Chapter 22: The Proposal — The Key of Oslov

Volume 11: Crosscurrents and Consequences

Chapter 22 The Proposal

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

“Tollsha said yes to that?” Tilrey asked.Gersha nodded. They were back in their suite, where Tilrey had retreated after the initial unsuccessful parley with Tollsha. He’d showered and shaved and was rubbing his wet hair with a towel, another one hanging fetchingly off his hips.At any other time, Gersha would have been tempted to whip the towel off him. But right now he had to keep his eye on his purpose. “The ultimate choice is Vera’s,” he said. “But we need Tollsha’s cooperation, and we have it.”“You must have done some diplomatic magic.”Tilrey was clearly still smarting from his own encounter with Tollsha. Gersha wished they could take time to hash it out, but there wasn’t time. “I’m here because it wouldn’t be right for me even to suggest this avenue without getting your consent first. You are my husband.”Tilrey straightened and looked at him, unsmiling. “To be honest, I think it’s a mad idea,” he said. “But Vera’s idea is even madder. The simplest route is not to involve me at all in raising this child. That would be best for him.”Gersha resisted the urge to protest: It wouldn’t be best, and you know it. But it wasn’t the first time Tilrey had shocked him by accepting something seemingly unthinkable with a shrug.Do you really know him? Tollsha had asked. Does anyone?“It would be simpler,” he admitted, “just in terms of giving your son a smooth path through his life in Redda. But Tollsha and Vera might tear out each other’s throats. And your mother . . .”Tilrey sighed. “My mother. Did Tollsha really say yes?”Gersha had to smile at the memory of Tollsha’s reaction. “He laughed so hard I thought he’d burst a blood vessel. He told me I was cracked in the head. But after a while, he changed his tune and decided it might be fun to see it play out.” Gersha didn’t mention how he’d helped that change along: by involving Tollsha in the planning, saying flattering things about how valuable his social savvy would be. “He even had some clever ideas for making it work.”Tilrey tossed both towels unceremoniously on the bed and turned to face Gersha, naked. “And you think you could put up with what you’re proposing? You wouldn’t want to tear Vera’s throat out?”Such possibilities hadn’t even occurred to Gersha. “If I’m with you, I’m happy,” he said, feeling small and meek with Tilrey looming over him. “We would still be together. And Vera—well, I think we’d manage not to rub each other the wrong way. In any sense,” he added, a bit appalled by the visual his phrase had summoned.Tilrey laughed dryly, picking up his pajama bottoms. “Tell me about it. Well, you could be right. It’s probably the best option we have left. But I want you to remember something, love.”“What?” Gersha didn’t like that note in Tilrey’s voice.The blue eyes went cold on his. “Vera did this without my knowledge. Without my consent. Whatever romantic fantasy she was playing out in her head, I hope it’s over. But she may still want more from me than I can give.”Gersha’s breath caught. Please don’t hate me for this. What I’m doing will keep us—the three of us—together.“Then,” he said, picking each word with care, “you and Vera will need a buffer between you. Someone who understands both your points of view. Someone to keep you from needing to get too close. We both know Tollsha’s not the man for the job.”Tilrey nodded, though his eyes were pinched as if he weren’t sure he wanted to see Gersha this way. “And you think you are.”*When the bedroom door opened to reveal Gersha, Vera was mortified. The soft knock had made her expect her mother or Lisha. What was the Councillor doing here?“Oh, hello, Councillor Gádden.” She ran nervous fingers through her frazzled, unwashed hair. She must look a fright, lazing here on the rumpled bed beside the sleeping baby, wearing a fleece jacket and track pants that she’d borrowed from Lisha.She had no hard feelings toward Gersha, but she barely knew him, and he’d always been so well mannered and impeccable, as if he belonged in the Sector at all times. Not the person she wanted to see so soon after dealing with Tollsha.“Sit down, please.” She should probably move from the bed to the armchair, like a civilized person receiving a guest, but she wanted to watch Ceill’s chest rise and fall with each breath. He alone made everything worth it.At least the baby’s presence had kept Tollsha from shouting at her. He’d hissed hostile questions with burning eyes—What were you thinking? How’s that even possible?—and then he’d cried, which was somehow worse.Gersha sat down. When he looked at Ceill, his whole face lit up, eyes bright and lips parted. Vera felt herself mirroring the expression. Maybe this conversation wouldn’t be a trial after all—it was so nice to see people reacting to her son as they ought.“Thank you for letting Tilrey introduce the two of us earlier,” Gersha said in a hushed voice. “It must be hard to let the little one out of your sight.”“It is.” But if Gersha wasn’t angry, didn’t feel betrayed, why was he even here? “How long have you known?” she asked, feeling stupid.