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Carter didn't know where she was. The ceiling was a pale cream with gold-leaf moldings around the edges. It smelled like fresh air, moist, like spring in the swamp, but also ocean-scented. There was a diaphanous curtain billowing. It wasn't the fucking godforsaken desert, that was for certain. But it wouldn't be. The memories came back, the woman and child, the blazing hot metal of the machine gun in her hands, the barked orders.
Carter reached up and touched her face, it was tender, but neat stitching ran down it, slicked with a gel that made her not flinch away at the touch. Slowly, she sat up. Every inch of her body hurt. She gasped, and her head spun as she moved. She collapsed over her knees when she came upright. Gasping and desperate, she didn't notice the woman seated carefully on the ornate armchair across from her until she spoke.
"You know, when I heard you'd gone into the army, I thought you'd gotten taller."
Rosalinda Maria Montoya-Fioré sat across from her, large as life and just as dark-eyed, poised, and perfectly put-together, and Carter Mason pressed her face farther into her knees and groaned. There was a laugh in response, not the joyful one she'd wrung out of Rosie once upon a time--so once upon a time that some nights, lying on her bedroll in a tent filled with sand and scorpions, she thought it was a fantasy, some stupid adventure she'd dreamed up as a kid--but a wry grown-up laugh, the kind that had once made her want to shake this girl. Live a little. You're a kid! But Rosalinda Fioré had never really been a kid, any more than Carter had been one after her mom had died.
Carter also knew what the laugh meant. You're the same, but that made her bristle, nails clawing into the blankets, teeth gritting hard against each other. She threw up her head and glared, teeth bared, face wild. She knew she had a babyface, but now it was scarred and swollen, now she knew how to look mad, she knew how to let every ounce of rage show. "What the fuck are you doing here?" she hissed between gritted teeth--but then the scent, the room, of course. Costa Luna. "What the fuck am I doing here?"
Rosalinda had risen, and she looked down on Carter, always down, always from on high. Princess, now queen, she did not crawl on the earth like the worm Carter did. She did not sink lower and lower into the shit. "Just know you are safe here," she said. "Costa Luna has no extradition treaty with the US."
For a moment, Carter could see her face and couldn’t look away, and it was a blessing--a strange one, to see how Rosalinda’s jawline had grown square and solid, to see how she held her shoulders back, not to push her chest out or to be ladylike, but because she was strong. It was funny. Carter was the one who'd joined the army, but Rosalinda was the one who'd grown strong.
She left then, the queen of Costa Luna, disappearing once more from Carter's world, leaving only her scent, and the bitter lump of pain and guilt in Carter's gut that she curled herself around and tried to soothe by simply holding.
#
It was quite a few days before Carter was mobile enough to walk in the gardens. Shameful really, because she'd only taken a beating. It wasn't like she was really wounded, not like some of her buddies--who she'd never see again. But her hips hurt when she walked, her knee kept buckling, so it was a while and it was with a stick that Señor Elegante brought her, stumping around and prodding things like a grouchy old man in his garden.
Sometimes she suspected she'd been born to be a grouchy old man.
Carter might have been a physical wreck, but she wasn't deaf, and she could hear the gossip in the palace. Nothing about her. No one cared about ex-Lieutenant Carter Mason ( an ex-parrot she couldn't help but hear in her head. if she was an ex-lieutenant, she ought to be dead). They just spoke of Queen Rosalinda, and the alliance she had made with Costa del Sol, the hard judicial choices, the way she had knelt beside the school that collapsed in the earthquake and wept for the children who had died. She should marry, they said. They were not worried about an heir, apparently Rosalinda was grooming a selection of wise young people to take over after her. But she should marry, they said, because she was sad, and they would like to see laughter once more in her eyes.
Everyone sane was sad, Carter thought. Love didn't change that. It just opened you up for more grief, for more moments of sudden awareness of all you'd lost and that feeling of vertigo--emotional vertigo--where what was up was down and the sides too were switched out.
But the gardens were beautiful. Probably expensive upkeep, she thought, but she'd only seen a few gardeners here and there, and many of the plants and bushes seemed to be old growth, carefully tended, not dug up and replaced on a whim. Some, like the particolored rhododendron, had grown out of all control, mounting up into plant-hills, bursting with giant flower heads. Roaming around, Carter pushed between the branches and found a small bench overlooking the cliffs that fell down to the sea. All you could see from here was cliffs, no houses, no boats, no palace. It was calming. So Carter often went there, just to sit and think.
