Her Secret

Tito closed and locked the door behind her with a soft click. With her head in her hands she sank to the dusty floor and felt horribly ill. The memory of Saberial's skull slamming against the cobblestone as he was struck repeated vividly in her mind, she could almost feel the whiplash herself. Over and over again it burned into her, making her ears ring. He'd deserved it of course. He was a freewheeling, thieving, con man after all. But it hurt anyway.

She remembered his soft skin against her body and the whispered words they'd shared years ago. Neither of them had wanted to leave. But they couldn't have what they wanted. She shouldn't have let him lead her as far as she did. But she had. And she had buried it. But now that blasted fraud had shown up in her life again and forced her to remember every memory she'd burned. Every moment she would still swear never happened. 

He'd come. All at once he'd been there. Caught in the act of petty swindling and on the run. Then shot, right when she and Peter had happened to be passing by. It had seemed to happen in silence, like in a bubble of time magic slowing down the world around her and blocking out all noise. Saberial's wide eyes meeting hers as he fell. Eyes full of fear. Desperately reaching out to her.

She hadn't been able to keep her composure. She'd grabbed him and sobbed at her husband like a fool. Pleading with him to not let him die. Criminal or no. She had been forced to admit that once long ago they'd been friends. And even though he was a criminal now, she couldn't watch him die.

Peter had listened. Oh gods he'd listened. And he wasn't even suspicious. Something writhed inside of her. Why couldn't he have been just a LITTLE suspicious? She felt like a worm on the ground wiggling about. Wishing a bird would come along and peck at her. Peter had raised his voice. Peter had struck her before too. She dreaded what he might do if he knew that inconsequential con-artist was their oldest son's actual father. And yet at the same time she desperately wanted him to know. To scream at her, to beat her, to expel her from their house. 

But then she thought of her children. Their son Pete wasn't the only one. Life could be scary, she could feel sick at the things that Peter was doing to colonize the land he had won in the war. But if she caved and she ran, what would happen to her children? She couldn't do that. 

She thought about Saberial, likely beaten in a prison somewhere. And a different kind of dread came instead. What if he tried to find her again? What if he survived or escaped and showed up in her window. She couldn't let him back into her life, she couldn't! It was dead, it was done! A thing of the past. Something no one else should know. She would guard that secret all her life. She would guard it WITH her life. And if that bastard thought he could crash back in and make everything about him again, he had another thing coming.

THIS was her place. The wife of a war hero. A duchess. Standing beside her husband as he tamed a wild land. Raising respectable and powerful children. Commanding a household. She was not the young woman he had charmed with adventure and postulates to morality. This was not an age for morality. This was an age of war. They all had to rise to the roles their country had handed them. He had rejected that. And so he would suffer the consequences.

"No." Tito decided. "No, I won't let him back in. If he shows up again, I'm handing him straight to Peter. Then he'll finally succumb to the consequences he's been running from." He would not dig up and throw about her secret. It was one she would take to her grave, clasped tight against her heart in her cold boney fingers.