“Uh. A while.” Gersha was picking at a loose thread in the upholstery. “I didn’t read your message, I promise. Tilrey showed it to me.”He seemed so earnest that Vera almost felt sorry for him. “I guess you two don’t have secrets.”“Not really.” Gersha scrubbed a hand through his dark curls. “Not anymore. Forgive me if I’m less than articulate, Vera. I didn’t sleep last night, and the travel, and—well, anyway, downstairs, I ran into your husband. He’s a bit indisposed—actually, he’s plastered. He blurted out something about what happened up here. The conditions he tried to impose on you. How you reacted.”Vera stiffened all over. Mortifying. “I’m so sorry you had to see that. I hope you’ll keep being discreet. I know this whole affair is a mess, but my mother—”“No, no! That’s not why I’m here at all.” Gersha had gone beet red. “I hope you’ll consider me a friend, and it’s not your mother I want to talk to. I’m actually here because—well, because I want to propose marriage. To you.”The words didn’t register at first. Then Vera laughed—to her own ears, it was a half-hysterical squawk. “As you may have noticed, I’m already married. For better or worse.”Gersha was red to the tips of his ears now. “Marriages can be dissolved. And, if Tollsha’s current attitude is anything to go by, a speedy visit to Records might spare you both much future pain.”Vera couldn’t deny that, but the rest didn’t make sense. “And then what? I marry you, and we register my son as . . . yours?”Gersha nodded with so much of that heart-rending earnestness that she regretted laughing at him. “I know it’s a stretch. I’m not exactly known for sleeping with women, let alone impregnating them. But consider this: We have a fair bit in common. Our proud families, for one thing.”“What else?” Vera asked warily. We’re both in love with Tilrey Bronn.If Gersha was thinking that, he didn’t say it. “Both of us are bound to men who exhibit a certain . . . how shall I put this? Sexual promiscuity.”It was Vera’s turn to blush. She didn’t care who knew Tollsha was sleeping around. But for Gersha to mention so casually that Tilrey did it, too, as if Vera were no different from whomever else he’d fallen into bed with (and how many were there?)—well. That hurt a bit.She reminded herself sternly of her conversation with her mother. This family has a debt of honor to pay. And hadn’t Tilrey made it crystal-clear from the beginning that she was just an opportunity for him?“I suppose,” she said. “And I suppose everybody knows we’ve both been, well, cheated on. But how does that make anyone more likely to believe we conceived a child together?”Gersha was still playing nervously with the thread. “Sometimes people who are intimately betrayed act way out of character. They commit crimes of passion. Have reckless liaisons. So, let’s just imagine that one day you discovered your seemingly loving husband with a mistress.”Vera didn’t have to work hard to imagine that. “And?”“And the same day, I discovered my beloved secretary in bed with one of my colleagues. We stormed off and ran into each other by chance, both steaming mad and wanting to show our significant others we couldn’t be taken for granted.”It sounded like a scene from one of the drama streams aimed at Laborers that Vera watched guiltily, on the sly. “That wouldn’t happen,” she pointed out. “I know what Tollsha does, and I don’t care.”“Have you told all your friends you don’t care?”“Of course not! I don’t talk about my private business to my school chums.” Only my brother, and he wouldn’t tell anyone else. She stopped short, starting to understand. “So that’s the story we’d tell. You think anyone would actually believe it?”“Tilrey and I know how to be discreet. You didn’t know till now that I knew he’d been with you, remember? I play the role of the pathetic, clueless cuckold fairly convincingly.”Vera wouldn’t think about what Tilrey might have told Gersha about her. That wasn’t her business. “So what happens next, after we commiserate about being betrayed? We fall into each other’s arms? One time, unpremeditated? Just to spite them both?”A wicked smile was tugging at the corners of Gersha’s mouth. “That’s the gist. What do you think?”Vera considered. “It’s still a stretch. But you’re right. Angry people do stupid, bizarre things.” She knew all too well that people in love did.“So, fast-forward several months. You try to forgive Tollsha, for the baby’s sake. When you look at the genetic profile, you tell yourself it’s not true. But once your son is born, reality hits. You’re too ethical to pass him off as Tollsha’s. You’d be happy never to see me again, but I’m perfectly eligible to be your husband. So you send for me—”Here Vera’s suspended disbelief thudded to the floor. “Ceill doesn’t look anything like you. The older he gets, the more obvious it’ll be. Even Tollsha would be more plausible as the father.”Gersha’s face fell, but clearly he’d thought of this already. “Physical traits skip generations. Without looking at a genetic profile, no one can say for sure the boy’s not mine.”“They can guess.” And all it took was a few stray guesses to hatch a scandal.