“But . . . she said you called out for me. When she tormented you.” I said the words, and then wished I could call them back. He suddenly looked sick and old.
“Probably, I did,” he admitted. “I have never claimed to be brave. But the fact that she could wring that from me changes nothing, my friend. Nothing.” He looked into the fire as if he had lost something there, and I was ashamed that I had taken him back to his torture. No man should be reminded that he has screamed in front of people who delighted in it. “It should probably serve to teach me that, in many ways, I am not as strong as I wish I were. And I should not put myself in a position in which my weakness could damage both of us.”
He suddenly took my hand. It startled me, and when I looked at him, our eyes locked. “Fitz. Please. Do not tempt me to follow you and interfere in the future I saw for you. Do not tempt me to step out of my time and try to take something that was never meant for me.” He shivered suddenly, as if a chill had taken him. He let go of my hand and leaned closer to the fire, holding his hands out to it. The nails had just started to regrow. He rubbed his hands together, loosening a layer of skin like white ash. The new skin exposed beneath reminded me of polished wood. Very softly, he asked me, “Could you have been content to live with Nighteyes among the wolves?”
“I would have been willing to try,” I said stubbornly.
“Even if his mate could never completely accept you?”
“Could you, for once, simply say whatever it is you are trying to say?”
He looked at me and rubbed his chin as if he were truly considering it. Then he smiled sadly. “No. I can't. Not without damaging something precious to me.” As if he were not changing the subject at all, he asked, “Will you ever tell Dutiful that your body fathered his?”
I did not like him to speak that aloud even when it was just we two. My strong Skill-bond with Dutiful made him seem ever close. “No,” I said shortly. “He would see too many things differently. It would hurt him, to no good end. It would damage his image of his father, his feelings toward his mother, even his feelings toward me. What purpose could it serve?”
“Exactly. So you will always love him as a son, but treat him as your prince. One step away from where you long to be. Because even if you told him, you could never be his father.”
I was starting to get angry again. “You are not my father.”
“No.” He stared at the fire. “And I'm not your lover, either.”
I felt suddenly weary and sour. “Is that what this is about? Bedding with me? You won't return to Buckkeep because I won't bed with you?”
“No!” He did not shout the word, but something in the way he said it stunned me to silence. His voice was low, almost harsh as he spoke. “Always, you bring it back to that, as if that is the only possible culmination of love.”
He sighed and abruptly settled back in his chair. He looked at me speculatively, and then asked, “Tell me, did you love Nighteyes?”
“Of course.”
“Without reserve.”
“Yes.”
“Then by your logic, you wished to couple with him?”
“I wished . . . No!”
“Ah. But that was only because he too was male? It had nothing to do with your other differences?”
I gaped at him. A moment longer he managed to keep his face straight in honest inquiry. Then he laughed at me, more freely than I had heard him laugh in a long time. I wanted to be offended, but it was such a relief to hear him laugh, even at my expense, that I could not.
He caught his breath, and said, “There it is. Plainly, Fitz. I told you I set no limits on my love for you. I don't. Yet I never expected you to offer me your body. It was the whole of your heart, all for myself, that I sought. Even though I've never had a right to it. For you gave it away ere ever you saw me.” He shook his head. “Long ago, you told me that Molly would never be able to tolerate your bond with the wolf. That she would force you to decide between them. Do you still believe that?”
“I think it likely,” I had to reply softly.
“And how do you think she would react to me?” He paused for a heartbeat. “Whom would you choose? And what would you lose, either way, by being forced to make such a choice? Those are the questions I've had to ponder. And if I come back with you, and make that choice a part of your future, what else will my Catalyst change in the process of choosing? If you left the Six Duchies with me, what future would we have set in motion, all unknowing?”
