Once Upon a Time

第28章 Chapter (1)

Five months later

Jamil was smiling a little as he opened the door to the gestation chamber—he couldn’t wait to see his daughter—and he froze in surprise upon seeing his brother seated in front of the gestation cube.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just came to say hi to my favorite niece,” Seyn said, turning to smile at him.

Jamil snorted and sat down next to him. “She’s your only niece,” he said, lightly touching the thick walls of the womb with his fingers. “Good morning. How is my beautiful girl today?”

The baby didn’t react outwardly, the womb’s walls too thick for her to hear him, but Jamil could feel her, faintly, and her emotions shifted into the feelings of contentment and security. They already shared a rudimentary familial bond. It was weak, but it was there and it was getting stronger every day as her brain and telepathic abilities developed. Despite being just five-months-old, she was already as developed as a seven-month-old fetus. That was the advantage of artificial gestationpared to a natural pregnancy that lasted ten Calluvian months: the early stages of gestation were elerated. His daughter was already three months away from birth, and she was already a tiny person—a tiny person who already knew loss.

Jamil looked at her wistfully, wondering how acutely his daughter could feel the absence of her other parent. Calluvian children were all born with rudimentary telepathic bonds to their parents. If she could already feel Jamil, she could likely already feel that there was nothing but silence at the other end of her bond to her other parent. Sometimes he thought he could feel her confusion, her sadness.

Catching Seyn’s curious eyes on him, Jamil schooled his features into a neutral expression, wondering what his brother had seen. “Sometimes I wonder if she feels lonely in there.” He chuckled, running his hand through his hair. Gods, he hated lying, hated pretending in front of his own family, but Seyn had no idea that the baby wasn’t Mehmer’s. No one besides the Queen could know that. It wasn’t that Jamil didn’t trust Seyn, but… Jamil wasn’t blind to his brother’s faults. Seyn was a good kid, but he was the baby of the family: spoiled, sharp-tongued, and a bit self-centered. He also had quite a temper on him. Jamil didn’t trust him not to blurt it out unthinkingly, in the middle of some argument, in the earshot of strangers. One thoughtless word, one rumor, was all it would take to destroy his daughter’s future. Bastards could rule, but it was a shameful brand Jamil’s daughter would never be able to erase. No. He could lie to Seyn. He would play the role Seyn expected from him.

Besides, the role of a grieving bondmate who was looking at the child of a man he had lost wasn’t exactly hard to play.

Jamil felt his lips curl into a mirthless smile. His chest felt tight, his stomach turning. “I know it’s ridiculous. We all were born that way, and we turned out fine.” His voice sounded off, strained even to his own ears. He wondered if Seyn would notice.

“Define fine,” Seyn said with a chuckle.

Jamil found himself smiling faintly. Of course Seyn hadn’t noticed. His brother considered himself observant, but in reality he saw the world through his own emotions and perceptions. And in Seyn’s mind, Jamil was his old, very proper and boring brother, incapable of deceit.

It was almost funny.

Silence fell over the room.

“Maybe it isn’t that ridiculous,” Seyn said at last, his eyes on his niece. “Maybe we aren’t much for physical touch because we got used to being isolated from before our birth.”

Jamil shrugged, hoping it wasn’t obvious that his heart wasn’t really in the conversation. “Maybe.”

He watched his daughter, sendingfort and love through their familial bond. Her tiny, wrinkled face turned toward him, as if she could sense where he was, her arms jerking.

Jamil’s chest swelled with love, his throat closing up. He was so glad his mother had all but bullied him into having a child. Had it been left to him, he would have never done it, feeling too guilty for even entertaining having a child with a man who wasn’t Mehmer.

Jamil grimaced at the thought. There were quite a few things he felt guilty about, but his baby girl wasn’t one of them. She was perfect the way she was. He would do anything for her.

“In any case, the point is moot,” Jamil said, watching his daughter play with her legs. “I’m lucky that I can have her at all—that Mehmer preserved his gic material just months before he…” The lie rolled off his tongue smoothly enough after months of telling it. Jamil didn’t even feel guilty about that white little lie anymore. Not only was it necessary to keep their House’s reputation unblemished, it was necessary to protect his daughter. Jamil would like to think Mehmer would have understood. He was a good man. Had been.

Wincing, Seyn sent him a wave of reassurance andfort. Perhaps his voice hadn’t been as firm as he had thought.

Sighing, Jamil reached out to his little brother through their familial bond. “I’m fine, kid.”

