Page 91 of The Court of Venus

The Lionessian court held an afternoon banquet in the gardens, tables laid with white tablecloths and the usual array of silver platters. Trails led to a grotto blanketed in dry leaves and a thin coating of moss. A mermaid rose up from a clamshell, water pouring from the fluke of her tail, down her naked breasts. Marguerite sat at the high table beside King Philippe, whispering beneath her hand. Seven men—each representing a planet—staged a dramatic swordfight on the lawn.

Roland was dancing a galliard with one of Marguerite’s women, dressed in a striking coat of vermilion silk, and when I stood at the floor’s edge to watch, his bloodshot eyes leapt to me, then away.

His mind was murky, difficult to grasp. His emotions both heightened and loose at once. He was drunk.

Damn him.

I want to talk to you. I need to talk to you.

If he heard my desires, he ignored them completely.

Applause rang out: The victor of the swordfight was Venus, of course. The other men lay limply in the grass. Marguerite offered the winner a kiss on the cheek while the king looked on, and the dancers lined up again for another sweep across the floor.

Roland was forced to guide his partner by me. He looked straight ahead, but I whispered to him as he passed. “Listen, I know you’re angry—”

He lifted his arm, spun away from his partner. “Angry? I thought you, of all people, would know that I’m not angry at all.” He let an emotion slip out, and I closed my eyes when I felt the depth of his pain.

I desire nothing more than to speak with you. Now.

From the agitation in his movements—usually so graceful and poised—I knew he wouldn’t relent. Not yet. Born under the sign of the bull, he was more obstinate than most.

The music faded. After bowing to his partner and sweeping the hair from his eyes, Roland snatched a goblet of wine and disappeared into the topiary.

Marguerite tutted, loud enough for me to hear. “So sensitive, my Roland.”

In the bedchamber, the sheets were still rumpled from Roland’s restless night. Bess removed the plaits in my hair and handed me a candle. “Where will you go, Mistress Bianca?”

“To the library. Enjoy yourself, Bess. I’ll be gone all afternoon.”

This time, when I stood before the library doors, I yearned for the past. The simplicity of the years before Roland and Hal and I wove these patterns around each other. When we had stood in the mud of the riverbed, daring each other to jump in.

I remembered it so clearly, how I’d leapt in first to impress them. I was covered in such thick muck that I was weighed down as I tried to scramble up the banks. I’d managed to smear Hal across the face, but Roland had shuddered and darted away, climbing a tree to avoid me. “You menace!” he called down. “Hal, get away from her!”

Hal swiped mud off my cheek instead and threw the clump up at Roland.

“Traitor! If one speck of mud touches me, you’re both dead.”

When I whispered my desire to the door, it clicked open. I set my candle down in the dim aisle, so much more at ease here than I’d been at the banquet.

I ran my fingers along spines as I walked. They stalled on a book I’d never seen in Alvion: The Far Planet, written by Faustus himself. I pulled it out, curious. There was no mention of exaltation, as far as I could tell, but my eyes caught on a passage.

It is unknown how the first tear between the dead and the living was made, only that it was Saturn-cut. A doorway, like any other. It soon became clear that ghosts will fade in our world, and we the living perish after too long in theirs. A Saturn master knows this intimately. Several have explored the realm of the dead and never returned. The solution was the creation of otherrealms, pockets between the two, where the living and dead are able to converse for a short time.

Ambrose’s words, before his own death: The experience is like wine—you’ll lunge for another sip right away.

I snapped the book shut and returned it to its slot, continuing along the shelves.

The Morning and the Evening Star was a history of the rulers of Lionesse. Of the mythical first king, a supposed undine who had walked from the sea and into his Venusborn lover’s arms. The crown passed down to fish-kings thereafter, most born under Pisces, as Philippe was. It also told of Raymondin the Lecherous, who, after slitting his king’s throat, dragged the throne of Lionesse into his own chambers and declared, “From this bed, power flows forth.”

But one footnote made me pause. A Venusborn’s greatest strength is his capacity to give. To offer what one wants most. His magic arguably drains him faster than any other magician, and his own love will be his ruin if it is given too readily.

Hadn’t Marguerite said something very similar?

I fiddled with the corner of the page. If Venusborn magic in its simplest form was a cut stitched, a wrinkle smoothed, then prolonging a life was its extremity. Was this the secret of exaltation: our magic in extremity? A Saturnborn, drawing a boundary between time itself. A Venusborn, the fountain of youth from which her lover drank.

Perhaps Prospero was wrong to chase this. Perhaps the knowledge should have always slipped from his grasp. Since Marguerite’s revelation about his plans for Roland, he fell farther away from me. I had now lost my father for the second time.

I’d lost the great man I thought he was.