like rosewater.
Roksana handed it over as Niko stumbled in late at night, or early in the morning, he wasn’t sure which. Niko took one look at the writing, smelled the familiar scent, and tossed it in the smoldering fireplace.
Roksana grabbed a poker and flicked the singed envelope out again, then stamped on it to crush any embers. “Idiot.” She blew off the ash. “If you don’t open it, I will.”
Niko dropped into one of the grand chairs beside the fire and huffed a sigh. His head rang from all the noise in the bars and his body ached from all-day trainings. And according to the spinning walls, he was also devastatingly drunk. “There’s nothing in that letter but trouble.”
“I’ve watched you Niko, this past month. You work like a mule, you’re at the docks until dawn, you rarely sleep, and then you start all over again. I worry you’re going to find trouble anyway.”
“I’m fine,” he groused back, pinching the bridge of his nose. He had been at the docks most nights, spending what coin he’d earned training new recruits. Sleep didn’t come anyway, so he’d given up on that weeks ago, and only last night, he’d contemplated taking the spice being shared among the men, just to hollow out the guilt gnawing on his insides.
Roksana tore the wax seal off the envelope. Niko sprang from the chair and snatched it from his aunt’s fingers. “Damn, now I have to read it.”
In reply, Roksana scooped up two glasses from the sideboard and produced a bottle of dark rum from somewhere—she usually had a stash at hand. She handed Niko a glass as he dropped back into the chair. “It had better bloody mention Yasir Lajani,” she said. “I paid that urchin true. He owes me silks! If he dies on some adventure, I want my damn coin back.”
Snorting at Roksana’s brutal honesty, he reluctantly pulled the thick paper from inside the envelope, breathing in the faint smell of roses.
Nikolas,
I suspect you’ll burn this letter on arrival, but Yasir will not stop speaking of you, and with his voice added to the others in my head, writing this will be cathartic, if nothing else. You’re a stubborn, righteous fool. I hate that about you. I hate how you believe there’s a right way for everything. There isn’t, but of course, somehow, you find one.
A Caville must forever hold the flame. That was how it was sold to me by my mother. But she was wrong, because as you said, Cavilles are not the protectors we make ourselves out to be. The truth is, a griffin must forever hold the flame. You were my griffin. For all our differences, I trusted you. But it was more than that. It was something I did not understand or allow purchase until I watched you walk away. You were more than my protector, more than my griffin, more than I cared to acknowledge because to care is to have something to lose. And I’m afraid to lose any more of myself.
I care about you, Nikolas. I hope you’re satisfied. I would prefer not to acknowledge it. You’re a distraction. One I cannot afford. I had hoped, in your absence, these feelings would fade. They have not, and now Yasir—astute and relentless as he is—demands I write this. Hopefully you’ll never read these words, and thus our last meeting will be the end of it. But if you do happen upon this letter, well then, I suppose something has changed.
I did not do all the things you suspect me of, but many I did, so what does it matter? You believe me capable, and I am. Thus, they may as well be true.
In many ways, I wish Julian had been the man you fell for, not the traitor he was to us both, because you deserve someone with a good heart. Perhaps you have already found that someone. I hope never to meet him, for I fear all good things I touch turn to ash.
Loreen is dying.
Yet, for the first time in my life, I feel very much alive.
I wonder if those two facts are related.
And I wonder if I hadn’t met you, whether the flame would already be free.
I have a path now. I do not know if it’s the correct one.
I once told you how I regret nothing. I was wrong. I regret not restraining you. It would have been… memorable.
Now, I pray this letter is burned, or perhaps I will tell Yasir it