Seyn hugged him back telepathically, his touch tentative and a bit awkward. As the baby of the family, Seyn wasn’t used to givingfort, and the mere fact that he was attempting to do it was as adorable as it was uncalled for.

Jamil reinforced his mental shields, focusing his thoughts on Mehmer.

“Are you, really?” Seyn said, his voice tinged with genuine concern.

Jamil shrugged, feeling a pang of guilt. “I still reach for his mind sometimes, but it’s getting easier, I suppose. The mind adepts said the bond would heal in time and all I would feel is absence.” That part was true at least, even though it had been months since he’d last seen a mind adept. After Rohan’s strange warning about them, Jamil couldn’t help but feel wary. He had tried to research the ancient Order but found nothing incriminating. The monks of the High Hronthar were peaceful learners of the mind arts, who historically stayed away from the petty politics of the twelve royal houses of Calluvia. It made no sense that they would be involved in Mehmer’s death.

“I still don’t get why they don’t remove the bond from your mind,” Seyn grumbled half-heartedly.

“It’s against the law,” Jamil said. “Besides, the High Adept said the bond has been in my mind too long and it isn’t safe to remove it. It’s interwoven with everything by now.” The High Adept had really said that right after Mehmer’s death, but Jamil couldn’t help but wonder if it was still true. Lately he could barely feel his bond to Mehmer. Only when he took time to meditate could he see the pitiful remnants of his torn bond woven around his telepathic core. The sight was unsettling. He could have never imagined that less than a year after Mehmer’s death, he would barely be able to feel the bond between them—the bond they had shared for most of their lives. It felt like an end of something. An end of an era.

“And to be honest…” Jamil said, watching his daughter, a daughter who would look nothing like Mehmer. “I want to keep it. I still feel him that way, a little. Like an echo. I don’t want to pretend he never existed. He did.” The pitiful remnant of their marriage bond was the only thing he still had of Mehmer. It was bad enough that Mehmer would never be the man he would see when he looked at his daughter.

Jamil cut that train of thought off.

“You still didn’t tell me why you were hiding here,” he said, turning to Seyn.

His brother blinked innocently, putting on a confused look that he probably thought was convincing. “I wasn’t hiding.”

Jamil snorted. Did Seyn think he was born yesterday? “And I suppose you weren’t declining all invitations, either.”

Seyn winced, looking genuinely surprised.

Jamil was amused despite himself. Had Seyn thought that Jamil was so absorbed in his grief that he’d failed to notice that his normally very sociable little brother was avoiding society like the plague? Jamil might be rarely attending social functions himself, but it was one of his jobs as the Crown Prince to make sure his family wasn’t the subject of malicious gossip. He closely worked with their press officer, and she had recently informed him that people were starting to wonder why Prince Seyn had turned into a hermit.

“Just not feeling it,” Seyn said, avoiding his gaze.

“You?”

Laughing, Seyn rolled his eyes. “I can get tired of socializing, too.” He went silent for a moment. “I had a fight with Ksar,” he admitted at last, scowling. “Now I’m avoiding him, because I won’t be responsible for my actions if I see his stupid face.”

Jamil suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. He should have known. Seyn was absolutely impossible when it came to his betrothed. “For heaven’s sake, Seyn. You should try harder to get along with your bondmate. Every relationship needs work, bond or no bond. Personally, I don’t get why you dislike him. He’s highly intelligent, and he’s perfectly reasonable and polite—”

“To you, maybe,” Seyn said with a scoff. “You’re the Crown Prince of our grand clan. He sees you as his equal.”

“Not really,” Jamil said, shaking his head. “His social standing is quite a bit higher domestically, and a lot higher in the intergalactic political scene. We aren’t really equals, so that can’t be why Ksar’ngh’chaali is perfectly civil to me.”

“It isn’t exactlyforting, you know,” Seyn muttered, scowling again.

Jamil chuckled and stood up. Grazing his fingers against the gestation cube’s outer wall, he turned to the door but then paused as he realized something. After Mehmer’s death, it had been hard for him to be around Seyn when his brother bitched and whined about his own bondmate, but now… there was no pain anymore. There was no envy.

The realization was hard to swallow, and Jamil pushed it out of his thoughts, to think about later.

“Everyone has their own version of the truth, brother,” he said softly, without looking at Seyn. “He’s not a petty man. Have you ever wondered why he treats you differently from others? Think about it.”

He strode out of the roo