“People would talk, yes.” Gersha’s eyes glittered conspiratorially. “People always talk in Redda. But how much does it matter? I’m a Gádden, and you’re a Linnett, and we high names have a way of creating our own reality. Think of your grandfather.”Vera didn’t want to. But he had a point: If you were high-named, clever, and willing to brazen things out, you could live life on your own terms.Marrying Tilrey would have stripped her of any power she had to make people accept her version of reality. But marrying Gersha would mean pooling their social credit. It wasn’t as sure a bet as staying with Tollsha, but it might, just might, be a safe nest for Ceill.Gersha would let Ceill see his real father and grandmother—she knew that without asking. Gersha wouldn’t pester her for things she couldn’t give him. It was almost too good a solution, except for the glaring problem.“But Ceill will be the image of Tilrey. You do realize that?”Gersha’s posture had relaxed. He must think he was getting somewhere. “With all due respect, Vera, you can’t predict how your son will look when he’s grown. And Tilrey will be nearly fifty then. How many people do you think will remember exactly how he looked at eighteen?”Me. I will. She didn’t believe that age would ever blur the resemblance between Tilrey and his son, and she doubted Gersha really thought so, either.But Ceill would spend the first eighteen years of his life in nursery and at school, among his peers. The danger of people drawing the obvious connection would be minimal. By the time her son started interacting with Upstarts in the Sector—the sort of people who did have all-too-intimate recollections of Tilrey—she and Gersha might have amassed enough power to shield Ceill from the consequences.Maybe it could actually work. Maybe. Then an unpleasant thought occurred to her. “You’re not going to want more children, are you? Of your own? The way Tollsha did?”Gersha drew himself up, elegantly scandalized. “Verdant hells, Vera. I have no intention of using you for breeding purposes. I applied for sanctioned celibacy because I can’t stand that sort of arrangement. Besides—” and here his face softened as he looked at Ceill— “I’d like to have a role in raising him, if you’re amenable. Maybe it’s presumptuous to want that, and I realize I need to earn your trust, but . . . he comes from someone I love.”Vera found herself having two equal and opposite reactions. She wanted to scoop up Ceill and press him to her breast and snarl. Mine. Not yours. Never yours. And she wanted to hug Gersha and thank him for seeing that her son was indeed the most perfect child in the Northern Hemisphere.If only Tilrey felt the same. The way he looked at Ceill struck Vera as reserved, even ambivalent. If she weren’t so happy, it would have made her miserable.He had his reasons, some of them good ones. She knew that. She just wasn’t sure what to do with the tears pooling in her eyes.“We’ll see, I guess,” she said. “You’d keep living with Tilrey, I assume.”Gersha nodded. “We won’t be in your way any more than you want us to be.”“Tilrey may not want to be around us at all.” Now there was a lump in her throat, and Ceill was opening his eyes and fussing. But it had to be said. “He didn’t want this.”Gersha was blinking back tears, too. “Before I came here to you, I asked his permission, and he gave it. But I don’t think it’s that simple. Showing his feelings never is, for him.”Oh, but it is simple. Tilrey had clearly expressed how he felt about this, time after time.“But you want this,” Vera said, the strangeness of it all dawning on her. “How can you want it? I mean, Tilrey really did betray you. That part won’t be a lie.” She glanced from Ceill’s deep blue eyes to Gersha’s tense sea-green ones and back. “Won’t you always look at Ceill and think of . . . well, you know?”“No,” Gersha said. He rose and stood before her, stiff and awkward and achingly sincere. “It doesn’t bother me what happened between you and Tilrey because I love him.”He looked straight at her, so close she could see the gray flecks in his irises. “And I know him. Tilrey does all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons that I don’t always agree with. But ‘betray’ me? He’s not capable of it. Any more than I’m capable of betraying him.”Something caught in Vera’s throat. So that’s what love is.What she’d felt for Tilrey suddenly seemed like a bored child’s play-acting. She remembered the flickering lights of the winter festival, the deceptive turns of the maze. It was all just a distraction. Her child’s tiny, smooth palm against her finger—that was real.She would do anything for Ceill. Maybe it was the same with the two of them.“So,” she said, “we’ll just have to tolerate each other, I guess. I think we can. Better than Tollsha and I could, anyway.” Already she was finding Gersha’s presence oddly restful, something she’d never expected. He reminded her a little of Valgund. “Do you want to tell my mother, or shall I?”“Do you think she’ll object?”Vera considered. “She’ll have the same concerns I did. I know she wanted to make it work with Tollsha. She has some weird sentimental thing about his dead dad. But she knows you, and she likes you. That counts for a lot.”Gersha extended his hand to her, a smile transforming his face. “Then maybe we should tell her together.”

