Osian swallowed roughly, jolting in a put-off cough.
Meilyr handed him a fresh tisane. ‘I had to tell the truth.’
The prince made a small, dismissive gesture. ‘I understand. I do not have to like it, but I understand.’
Meilyr set the emptied cup aside.
Osian said, ‘I have been wondering, why is it called fox’s tears?’
‘It is translated from Cyngaleg. The plant features in an old story of two lovers, a man and a fox spirit, who are betrayed by someone close to them.’
He thought again of the glimpsed fox in the gardens, and the overwhelming dread that had engulfed him.
‘A happy story?’ Osian asked, mildly sardonic.
Only then did Meilyr register what he had done. ‘I… could not say.’
There was something sad in Osian as he weighed a decision and made it. ‘Before, you said you had been reminded of Cyngaleg stories, when we investigated the alder.’
It was a gentle press, a desire without demand. A space on the bed beside him, where Meilyr had already settled so many times.
‘Such stories,’ Meilyr said slowly, ‘are forbidden to be schooled or spoken.’
Osian smiled softly. ‘What if I were to offer a royal pardon? Indefinite.’
Meilyr’s heart thumped.
Osian’s sadness took on more definition. ‘My mother told me some, gifted to her during her stays here when she was a child. I wish I could remember far more than I do. Though it is not fair, I think, that I should have learned such things in the safety of a castle, whilst the people these stories belong to were forbidden them.’
Meilyr perched on the covers, disbelieving.
Osian bared yet more of himself. ‘I am thankful,’ he said, ‘that you know some of them. Thankful we could not take them from you fully.’
Meilyr plucked at the stitching of his tunic to keep from reaching for him. ‘I had no idea, about your mother.’
‘I think you can imagine why.’
He could. Sympathies for Cyngalon in a queen of Khaim…
‘My parents—’ Meilyr’s voice caught, and he swallowed. ‘Stories handed down to children… Some are not so different to those told in Khaim, I think.’
‘But some are.’ That openness again, should Meilyr choose to step into it, like Osian’s hand offering to lead him into the next step of a dance. ‘In fact, I remember some being quite terrifying.’
A very bad idea unfurled inside Meilyr, but with it came a strange exhilaration. Hewantedto share with Osian, as devastating as that was. ‘Do you happen to know the tale of Blodeuwedd?’
Osian’s eyes lit up, brighter than any dawn. ‘Barely…’
‘Once,’ Meilyr began, ‘before the Otherworld drew away to the west…’
He told the tale of Blodeuwedd: of her birth through the blood of aonce-infamoussorcerer, enspelled with flowers of meadowsweet,broom and oak. Created to be the bride of a cursed hero, she fell inlove with another, was tricked and conspired with him to kill herhusband, and ultimately met a bitter end: not death but worse. Cursed bythe sorcerer, trapped in the shape of an owl, her lover murdered beforeher eyes.
It was little more than a fable: blood and flowers. He could feel his voice take on the careful cadence of his parents’ retellings, the words swimming in Cyngaleg beneath the surface. Words passed from grandmother, to mother, to son.
His heart ached in a grief too large for his body.
Osian focused on him intently. There was no suspicion, only his seascape eyes, fixed.
In the aftermath, the fire crackled. It had begun to rain.