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You just knew. That’s what they said. If your love was true, then you didn’t need to dwell on it. You didn’t need to weigh up the risks.
You just knew.
The army of green soldiers stood to attention before him.
And with a slow exhale. He blinked out a single rapturous tear.
Across the sway, one rose glinted without light. It beckoned without call.
And he knew.
With a certainty he had never felt before, he just fucking knew.
He ran along the paths through the field and came to the beacon. Without hesitation, he reached down, his fingertips just inches from the thorns that would prove his love.
“Wait!” bellowed a voice from behind him.
It was Calix.
“Stop!” said the prince, skidding to a halt at the edge of the field, his full military uniform flapping with the effort. He glared at the roses in horror, like it was a nest of snapping vipers. For him they basically were. “You can’t do that!”
“Yes, I can!” Aurelius called back. “I love you, Calix. I know I fucked up. Maybe this whole thing is just some crazy fuck up. But I love you! And I need to show you what I feel!”
“Not like this!”
Aurelius stood, taking in the man who he cared about more than any other. His own voice broke. “Then tell me. Can you see it? Is there a rose that calls to you? A rose you don’t even need to look at twice to know that it is the one? Can you see it, just like you see me?”
The prince’s jaw clenched, his face in agony.
“Tell me you don’t, Calix. Tell me that all you see is a field of identical fucking flowers. Tell me that, and I will walk away and never return!”
Calix raised a slow, shaking hand, and pointed into the field—right at the rose that Aurelius was standing over. “I see it, Aurelius,” he said, tears falling. “But you still can’t do this! Not for me!”
The tears flowed down Aurelius’s own cheeks now—tears of relief, tears of overwhelmed joy.
Calix saw it.
Calix loved him still.
“You can’t pick one,” Aurelius said. “I know what it would do to you. Because I know what you are. I know what you are better than any other person in this whole fucking city. I have seen parts of you, experienced parts of you, that no one else has. That no one else would. Things that other people would run from. But I am not running, Calix! Because I don’t care what you are. I am here! For you. For us. And you can’t do this, but I can!”
“No!” Calix yelled, reaching out from twenty yards away in a desperate attempt to stop him. “You can’t do that either, Aurelius. For god’s sake! Don’t you understand?”
“What are you saying, Calix?”
“Why you are the way you are? Why you are so different from other Mestibians? Why you have urges you struggle to control?”
Aurelius wiped the tears from his jawline. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re a therian, Aurie!” he screamed. “You’re a fucking siren!”
81
TEIGRA
The sea wind snapped through her stained stola as the galley sped past the twin headlands of the bay, out into the sea beyond.
Wood groaned beneath her stomach—flat on the deck, which rocked and swayed, rocked and swayed. The sun glinted as vertical crystal against the water, which took up more and more of her view as they traveled away from the safety of land.