“Tollsha said yes to that?” Tilrey asked.

Gersha nodded. They were back in their suite, where Tilrey had retreated after the initial unsuccessful parley with Tollsha. He’d showered and shaved and was rubbing his wet hair with a towel, another one hanging fetchingly off his hips.

At any other time, Gersha would have been tempted to whip the towel off him. But right now he had to keep his eye on his purpose. “The ultimate choice is Vera’s,” he said. “But we need Tollsha’s cooperation, and we have it.”

“You must have done some diplomatic magic.”

Tilrey was clearly still smarting from his own encounter with Tollsha. Gersha wished they could take time to hash it out, but there wasn’t time. “I’m here because it wouldn’t be right for me even to suggest this avenue without getting your consent first. You are my husband.”

Tilrey straightened and looked at him, unsmiling. “To be honest, I think it’s a mad idea,” he said. “But Vera’s idea is even madder. The simplest route is not to involve me at all in raising this child. That would be best for him.”

Gersha resisted the urge to protest: It wouldn’t be best, and you know it. But it wasn’t the first time Tilrey had shocked him by accepting something seemingly unthinkable with a shrug.

Do you really know him? Tollsha had asked. Does anyone?

“It would be simpler,” he admitted, “just in terms of giving your son a smooth path through his life in Redda. But Tollsha and Vera might tear out each other’s throats. And your mother . . .”

Tilrey sighed. “My mother. Did Tollsha really say yes?”

Gersha had to smile at the memory of Tollsha’s reaction. “He laughed so hard I thought he’d burst a blood vessel. He told me I was cracked in the head. But after a while, he changed his tune and decided it might be fun to see it play out.” Gersha didn’t mention how he’d helped that change along: by involving Tollsha in the planning, saying flattering things about how valuable his social savvy would be. “He even had some clever ideas for making it work.”

Tilrey tossed both towels unceremoniously on the bed and turned to face Gersha, naked. “And you think you could put up with what you’re proposing? You wouldn’t want to tear Vera’s throat out?”

Such possibilities hadn’t even occurred to Gersha. “If I’m with you, I’m happy,” he said, feeling small and meek with Tilrey looming over him. “We would still be together. And Vera—well, I think we’d manage not to rub each other the wrong way. In any sense,” he added, a bit appalled by the visual his phrase had summoned.

Tilrey laughed dryly, picking up his pajama bottoms. “Tell me about it. Well, you could be right. It’s probably the best option we have left. But I want you to remember something, love.”

“What?” Gersha didn’t like that note in Tilrey’s voice.

The blue eyes went cold on his. “Vera did this without my knowledge. Without my consent. Whatever romantic fantasy she was playing out in her head, I hope it’s over. But she may still want more from me than I can give.”

Gersha’s breath caught. Please don’t hate me for this. What I’m doing will keep us—the three of us—together.

