Blood Marriage

Nineteen: In Which Florian Remembers

Xavier only left her alone when he was called away for a meeting about the upcoming ball. Unfortunately, that meant that Alice hadn't had too much time to read the journal, but she'd had enough to skim the important parts.

Cloak around her shoulders to conceal the book, now she made her way out to the gardens. The air was a little chilly, the last bits of summer finally giving way to a crisp mountain fall. Soon, the leaves would start to change, painting the woods with beautiful reds and oranges all across the Appalachians.

Alice aimed to see those leaves from Howard's Knob, tucked safe and warm in her own bed, the Shadow Court far behind her.

Florian was already waiting by the large oak tree that had become their meeting spot. Alice tucked herself in between the roots on the far side of the trunk, concealed from the view of anyone who might be watching from the palace windows, and pulled out the book.

"What did you find?" Florian asked excitedly.

"A few things. Seems like he kept the book to help him remember stuff, which..." she paused, tilting her head.

"What?" He sat down on the grass beside her, just close enough to make her think that he was really there in corporeal form.

It was nice. If she didn't think about it too hard, it felt a bit more like a picnic than a serious meeting.

"I don't know. It feels weird. I still don't get why he has so much trouble remembering," Alice said with a sigh. "Even Hart doesn't have that much trouble, and he's way older than Xavier."

"How... how old is he?" Florian asked, eyebrows raised.

"Uh... old," Alice said vaguely. "Thousands. Double digit thousands."

"Shit," Florian said, blinking.

She couldn't help but giggle. That might have been the first time she'd ever heard him curse, and the sheer surprise on his face was a rare look. It melted into a smile when he heard her laughing, though, and he laughed along with her.

Soon they were both smiling, the grim atmosphere lifting from their shoulders like removing a heavy cloak. That small moment of light was enough to give her the courage to face the next few days, to breathe easy for an hour or two, to keep going and keep planning for the future.

"Alright, alright," Florian sighed, still laughing. "Tell me what you found. I know you're limited on time."

Slowly, Alice went through the details of Xavier's history based on what she'd read.

Xavier started his journey as a human. By the time he'd written the journal, he wasn't sure where in the world he'd been born, but he knew that, at one time, he was a human man. His family passed away in a plague that ravaged his home when he was still very young, and watching their slow deaths led to a lifelong obsession with never experiencing the same thing himself. Ever.

At first, he'd simply searched for means to keep himself healthy, to keep himself young. Then, eventually, he stumbled upon magic— real magic, true magic, Other magic.

Alice wasn't sure how one found Other magic before the Appearances. She'd have to ask Granny, as her bloodline stretched farther back than Alice's did. Xavier had clearly found it, though, and he seemed to have learned about it through a woman named Falina.

She was his mentor, and eventually his lover. Alice was unable to tell from the tone if his relationship with her was really love, though. There was sex involved, of course, but that wasn't love. It reeked of a mutual obsession, of wanting someone to be with you when the rest of the world fell away, of wanting someone else willing to do absolutely anything to get there.