
She led him down to her office, closing the door behind them and kneeling by the lower shelves. After a bit of rummaging, she revealed a small leather bag from behind a run of codices. With great care, she withdrew the contents.
Aurelius gave a tiny laugh. He didn’t think her the sort.
It was an eternal rose, made entirely of a richly colored glass, with a brooch pin attached to the back.
The workmanship was remarkable, equal to the best he had seen in Mestibes. It was so real, so lifelike, that it looked less like a work of art, and more like a genuine rose had been encased within glass. He didn’t insult her by asking where it came from—it was obviously from the Securia glassworks, no doubt a parting gift from her family when she’d first been appointed.
“It is beautiful, Ramuna,” he said. The sunlight illuminated a gash where one of the thorns had snapped off. Effort had been made to smooth the surface, but it couldn’t hide the damage. “Shame it is broken.”
“With something this fine, you cannot guarantee it will never break.”
“Then why do it? Why spend so much care making something that will just shatter in the end.”
She ran her finger along the smooth stem. “My grandfather used to say that only a fool predicted how a piece would turn out before it was put to flame. You could look at the materials, see imperfections in the sand, or weakness in the color, and swear that it might shatter at first contact with the kiln. Other pieces would be made from the finest materials, and the whole workshop would swear that they would survive unscathed. And he was always surprised at how wrong he could be.”
“There must have been many breakages?”
“More than you could imagine.”
Aurelius’s mouth went dry. “How... how did he find the will to keep going?”
She looked out the window. “He told me that if he was afraid of trying, he never would have made anything.”
Ms. Securia held the flower out to him. “Take it, Your Excellency.”
His eyes bulged. “I can’t accept this, Ramuna. This is your heirloom.”
A look of sadness swept her face. “It is a memento of a different time. A memory... I have clung onto for far too long.”
He looked into her eyes, still red from grief. Perhaps this was her own realization? The man who must surely have made this—Safin Securia, her grandfather and one of the finest craftsmen in Mestibes’s history—was long gone. And gone, perhaps too, alongside his whole generation, was the piety and morality that she remembered from her youth.
Maybe this was what she needed to leave that past behind? What she needed in order to accept Mestibes for what it truly was?
“Thank you,” he said, pinning the delicate thing deep into the curled layers of the toga by his shoulder. It still was far from his preferred garment, but after so many days feeling nothing, there was something strangely comforting about the weight of the heavy wool. “Will you be all right?”
“I have no choice not to be.”
“Well, hopefully the other scroll gave you better news.”
She gave him a quizzical look.