Of course, it turned out to be Rosalinda's quiet place too. She came upon Carter sitting there, and paused by the rhododendrons. "My apologies for disturbing you." She turned to go.
"No." It was all Carter could manage, and it was so wrong. She hated herself for it. You did not tell the queen of Costa Luna no .
Rosalinda hesitated. Then she turned back. "As you wish." They sat on opposite ends of the bench, gazing out to sea. Neither spoke. Neither got much peace out of it, Carter guessed. But the next time they both ended up there together they didn't have to speak at all. And yet, the lack of speaking felt like an empty space, a 'didn't' or a 'should have' that would become guilt in Carter's bed late at night.
The third time, Carter broke the silence.
"I always thought I'd follow in my dad's footsteps," she said, her tone flat, empty. "ROTC, army, muster out, get headhunted by the PPP. Guess I'm just a fuck-up."
"Making a moral choice isn't being a fuck-up," Rosalinda said.
It no longer sounded absurd for her to say fuck. Carter supposed she said it often enough these days. "Was it? Or was I just so pissed off at his bullying, his bullshit, that I fragged him." Carter went quiet. "Does it make up for the other times when I didn't stop him?"
Rosalinda shrugged.
Carter stared at her. "Oh. Helpful."
The queen of Costa Luna raised an eyebrow. "I'm not your therapist or your priest. If you want them, I can find them for you. But I can neither offer understanding or expiation. Particularly when I am still looking for both myself."
"What are you, then?" Carter snapped. "Why am I here?"
Rosalinda looked at her for a long time, and Carter felt more like a worm under her eyes than she had for eight years as "bait girl." "I thought, perhaps, that I was your friend."
#
At some point, Carter felt strong enough to bother the gardeners for work to do. She liked that kind of work, the earthy shitty scent of mulch, the crunch of soil under a spade, the careful arrangement of rocks into a new wall around a raised bed. She did not meet Rosalinda often, but when she did, they nodded politely. There was a kindness in being polite, in expressing care, in meaning it. Carter had forgotten that after too many years among young men who could only check on each other in the most backhanded of ways, for whom politeness was an embarrassment, and cruelty was the currency of belonging. It was good to practice once more looking people in the eye, reaching out to steady their load if it wobbled, offering humility in exchange for this gift she'd been given. She caught Rosalinda watching her, as she helped the most elderly gardener balance his wheelbarrow, as she thanked the nurse who dressed her still raw wounds for her services, as she offered care.
It was a while later that Carter spotted the shiver in Rosalinda's shoulders as she sat on the bench and wrapped her own military cut jacket around the queen's shoulders.
When they came back, still quiet, but side by side, with Rosalinda still wrapped in Carter's coat, there was a look from Señor Elegante. Then there were murmurs in the halls and in Carter's room-- finally rumors about the disgraced US Lieutenant, about the sad queen who had never had a male companion, and perhaps that was in fact important.
It wasn't to Carter. Just silly gossip. What she did care about was the way Rosalinda had begun speaking when they were together, offering quiet comments on her day, on the struggles she faced, on the sorrows she carried. Carter listened, and sometimes she let her fingers curl around Rosalinda's hand. It was more than she deserved.
This time, when she spoke, it wasn't a forced confession. "I'd like to be able to help with that," she said. It was a simple thing, an address to a small audience that Rosalinda didn't feel comfortable giving. It wasn't an offer to do it for her, just a wish to be able to lift the cares and struggles from her shoulders.
"Thank you," Rosalinda said, pressing her hand lightly. "It will be fine." But as they sat to look out at the sea, the queen rested her head on Carter's shoulder and Carter felt her chest swell as tight as an overfilled balloon.
Then, almost without noticing, Carter was in the crisp grey of the Costa Luna uniform, a gold-hilted sword at her side, a commlink in her ear and Rosalinda only a few inches away. For a long time she had not been certain if she could ever handle a weapon again, but for Rosalinda, she could draw one. It was soothing, to know that the marks of Cain she'd left on herself were ones that could be turned into defense of someone worth defending, could be used as protection, as love.
After a grand ball, they sat on the steps of the empty ballroom, finishing off the last of the sangria punch. Carter teased Rosalinda lightly about still wearing pink, about how silly the men seeking her attention were.