“Then,” he said, picking each word with care, “you and Vera will need a buffer between you. Someone who understands both your points of view. Someone to keep you from needing to get too close. We both know Tollsha’s not the man for the job.”

Tilrey nodded, though his eyes were pinched as if he weren’t sure he wanted to see Gersha this way. “And you think you are.”

When the bedroom door opened to reveal Gersha, Vera was mortified. The soft knock had made her expect her mother or Lisha. What was the Councillor doing here?

“Oh, hello, Councillor Gádden.” She ran nervous fingers through her frazzled, unwashed hair. She must look a fright, lazing here on the rumpled bed beside the sleeping baby, wearing a fleece jacket and track pants that she’d borrowed from Lisha.

She had no hard feelings toward Gersha, but she barely knew him, and he’d always been so well mannered and impeccable, as if he belonged in the Sector at all times. Not the person she wanted to see so soon after dealing with Tollsha.

“Sit down, please.” She should probably move from the bed to the armchair, like a civilized person receiving a guest, but she wanted to watch Ceill’s chest rise and fall with each breath. He alone made everything worth it.

At least the baby’s presence had kept Tollsha from shouting at her. He’d hissed hostile questions with burning eyes—What were you thinking? How’s that even possible?—and then he’d cried, which was somehow worse.

Gersha sat down. When he looked at Ceill, his whole face lit up, eyes bright and lips parted. Vera felt herself mirroring the expression. Maybe this conversation wouldn’t be a trial after all—it was so nice to see people reacting to her son as they ought.

“Thank you for letting Tilrey introduce the two of us earlier,” Gersha said in a hushed voice. “It must be hard to let the little one out of your sight.”

“It is.” But if Gersha wasn’t angry, didn’t feel betrayed, why was he even here? “How long have you known?” she asked, feeling stupid.

“Uh. A while.” Gersha was picking at a loose thread in the upholstery. “I didn’t read your message, I promise. Tilrey showed it to me.”

He seemed so earnest that Vera almost felt sorry for him. “I guess you two don’t have secrets.”

“Not really.” Gersha scrubbed a hand through his dark curls. “Not anymore. Forgive me if I’m less than articulate, Vera. I didn’t sleep last night, and the travel, and—well, anyway, downstairs, I ran into your husband. He’s a bit indisposed—actually, he’s plastered. He blurted out something about what happened up here. The conditions he tried to impose on you. How you reacted.”

Vera stiffened all over. Mortifying. “I’m so sorry you had to see that. I hope you’ll keep being discreet. I know this whole affair is a mess, but my mother—”

“No, no! That’s not why I’m here at all.” Gersha had gone beet red. “I hope you’ll consider me a friend, and it’s not your mother I want to talk to. I’m actually here because—well, because I want to propose marriage. To you.”

The words didn’t register at first. Then Vera laughed—to her own ears, it was a half-hysterical squawk. “As you may have noticed, I’m already married. For better or worse.”

Gersha was red to the tips of his ears now. “Marriages can be dissolved. And, if Tollsha’s current attitude is anything to go by, a speedy visit to Records might spare you both much future pain.”

Vera couldn’t deny that, but the rest didn’t make sense. “And then what? I marry you, and we register my son as . . . yours?”

Gersha nodded with so much of that heart-rending earnestness that she regretted laughing at him. “I know it’s a stretch. I’m not exactly known for sleeping with women, let alone impregnating them. But consider this: We have a fair bit in common. Our proud families, for one thing.”

“What else?” Vera asked warily. We’re both in love with Tilrey Bronn.

If Gersha was thinking that, he didn’t say it. “Both of us are bound to men who exhibit a certain . . . how shall I put this? Sexual promiscuity.”

It was Vera’s turn to blush. She didn’t care who knew Tollsha was sleeping around. But for Gersha to mention so casually that Tilrey did it, too, as if Vera were no different from whomever else he’d fallen into bed with (and how many were there?)—well. That hurt a bit.

She reminded herself sternly of her conversation with her mother. This family has a debt of honor to pay. And hadn’t Tilrey made it crystal-clear from the beginning that she was just an opportunity for him?

