Golden Fool (Tawny Man, #2)

by Robin Hobb

To recognize you are the source of your own loneliness is not a cure for it. But it is a step toward seeing that it is not inevitable, and that such a choice is not irrevocable.

“Go after him. Don’t let him close himself off from you. You should know by now how easy it is to lose a person, just by letting someone walk away from you.”

At the heart of my discontent, I wanted to be in love with someone the way I had been that first time. I wanted someone I could touch and be held by, someone who made everything else in the world more significant simply by her existence.

“You know, I like you better with brown eyes. Much more becoming than the blue ones Paragon has.”

I felt him hit that barrier like a rabbit finding the length of the snare. Like a rabbit, he struggled against the choking restriction of my command. But unlike a rabbit, I felt him, even in his panic and outrage, consider the type of stricture it was. He acted swift as thought. He lifted his head, and almost like a tracing finger, I felt him follow the noose back to me. He severed it.

“I love you,” he said quietly. “I set no boundaries on my love. None at all. Do you understand me?”

But I can’t let you walk away and think I’ve forgotten everything you taught me. I haven’t. But I have to find my own life here, and sometimes the things you taught me just don’t seem to fit with how everyone else thinks. Sometimes the things you taught me don’t seem to work here. But I’m trying, Tom. I’m trying.”

Then Hap found the words for both of us. “I love you, Tom. I’ll keep trying.”

When people have that much history together, we tend to take everything for granted. We accept as given the faults as well as the graces.

The old man, the golden lord, the Prince, and the idiot stared down at me, and in their gazes awe mingled with fear and satisfaction vied with regret. Thus was Dutiful’s coterie formed,

How strange to be loved simply for who I was.

“You said once that I might call you ‘Beloved,’ if I no longer wished to call you ‘Fool.’ ” I took a breath. “Beloved, I have missed your company.”

Perhaps having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes.