17. Learn

Learn

Rose

Tristan’s lips brush across the top of my hand, sending a shiver through me. He’s always doing that, sending shivers through me with his words or his lips or his hands. “We’ll have dinner with my parents next clipse, and you’ll move in at the end of the quad.” We’re walking past the forum, but Tristan tugs me down the steps to the sunken walkway. The suns are low, evening creeping up on us.

It feels fast. The moments coursing together and slipping through my fingers like I’m trying to grasp the Maero rushing beside us. “Already?” I ask, breathless as he gathers me closer. A hand slips low behind my waist. The path is empty, most walkers migrating to the forum, a domus, or to the taverns, where Pater headed only moments ago.

“You don’t want to marry me, Rose?” Tristan whispers, his breath moving across my neck. He doesn’t wait for me to answer before he goes on. “I want to marry you. I want to make you mine in every way there is.”

His lips meet the tender spot below my ear, against my hairline, and I gasp. “I love you,” he murmurs. “I need you.” He kisses again, lower.

My cheeks heat. My skin blazes, bursting into flames beneath his touch. “Already?” I say again, looking around, but I’m not sure if it’s because I do or don’t want to be interrupted.

“Don’t you love me?” He says it like a plea, and I know I’m the one that’s broken here. I’ve never known love from a man. I’ve known what my pater gave to us, fists and shame, screams and cruel names.

Of course this pebbled skin, and this pulse thrumming through my veins is love.

Right?

“I love you,” I say. It doesn’t feel wrong, but it feels off. Like the first time I had to bake for Daisy and me, and I didn’t know to add salt to the dough. It was still good, still edible, but not quite right.

“You’re special, Rose. Different than any girl I’ve ever known. I know we’ll be good for each other.” He kisses my cheek, the press firm. “I know you were made for me.”

My smile does feel right. It belongs on my face the way the suns both belong in the sky, the way Daisy’s hair slips like silk between my fingers, the way it feels to wake up on our pallet warmed by her presence each morning.

“Daisy…” I whisper.

“What?” Tristan asks. Will he think I only said I loved him to get something in return?

“My sister,” I say. “I just worry about her.”

“Why?”

The question takes me by surprise and I don’t answer at first. I can’t answer honestly, but I won’t lie to my betrothed. “My pater can be… exacting.”

He nods. “Is she old enough to be wed?”

“Yes, she’ll be seventeen soon.” Sixteen was the age it was appropriate to marry. “Although, I’d love for her to have some more time to find a love match.”

“Like us,” he says, squeezing my hand.

“Like us,” I agree. “I wonder if we might have room for her? She can cook.” Not well. “And clean.” Passably better. “And she’s great at mending and sewing, so she could earn some money as a seamstress for the domus?” That part is wholly true.

“I’ll have to talk to my familia.” Tristan considers a moment, but the pause is familiar to me. It’s the intake of breath that comes before bad news, before disappointment. “We certainly have the room, but my pater often has to follow the politics of Divus.”

“Of course,” I agree.

“And coemptio was never in the plan for me. We expected a handsome dowry with my pater’s position.” I shiver with a different feeling now, the shame coating my skin. I thought the dowry didn’t matter to his familia. I’d be in the Sabines if not for Tristan, my hand reaching into an empty alley. Daisy and I have survived our entire lives with Pater, so what’s another few years for her? Or even a few quads until Tristan knows us better, understands.

“I’m sorry,” I say quickly, throat tightening. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful.”

He pushes a stray hair behind my ear. “It’s okay.” I can’t tell if he’s angry with me, his face impassive and composed. Fear coats my tongue and pricks behind my eyes, but I swallow the bitter taste of it down.

“I’m sorry, Tristan.”

“Look at me,” he says, and I do. “It’s okay, Rosebud.” He doesn’t smile, but his eyes search mine, like he’s trying to read the thoughts even I don’t know. Like he wants to see what’s written on the walls inside my mind. “Life is just different in the political sphere. We don’t always have the choice to do what we want.”

“Of course,” I say again.

“I already took a chance on you and your familia, and doing more might take time. I won’t forget your sister, but you’ll have to learn how things work.” I’m already nodding, knowing that his familia is worlds away from mine.

And he still wants to marry me. “I’ll learn,” I agree.

Tristan kisses my cheek again, as if he’s dismissing me, and the butterflies that usually reside in my chest have stopped fluttering, the stillness suffocating.

I can’t lose him. I can’t lose my chance to be free of Pater. My chance for love.

My chance for a better future, for me and for Daisy.

My voice shakes as I say again, “I promise, I’ll learn.”