“I suppose,” she said. “And I suppose everybody knows we’ve both been, well, cheated on. But how does that make anyone more likely to believe we conceived a child together?”

Gersha was still playing nervously with the thread. “Sometimes people who are intimately betrayed act way out of character. They commit crimes of passion. Have reckless liaisons. So, let’s just imagine that one day you discovered your seemingly loving husband with a mistress.”

Vera didn’t have to work hard to imagine that. “And?”

“And the same day, I discovered my beloved secretary in bed with one of my colleagues. We stormed off and ran into each other by chance, both steaming mad and wanting to show our significant others we couldn’t be taken for granted.”

It sounded like a scene from one of the drama streams aimed at Laborers that Vera watched guiltily, on the sly. “That wouldn’t happen,” she pointed out. “I know what Tollsha does, and I don’t care.”

“Have you told all your friends you don’t care?”

“Of course not! I don’t talk about my private business to my school chums.” Only my brother, and he wouldn’t tell anyone else. She stopped short, starting to understand. “So that’s the story we’d tell. You think anyone would actually believe it?”

“Tilrey and I know how to be discreet. You didn’t know till now that I knew he’d been with you, remember? I play the role of the pathetic, clueless cuckold fairly convincingly.”

Vera wouldn’t think about what Tilrey might have told Gersha about her. That wasn’t her business. “So what happens next, after we commiserate about being betrayed? We fall into each other’s arms? One time, unpremeditated? Just to spite them both?”

A wicked smile was tugging at the corners of Gersha’s mouth. “That’s the gist. What do you think?”

Vera considered. “It’s still a stretch. But you’re right. Angry people do stupid, bizarre things.” She knew all too well that people in love did.

“So, fast-forward several months. You try to forgive Tollsha, for the baby’s sake. When you look at the genetic profile, you tell yourself it’s not true. But once your son is born, reality hits. You’re too ethical to pass him off as Tollsha’s. You’d be happy never to see me again, but I’m perfectly eligible to be your husband. So you send for me—”

Here Vera’s suspended disbelief thudded to the floor. “Ceill doesn’t look anything like you. The older he gets, the more obvious it’ll be. Even Tollsha would be more plausible as the father.”

Gersha’s face fell, but clearly he’d thought of this already. “Physical traits skip generations. Without looking at a genetic profile, no one can say for sure the boy’s not mine.”

“They can guess.” And all it took was a few stray guesses to hatch a scandal.

“People would talk, yes.” Gersha’s eyes glittered conspiratorially. “People always talk in Redda. But how much does it matter? I’m a Gádden, and you’re a Linnett, and we high names have a way of creating our own reality. Think of your grandfather.”

Vera didn’t want to. But he had a point: If you were high-named, clever, and willing to brazen things out, you could live life on your own terms.

Marrying Tilrey would have stripped her of any power she had to make people accept her version of reality. But marrying Gersha would mean pooling their social credit. It wasn’t as sure a bet as staying with Tollsha, but it might, just might, be a safe nest for Ceill.

Gersha would let Ceill see his real father and grandmother—she knew that without asking. Gersha wouldn’t pester her for things she couldn’t give him. It was almost too good a solution, except for the glaring problem.

“But Ceill will be the image of Tilrey. You do realize that?”

Gersha’s posture had relaxed. He must think he was getting somewhere. “With all due respect, Vera, you can’t predict how your son will look when he’s grown. And Tilrey will be nearly fifty then. How many people do you think will remember exactly how he looked at eighteen?”

Me. I will. She didn’t believe that age would ever blur the resemblance between Tilrey and his son, and she doubted Gersha really thought so, either.

But Ceill would spend the first eighteen years of his life in nursery and at school, among his peers. The danger of people drawing the obvious connection would be minimal. By the time her son started interacting with Upstarts in the Sector—the sort of people who did have all-too-intimate recollections of Tilrey—she and Gersha might have amassed enough power to shield Ceill from the consequences.

Maybe it could actually work. Maybe. Then an unpleasant thought occurred to her. “You’re not going to want more children, are you? Of your own? The way Tollsha did?”