Rosalinda laughed, wide mouth, all teeth and squinted eyes and full abandon, and it took the breath right out of Carter's chest.
"You have an escaped mint leaf---" Rosalinda's fingertips brushed over Carter's cheek, and without thinking, as they touched Carter's lips, she kissed them. The kiss lasted for moment of extended, limitless time. It was broken by the caterers. Carter didn't think either of them could have broken it.
#
Major Mason showed up in Costa Luna unannounced. Everything was announced in Costa Luna, but he was waiting at the breakfast table when Carter came down, in black tac gear and a faded expression.
His hair had gone grey in the time she'd been in the army, and the dour lines around his mouth were deeper than the crinkles around his eyes. They didn't speak.
Carter wondered if growing up with only a dad who didn't talk about his feelings made it even harder for her to say what she felt, but though he hadn't spoken he'd been free with hugs, free with affectionate slaps on the back and always calling her 'pal.' He'd called her Lieutenant instead for a little while, proud as punch. Now that pride was gone.
He passed her a clipping instead of speaking. The US presses for Costa Luna to extradite ex-Lieutenant Carter Mason for court martial. If extradition does not occur, Mason will be tried in absentia and likely sentenced to death for her crime of murdering a superior officer. Trade agreements between Costa Luna and allies of the US have become fraught over this conflict, and the small crescent country is feeling the hardship.
"You know I don't want to see you in trouble for this," Major Mason said. "But I figured she might not be keeping you up to date with this stuff."
Carter nodded. "Thanks, Dad."
What was the job of a princess? Carter sometimes tried to remember what Rosie had said all those years ago, back when she hadn't yet been a queen and discovered that those tasks were different and weighed so much more. Turn the other cheek, remain dignified at all times, protect your people. Rosalinda and the people of Costa Luna weren't her people, and yet they'd kept her, they'd looked after her. They'd looked after her.
"What are you doing?" The words were harsh, not a question, an accusation, and Carter looked up from where she was packing up her duffle bag. She didn't need much. They'd take it all away when she got there anyhow, but she wanted to go through the few things she'd collected while here and maybe leave them for the people she’d grown friendly with.
Rosalinda was in the door, her shoulders back, fists balled, her dark dress a long splash of silk, no trace of laughter on her face or in her eyes. "When I allowed your father to come here, I expressly told him not to try to convince you--"
"He didn't have to say anything!" Carter snapped. "All he had to do was show me what I was doing to you, to this place. I am no good for Costa Luna!"
Rosalinda reeled back. This was the first direct confrontation they'd had this whole time--how much of a laugh was that? This was the first and last time.
"I know what I'm doing," Carter said, softer now. "I need to. I need to take responsibility and not let my mistakes harm you as well as me. You taught me how to do that, a long time ago."
A cut to the heart, it seemed. Rosalinda slowly lowered herself to sit on Carter's bed, her shoulders bent, her hair falling into her face, the dark waves always glossy and perfect, even now.
"I'm sorry." Carter finished packing her bag.
"My lady?" Señor Elegante peeked his head in, then went still, a little disappointed, clearly.
Rosalinda lifted her head. "I'm sorry. I'll be along soon." She rose slowly and paused to check her hair in the mirror. Carter felt her reflected eyes linger for too long.
As she started for the door, she paused and looked back. "You really aren't good for Costa Luna, Carter." Carter flinched and leaned back against the wall. "But you've been good for me."
#
Sofía had moved into her own small estate a little ways away, not too far but far enough to make it clear that mother and daughter had had a split. Rosalinda hadn't spoken of it, but Carter had been invited over by the queen mother and from the subtle things Sofía said, it was easy enough to guess that it had come with Rosalinda taking the weight of Costa Luna too heavily upon herself. Sofía had been glad Carter was here, touched her scarred cheek, told her to take care of herself, to look after Rosalinda if the queen might deign to let her.
That night Carter sat and drank tea with Sofía, her duffle bag in the corner, waiting for the puddle-jumper plane she'd chartered to Costa del Sol where she could get a real jet back to the states. When she’d arrived, Sofía had looked at the bag once, looked at Carter intensely, and then made her tea.
"Tell me,'" she said. "Rosalinda doesn't anymore."
And that made Carter sick inside and so tired. She couldn't drink any more of the tea, her stomach wanting to turn on her. "I always thought it would be so easy to die for her."
