Episode 40: A Beginning (Giana)

Giana lay in bed and worried.

She worried about her daughter-in-law, Talise, who had far too much responsibility for a child her age. No amount of insisting that sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, depending where one was, constituted adulthood, would sway Giana. She saw Talise’s uncertainty in small things.

With luck, Niels would continue to heal those small hesitations and feelings of incompetence in his wife.

She worried about her friend Aadya and what direction her life would go in. Aadya had been less true to herself recently; more closed and decisive in a cold way. Her natural warmth was fading into a steel that Giana loathed to see.

There was no happy solution for Aadya that was also a happy solution for Giana.

It pained her.

She forgot her other worries, about Niels and about Meldrick, and about dozens of other things around the palace.

She worried about herself.

Tonight, she would put an end to this. It wasn’t healthy to be in love with a married man.

She’d made this same vow to herself every night for more than a year. She’d read poems, made short trips all over her home realm of Babylon, even purchased a self-help book which she’d discreetly tucked into a shelf in the library after the embarrassment of having read it.

Tonight was the night.

She would plan a trip. She got up and turned the light on. She pulled out her Children’s Desk Atlas, a remnant of her own childhood. It smelled like must and home. She hugged it and then opened it, skimming over the ever-changing nations of Africa and Asia.

If she planned carefully, she could be gone months. She would miss her children. She would miss her grandchildren.

It would be worth it, if she managed to abandon her interest in Meldrick along the way.

She knew she didn’t love men easily or naturally: Her marriage to Viggo the elder had been an understanding they’d both grown up with. It was a matter of, This is your friend Viggo and someday you will marry and have two sons and no daughters and carry on the family name.

It had very nearly worked. Even two of babies had obliged by being boys.

Perhaps it was time for her to lower her standards. The world wasn’t full of conscientious gentleman kings who also happened to be amazing fathers and attractive and share her sense of humor.

She needed to accept that there were other good men out there, and move on.

She focused on the route, starting along the cape of Africa and wending her way north and west, then down the center, then up the east coast. From there, into the desert nations and on through to Asia.

She could have traveled the fairy lands in search of a different love, but she liked the idea of finding someone mortal and extending his life. To be able to give that gift to someone she loved would be such a privilege.

Someone knocked on her apartment door.

She jumped. She closed the atlas and returned it to its shelf. She didn’t need Niels to see it and question her plans. She needed this trip.

She put the cap on her pen and tucked her itinerary and pen into the small lipped drawer on the front of her desk.

“Gi?” Meldrick called. He knocked again. “Giana.”

Oh, hell. He was here. What did he want? He’d never come to her room before; it filled her with all sorts of hopes and wishes.

She sternly forced herself not to look in the mirror.

When she opened the door, she saw him there. He stood in the hall, brittle as a fresh cracker, pale and unsure.

He had such immense control, it was easy to forget that he could be vulnerable.

Something terrible had passed, and he’d come here, to her. He’d chosen this.

He might have immense control, but she did not. If he came into her room, she wasn’t sure what would happen.

“Oh,” she said.

Meldrick wasn’t the sort of man who would be here unless he believed something irrevocable had changed between him and Aadya.

She wanted it to be true.

It was beyond a doubt the most selfish moment of her life.

“I can go elsewhere,” Meldrick said. He took a step back and she realized that her expression must betray the turmoil within her.

If he left now, he’d never be back, not like this.

Her hand rested itself on the small of his back and her voice reached for him, held him, before her mind caught up. “No, come in,” she found herself saying softly.

She wanted all of him, any of him, whatever she could get.

He stood in the front part of her room. Unlike her sons, who both wanted apartments, all Giana needed was a bed, a closet, a bathroom, and a small set of living room items.

Seeing him here, in this place, sent a thrill through her body. It was a special anguish to combine that thrill with the grief she knew he must feel. To celebrate, while he suffered, was unconscionable.

“We separated,” he told her plainly. He ran his hand through his lovely white hair which preferred to stand on end, and straightened his delicious lips.

Giana knotted her hand in the fabric of his shirt and looked up at his eyes. He regarded her with his usual intensity. He was here, looking at her with those eyes…

“A selfish part of me has hoped for this,” she admitted. “Still, I am sorry. What changed?”

When had it changed? Had the trip yesterday to San Marino been part of the decision, or had he already known then what he would do and he only wanted to do things in their proper order?

“I asked if she could bond,” he said. “She used to be able to.”

The bond was an odd feature of some fairy magics. It could turn a pair of strangers into people with an emotional connection that ran deeper than most marriages Giana knew of in Babylon. Talise had bonded to Niels and the effect of that bond was unmistakable. Giana suspected that at some point, Niels had bonded back.

Aadya had that power, to grant bonds between couples.

It meant that when Aadya had said she couldn’t bond to Meldrick, what she really meant was that she refused. It could have been forced, it could have been faked, for the sake of the marriage, the children, the kingdom.

Giana wondered whether Aadya had refused for herself, or for Meldrick. One was selfish, the other selfless.

Not that it mattered in the face of Meldrick; the ultimate outcome was the same, that he’d lost her.

“Can I get you a drink?” she asked him.

She didn’t drink often, but she kept a small liquor cabinet for special occasions.

“Not tonight, thank you.” He stepped toward her. Far too close for it to be anything but deliberate.

She could taste his scent – the soap he used and the work he’d done today.

“When Viggo first confessed he was gay, I tried everything.” She’d even named her son after him, an attempt to direct his focus toward family. “I thought it must be me.” She looked up at Meldrick’s face – his pale red eyes that were a product of his albinism, the circles of stress beneath them, the insatiable look he was giving her… “It isn’t you,” she promised him.

“I know.” He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear.

It was the most intimate sensation Giana had known in more than a decade. She swallowed back her anxiety. She wanted this, he wanted this.

“She’s all I’ve known,” Meldrick said. She couldn’t determine if that was a confession or a warning.

He could leave her. The thought made her cold.

He could be hers tonight and Aadya’s tomorrow.

This was such a terrible idea, but his presence, her yearning, all of it overwhelmed her patience. She had shackled her desire for too long. Now was a time to be opportunistic and hope for the best.

“For hundreds of years,” she agreed. She was just a portion of those years, a line on a number scale compared to the expanse of shared history between him and Aadya. What she saw of Aadya most certainly wasn’t who Aadya had been during most of her time with Meldrick.

Giana wanted all of his future. Not a year of teas, but a lifetime of shared interests and exploration.

She touched his hairline with her fingertips. She’d longed to touch his hair for months now, to feel the silken lightness of it.

It was as soft as she imagined.

“What do you want?” she asked him.

He pressed his forehead into hers and breathed her in. “I want you.”

Yes.

She closed the distance between their mouths and welcomed his passion.

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