Gersha drew himself up, elegantly scandalized. “Verdant hells, Vera. I have no intention of using you for breeding purposes. I applied for sanctioned celibacy because I can’t stand that sort of arrangement. Besides—” and here his face softened as he looked at Ceill— “I’d like to have a role in raising him, if you’re amenable. Maybe it’s presumptuous to want that, and I realize I need to earn your trust, but . . . he comes from someone I love.”

Vera found herself having two equal and opposite reactions. She wanted to scoop up Ceill and press him to her breast and snarl. Mine. Not yours. Never yours. And she wanted to hug Gersha and thank him for seeing that her son was indeed the most perfect child in the Northern Hemisphere.

If only Tilrey felt the same. The way he looked at Ceill struck Vera as reserved, even ambivalent. If she weren’t so happy, it would have made her miserable.

He had his reasons, some of them good ones. She knew that. She just wasn’t sure what to do with the tears pooling in her eyes.

“We’ll see, I guess,” she said. “You’d keep living with Tilrey, I assume.”

Gersha nodded. “We won’t be in your way any more than you want us to be.”

“Tilrey may not want to be around us at all.” Now there was a lump in her throat, and Ceill was opening his eyes and fussing. But it had to be said. “He didn’t want this.”

Gersha was blinking back tears, too. “Before I came here to you, I asked his permission, and he gave it. But I don’t think it’s that simple. Showing his feelings never is, for him.”

Oh, but it is simple. Tilrey had clearly expressed how he felt about this, time after time.

“But you want this,” Vera said, the strangeness of it all dawning on her. “How can you want it? I mean, Tilrey really did betray you. That part won’t be a lie.” She glanced from Ceill’s deep blue eyes to Gersha’s tense sea-green ones and back. “Won’t you always look at Ceill and think of . . . well, you know?”

“No,” Gersha said. He rose and stood before her, stiff and awkward and achingly sincere. “It doesn’t bother me what happened between you and Tilrey because I love him.”

He looked straight at her, so close she could see the gray flecks in his irises. “And I know him. Tilrey does all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons that I don’t always agree with. But ‘betray’ me? He’s not capable of it. Any more than I’m capable of betraying him.”

Something caught in Vera’s throat. So that’s what love is.

What she’d felt for Tilrey suddenly seemed like a bored child’s play-acting. She remembered the flickering lights of the winter festival, the deceptive turns of the maze. It was all just a distraction. Her child’s tiny, smooth palm against her finger—that was real.

She would do anything for Ceill. Maybe it was the same with the two of them.

“So,” she said, “we’ll just have to tolerate each other, I guess. I think we can. Better than Tollsha and I could, anyway.” Already she was finding Gersha’s presence oddly restful, something she’d never expected. He reminded her a little of Valgund. “Do you want to tell my mother, or shall I?”

“Do you think she’ll object?”

Vera considered. “She’ll have the same concerns I did. I know she wanted to make it work with Tollsha. She has some weird sentimental thing about his dead dad. But she knows you, and she likes you. That counts for a lot.”

Gersha extended his hand to her, a smile transforming his face. “Then maybe we should tell her together.”

Chapter End Notes

Got some short-ish chapter coming up, so I’m going to try to post a little faster. Thanks so much for reading!And big thank you to mugi_says_eep for giving me the idea of Gersha being the key to this! In my ancient head-canon, Dal and Tilrey were already married and both living in Redda, so they became Ceill’s official parents. He bonded with Dal and then Vera sort of appropriated him when he was older and OUCH. It seemed like something that would really mess up a kid (coupled with the whole social system), and I didn’t know where to go from there with Ceill’s between-two-worlds character. This way I hope at least to avoid traumatizing him until he’s old enough to handle it. ): And I like the idea of Gersha being a dad. :)

Chapter End Notes

Got some short-ish chapter coming up, so I’m going to try to post a little faster. Thanks so much for reading!

And big thank you to mugi_says_eep for giving me the idea of Gersha being the key to this! In my ancient head-canon, Dal and Tilrey were already married and both living in Redda, so they became Ceill’s official parents. He bonded with Dal and then Vera sort of appropriated him when he was older and OUCH. It seemed like something that would really mess up a kid (coupled with the whole social system), and I didn’t know where to go from there with Ceill’s between-two-worlds character. This way I hope at least to avoid traumatizing him until he’s old enough to handle it. ): And I like the idea of Gersha being a dad. :)