Sofía smiled, but her lips were pressed together in that disapproving parent way. "Yes, Señor Elegante told me of your wild ruse on homecoming night. You might have, then, had Magnus not been a sad man with more of a sense of drama than of violence."
Carter looked away. She knew that. Her dad had been clear, her adult self knew exactly what risks she'd taken, and yet she knew that nothing could have made her change her decision. She would do it again, a thousand times. Stupid . Her whole school had fallen ass over tit for Rosie Gonzalez. Why did she think she was any different?
"I don't know what she wants from me. I thought she wanted me to do the right thing. But I'm trying, and I think she wants . . . something else."
"I feel, Carter Mason, that asking me this expects me to be a mind reader, when I hardly have any idea of what Rosalinda thinks these days."
"So, you're no help?" Carter rolled her eyes, because Sofía always grinned at her when she rolled her eyes. These Fiorés, so coy with their advice.
"Oh no, I think I know exactly how you can find out what Rosalinda wants." Carter sat up, hopeful and expectant. Sofía let one long elegant finger rest on her chin and she smiled just a little.
Goddammit.
#
The puddle-jumper hummed off over the sea toward Costa del Sol and Carter watched it from the promontory, clutching the dufflebag hard to her chest. Then, ungainly and helpless, she ran. She was panting and gasping by the time she reached Rosalinda's suite in the palace, sweaty, her hips aching again, her heart pounding in her chest. She hammered on the door.
Rosalinda opened the door, no make-up, her hair up and lank, the long white cotton nightdress she wore sleeveless and simple, and the sharp pain in Carter's chest felt like a heart attack.
Rosalinda looked at her, eyes so limpid and dark, thoughtful, drawing her in, and Carter dropped the duffle, dropped everything. "What happens? What happens if I don't go back, if I stay here?"
Rosalinda was silent for one more long moment. "You stay."
"What happens to you, to Costa Luna, to everyone here?"
"I won't tell you that things won't be hard for a little while. But we have friends who do not need to pander to the United States. Perhaps they will try you in absentia. And then something else will happen and they will forget about you. The world will forget about you. In the end, even important things are only so important."
"I don't think you would have said that before."
Rosalinda stared at her, hard. "I don't think you would have called being sentenced to death for ridding the world of a sociopath ‘taking responsibility’ before. Maybe we both have been in our jobs too long."
Carter stood there, wordless.
"If that is all?"
Carter nodded.
"Then goodnight." Rosalinda shut the door in her face, and Carter was left alone in the hallway.
Señor Elegante was passing. He nodded. "May I?" He carried her duffel back down to her room for her.
Carter sat in the window-seat and watched the moon set far beyond the distant horizon of the sea.
#
"You're still here," Rosalinda said, when she came upon Carter, stripped down to her sports bra, digging out a root of a dead tree in the garden.
"I'm not that memorable," Carter said between gasps. "I figured it wouldn't take too long for the world to forget me."
"I find you quite memorable, Carter Mason.” There was a smile then, one of Rosie’s quiet, private little smiles that always sent tingles up and down Carter’s back. “I think, for those who know you, you would take quite some time to forget."
#
Rosalinda hadn’t been wrong in her predictions. More information about the case arrived, a change in power meant its implications were no longer politically suitable, it was swept under the rug. Costa Luna's trade recovered. Some people on twitter talked about Costa Luna as a place that protected violent criminals, but it did not cause a sudden influx of violent criminals seeking asylum, so in the end, Carter stayed, and the world shifted, but it always did keep shifting, changing, if not progressing.
The hardest part was that it made Carter think that perhaps what Rosalinda had learned most in being queen was how little what she did mattered. But that wasn't true; Carter knew that. She knew that in the way the people of Costa Luna loved their queen, in the way she had made the brief time of hardship pass by easily, and supported recovery with utter selflessness. Now people recognized Carter and smiled at her, as if she brought something besides trouble to their shores. As if, perhaps, they thought she brought a little comfort to their queen. If so, it was probably the most worthwhile thing Carter had ever done.
#
At some point, Carter realized that she loved Costa Luna. It was not a difficult place to love. Her Spanish was good enough now to get by. Perhaps her mother wouldn't be embarrassed of her, should she miraculously return from the dead. It was a place of outdoor people, of farmers and fishermen and craftspeople who worked in the open air. It was a place of modern hospitals and a good university and cliffs and birds and the flash of the bright fins of flying fish.
