The Worm in Every Heart

“You’ll stay, surely—”

“Regrettably not,” I replied. “I have a matter in the old wing—work of a rather unstable nature—which requires my immediate attention. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course I do,” he said. “ . . . Mikela.”

* * *

You found me in the gallery, a refuge I chose not only for its fascinating row of family portraits—each dark oil with its own little plaque, Kosowan name and date of birth—but because its shuttered window looked directly down on that of the Great Hall. Through it, I had watched your conversation with Rebecca—that delicate duel between light and dark, with Ivan looking on, drunken and faintly afraid.

It was true that I hated him a bit less now, having seen how hopelessly he fawned on you. But I cannot honestly say I liked him any better.

And what an idiot he must be, I thought for the thousandth time, not to see how much she cared for him—and how little you cared at all.

I stepped away from the window as you entered, pointing at the wall beside me.

“Your family,” I said.

“Yes.”

I pointed again. “Your father.”

“Whom I never knew, yes.”

I traced the gleam of paint to form a cheek, a jaw, a dark grey eye—and closed my own.

“You are not God,” I began. “But you created me. As your father was created by God, yet created another—you.” I opened my eyes. “So you are my father.”

* * *

And he smiled, so happy to have found me another title at last. While I smiled back, so unaccountably, witlessly happy . . . to bear one.

In the weeks to come, Grendel listened again: He read what I gave him, wrote what I set him, did what I told him. But it felt far too good to be teaching him once more, because there was a hint of the old look in his intent gaze—that look I knew well, yet could never bring myself to call by name. A little like worship, but a little more like love: The kind of love you hold for some pretty but intimately disposable thing, made all the more keen for knowing it won’t outlast the strain of your loving it. And with a pushing toward something unreachable behind it, as always—some nameless hurt that I could never diagnose, or salve.

Oh, how I hated how my heart clenched and thudded to see it.

4.

“You keep something up there in the old wing,” Ivan began, one evening. “Something which fascinates you beyond all else. Do you deny it?”

Already drunk, he swayed uncomfortably close to my desk, another half-full glass of brandy sloshing in one hand.

I shrugged. “Why should I?”

“Then deny this, cousin: Amidst such fascination, I find you have no more time for me.”

“My work requires—”

“Ah, yes.” He turned away, eyes straying as if magnetized, back to the mounted duelling pistols. “Your holy work, which I pay for. Whatever it is.”

“I’ve outlined my ambitions to you more than once, cousin.”

“Who is he, Mikela?” Ivan asked.

I had no real reply for such an implication, not that it merited one.

Ivan sighed to himself. Then, softly: “I almost begin to think that you no longer love me.”

“You are a married man now, Ivan,” I reminded him.