“Yeah, the pair of us are pretty shit at keeping a woman, aren’t we,” Ro said softly, with a start that sounded as cutting as usual and then the end of it more somber with her own personal memories. Ever since my baby went away, it’s been the blackest day… the song moved through Rowan’s head all too easily. Now that she’s gone, I can’t feel nothing… Suddenly, Rowan felt very old. The kind of old that held a heaviness of body and a stagnancy of being. She wasn’t old enough to feel this way, not like the other fey who had seen so many more winters in their years, but ancient, like something that knew how to feel once, but time swallowed all of the emotions up, all of the nuance, on the long parade from birth to forever.
“Do you ever feel old?” she asked him, taking the whiskey back for another swig. The pair of them, drinking their troubles deeper into oblivion, the only skill set they had. The only one readily available for people like them. At the very least, they had each other, and that small thread was something to cling to, however small. He might not understand the whole of her troubles, but he understood the price paid for what they were paid for. How they never really stopped paying for it and all the money in the world didn’t rectify it. Ro knew why she did it; she lacked the whole of a choice. “Why do you stay a Shadow?” she asked.
She knew why he became one. What she currently couldn’t fathom was why he stayed. Or maybe he’d made a peace with this all that she still had such tension with. “Never fixed properly.” That was an interesting thought, enough so to echo it. She wracked her brain; they’d assumed the decline of life span and magic and such was natural evolution, something the Seelie staved off by rarely interbreeding, but what if something had been broken long before either Adare or Lacha had claimed the throne? What if it was something in Celia and Titania’s rule, when things seemed to shift? Maybe there was a clue there.
“Shit, I suppose it is.” Rowan dropped the train of thought; her head hurt. Her heart hurt. Her body hurt. She wasn’t going to solve the Court’s issues on the bed drowning herself in whiskey. There was part of her, the part of her that still belonged to Caora, that still wanted the memory of her lover to be proud of her, to see her using more than her strength, the way she’d wanted when Ro was grooming for Consort. But that wasn’t her life any more. She was an Archfey and she could give advice when asked, but beyond that—not technically her problem.
He glanced down at her, not answering what he assumed was a rhetorical question. If Rowan wanted to keep a woman, she could...she’d done it before. It wasn’t exactly her fault that the relationship ended. Part of him was surprised by how deeply loyal his partner still was to their queen after how all of that played out, but they didn’t really talk about it. It was as taboo a topic as his family. They both knew what had happened, it didn’t need to be discussed further.
Do you ever feel old? Why do you stay a shadow? They were very different questions but had similar answers. He’d grown up too fast, lost too much too young. He didn’t know how to do anything else. “Yeah...I feel old. But blowing shit up helps me recapture my youth,” he teased. It wasn’t the real reason he stayed a shadow, but it was a perk. “What else am I gonna do? I’ve got a specific skill set and I’m good at it. Not as good as you, maybe, but I don’t see anyone else lining up to take our places. Even if I wanted to retire, which I don’t, I wouldn’t leave the court vulnerable. I’ve got your back, Ro. Always. Just like I know you have mine. I’m gonna trade that in for...what?”
He sighed, wondering if Rowan was considering retirement now that the magic seemed to have abandoned them. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the job alone, but he didn’t really want to. He’d never really admit it to anyone, even the woman beside him, but he didn’t want to lose the connection they had. It wasn’t his job to fix the magic, he had no idea how to do it, but suddenly it felt as though he had to find a way to do just that if he wanted to keep his life the way he liked it.
“Fuck. This is a goddamned mess, isn’t it? Quit hogging the whiskey.”