Healed and not unwanted, she roamed the cliffs and inlets, went out on lobster trawlers, gathered mushrooms after the rains, and learned to spin the long nettleflax that grew like weeds. And then, armed with Costa Luna itself, she made her sally upon its queen.
"You have an afternoon off, may I claim it?"
Puzzled, but always polite, Rosalinda agreed. "As you wish."
Carter claimed it to go clamming, barefoot in the low tide.
Rosalinda stood there, holding the rake, a scarf tied up around her hair, her capris folded up to above her knees, gaping.
"Traditional Costa Luna technique," Carter explained. "Of course their queen should know how!"
The curious gathering on the shoreline seemed to agree, and Rosalinda lifted her chin in the stubborn take-on-the-world pose that Carter hadn't seen since Louisiana, since High School, and splashed in.
It was impossible to stay serious with little lapping waves tickling your toes, with terrible smells and slippery rocks. Then Rosie was in on her butt in a pool; then she'd thrown her head back to laugh, because Carter had fallen too. On their knees in the surf, Rosalinda's warm fingers closed around hers, ready to help her up, and Carter held her hand so firmly back. This was who she was, muck and boats and worms and lizards, but maybe those ordinary things were worth something too.
Out on a small boat, lazy in the sun, Carter let Rosalinda rest her weight against her, let her close her eyes and sigh. Then came the gentle brush of lips on the back of her neck. By the time Carter caught her breath again, she could sense by the evenness of Rosalinda's own, that the queen was asleep.
#
At official functions, Carter was quiet, professional, uniformed and anonymous. When they were alone, Carter did what she could to be the queen of Costa Luna’s friend. Rosalinda needed friends. Rosalinda was guarded at the best of times, and she shared her gentle, polite concern with everyone. Carter mostly knew that they were friends because of the way Rosalinda would tease her, and because they knew how to fight with each other, though they did not often dare to fight anymore.
But there were moments, a secret grin behind the grand staircase, a lazy acknowledgement of their plans 'what are we doing this week? I hear there are still traditional Costa Lunan rat catchers to shadow,' a brush of her fingers across the back of Carter's hand when they crossed near each other, even if there was no other acknowledgement, where Carter could feel in the air an invisible door, and crossing its threshold would put her always under the intense fire of the queen's attention, her curious smiles and her relentless insight that made secrets unkeepable. If she put herself there, she could not go back without leaving wreck and ravage behind her. And though she had begun to ache to be held down under the weight of Rosalinda’s body, pressed into the bed, the queen's forearms crossing over her wrists, her disarrayed hair slipping down and falling into Carter’s face, as Carter lay transfixed by the eyes that always judged and always forgave, the threshold still tasted of fire and ruin.
#
Carter had forgotten about her own birthday. But Rosalinda had not, and there was a small party, a dinner, with Sofía and Major Mason and Señor Elegante and the gardeners and some other friends Carter had made around the island without really noticing that she’d made them. It was a little embarrassing, but also a pleasure. Carter had learned enough from Rosalinda to handle mild embarrassment with grace. After the party, there was coffee up on the wall with just Sofía and Rosalinda and her dad.
It had been a long time since she’d seen her dad, and though Major Mason had smiled and toasted and congratulated like the happiest of fathers, the echoes of their last conversation still lingered in Carter’s head. So when Major Mason made noises about getting some air—though the coffee was served outside and there was plenty of air all around—Carter went with him on a walk along the battlements. Together they wandered away from warm lanterns and into places where the pale walls were lit only by moonlight.
“Is it all right--” Carter asked, when they were far enough away that there was no chance of the queens of Costa Luna overhearing. “--that I stayed?”
Major Mason put his hand on her shoulder, a tight squeeze, a tight twitch of his lips, only barely showing something that she could read as restrained joy. “If you talked to her about it, of course it is. Of course it is.”
Carter let out a breath that she thought she might have been holding for months. It had been good enough, what she’d done, good enough.
“Lady Ekaterina has been asking if you’d be interested in a bit of a gig.”
Carter let out a rough gasp of a laugh. It wasn’t how she’d thought any of this would turn out, and yet the offer was still being made. Here , the world was saying, have everything you said you wanted . But she knew now that those things weren’t what she’d really wanted. They were what she’d thought she could have and how she thought she was supposed to get them. What she really wanted . . . was what she already had: those bright smiles, stomach-churning touches, and the sense of knowing that her orders were the right ones.
