All the Hidden Paths (The Tithenai Chronicles Book 2)

by Foz Meadows

For as long as I’d known of my preference for men, I’d understood myself as a kind of slowly unfolding tragedy. I might fuck and dally and even love in secret, but there could be no true future in any of it, not really. Being openly married to Cae felt surreal at the best of times, as though I was perpetually one wrong move away from ruining everything. So when I’d learned of the assassin, a part of me had simply accepted it as inevitable—the universe course-correcting against the possibility of my happiness—and I, without even realising, had resigned myself to it.

“But I want you to be happy, Velasin. I want you to fight to be happy. Imagine what you’d be saying to me, if our positions were reversed!” “That’s different,” I mumbled. “You’re you.”

“Does the shape of the saddle they’ve forced you to not chafe, yaseran?” For a moment, Cae looked angry; then his expression smoothed into his bland soldier’s mask. “Personally,” he drawled, “I don’t find being ridden a hardship.”

Markel’s expression sharpened. Eyes hard, he wrote: I WASN’T BORN WITH A SLATE AND PEN. I NEED NO LESSONS IN HOW MEN TAKE, OR FROM WHO, OR WHY.

Oh, he thought, trying very hard not to trip over his own feet at the realisation. Oh, I really do love him.

“I can feel the pair of you mother-henning me from here,” Vel called from the bathroom door. “It smacks of conspiracy.” “You’ll be cared about and you’ll like it!” Cae called back.

I had yearned for love, had hoped for, cherished and feared it in nearly equal measure, but all of that paled before my sudden certainty that, if my heart was a ship, Caethari had become its harbour.

“Answer me this: what is Ralia like?” “In general, or for men like me?” “Both. Either.” I stared at the floor. “I don’t know,” I said, pulse jumping oddly. “It’s not … what else do I have to compare it to, really? This is the only other place I’ve ever lived, and I’ve hardly been here long.” I fell silent, but Naza waited me out as I drained my cup, more swiftly than was sensible on a half-empty stomach, and eventually, without meaning to, I spoke, the wine-loosened words tumbling out of me like marbles from a pouch. “What’s Ralia like? It’s a place. It’s home. It was never home. It’s warm fires in winter, apples in summer, wine in spring, cider in autumn and dancing always. It’s beautiful and clever and violent and cruel. I love it, and it hates me, and I wish I hated it too, but I don’t. I’m not sure I can, without hating myself. I do hate myself. Ralia is a fist raised against itself in defence of itself. It’s my mother. It’s people, the same as anywhere else. Just people, and things, and the stories they use to justify treating the one as the other. I don’t ever want to go back, and I hate that I can’t. I do want to go back. Or maybe I just want to want to, I don’t know. It’s all the songs I’ve ever learned. It’s the only place I know how to belong, and I’ve never belonged there once.” My eyes stung, and I scrubbed at them angrily. “What the fuck kind of question is that, anyway? Ralia is Ralia. Leave it at that.”

Vel put a hand over his eyes. “Not listening!” “Just accept it, Vel,” said Cae, fondly amused. “Other people think you’re competent.” “I’m not competent,” Vel grouched. “I’m a scandalous reprobate.” But he lowered his hand, a touch of heat in his cheeks.

“You think I don’t love Caethari,” he said. “But I do. I love him so much I hardly know what to do with it.” Vel laughed, the sound so fragile and perfect that Cae’s heart clenched in his chest. “I think I’ve been falling in love with him since the day I first rode into Qi-Katai. And if you hurt him—if you put so much as a scratch on him—so help me, I will burn your clan to ash.”

“Even if you’re right, whatever good might come of it later, imagining a meal that my grandchildren might one day eat at a table that isn’t yet built won’t fill my stomach now.