“I think I’m all right here,” Carter said. “As long as Rosalinda will have me.”
Major Mason gave her a brisk clap on the back so unexpected that Carter almost pitched over the battlements. She recovered, swearing, and was startled to see his grin.
“Go get ‘em, Pal.”
“ Dad .” That wasn’t what she’d meant, but she didn’t clarify. Saying that she wasn’t sleeping with the queen of Costa Luna was far more embarrassing than having her dad assume that she was.
“I think I’m going to have a quiet little smoke over here,” Major Mason said.
Carter eyed him suspiciously. She knew he hadn’t smoked since her mother died.
“If you’re heading back, you might want to ask the queen mother if she’d be interested in joining me.”
“Do you have a blunt?” Carter asked. “Are you really inviting Sofía back here to smoke a bowl with you?”
Major Mason glared at her. “I am trying to give you a little privacy, on your birthday , if you weren’t too thick to notice.”
“Well maybe you should be a little less subtle, as I almost ended up being court-martialed for murder because you told me to ‘do the right thing,’ which, somehow, I didn’t interpret as ‘talk to Rosalinda.’”
“Have I taught you nothing about how to treat women, particularly royal women?”
“I’m not sure your lessons on how to politely throw a protesting princess over your shoulder and escape ever really stuck, as at 130 pounds soaking wet, I was more likely to be the one who ended up on the floor.”
“Maybe I have something I’d like to say to the lovely Sofía.”
“Do not ask the queen mother to smoke a bowl with you,” Carter said. She gave in and left him at the west tower and headed back to where the smell of coffee wafted through the air. Privacy was rare in the palace, but it wasn’t as if Rosalinda had anything she’d be ashamed to say to Carter in front of their parents. They were alone together often enough that if Rosalinda had something to say, she’d have said it already.
But somehow, Carter had forgotten that Rosalinda no longer got along with her mother. As she neared the seating area on the wall, she heard hissed words in Spanish, her own name, and then an ugly anger that made her stomach plummet.
“ You were the one who taught me that there are things I can have and things I cannot have, and that sometimes I must make sacrifices. Why are you upset that I have learned my lesson? ”
“That was not the lesson I tried to instill. Your duty is not suffering, Rosalinda.”
“ Carter is a good friend. I do not need a lover.”
A blunt inquiry, “¿Se quieres?”
Then, in English, a cold, hard, roughness. “You use tu to me?”
“To my foolish, childish daughter? Yes.”
That was enough. Carter stepped around the bend, no words in her mouth, but at least her presence could disrupt this chaos before anything even more unforgivable was said. “Um,” she tried. The Fioré women turned sharply to view her. “Dad asked to see you, Sofía.”
“Oh?” the queen mother gathered herself more quickly than Rosalinda and looked intrigued at the invitation.
Carter sighed internally. Maybe she would want to smoke up with him. Back when she was a kid she’d wondered if her dad might ‘befriend’ one of the lovely royal ladies he assisted. And in the year and a half before college and figuring out that oh no, she was a fucking homosexual and that was why she’d been a useless mess around Rosie, she’d been particularly hopeful that her dad might ‘befriend’ Queen Sofía, so she and Rosie could become ‘sisters.’ In retrospect, those thoughts made her want to die of embarrassment. ‘Sisters’ helping each other get ready for bed, making intense eye-contact in the mirror and telling each other how beautiful and perfect they were. How thick could she be?
“I will go to meet him then.”
Sofía took herself off and Carter was left alone with Rosalinda, the fury that had been on her face at the moment of interruption unchanged. She was staring Carter down, eyes like blowtorch beams that could cut even through the hardest metal. Then she rose, unfluidly, sharply, and looked away from Carter, walking to the battlement and placing her hands upon the stone, glaring out at the wine-dark sea. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough to know that you don’t speak to your mother like that. I don’t have a mother, but if I’d talked like that to Dad, I’d get a hiding, and deserve it.”
Rosalinda’s fingers clawed. “She cannot ask me those things. She always prods me and probes me into admitting that I am weak and I do not have the time or space to be weak.”
Carter sighed out a laugh. The Fioré women could dish it out but couldn’t take it. “You think she wants you to be weak? Maybe she sees a breach point and wants you to take it apart so you can build it back up stronger before the next battery. Maybe she knows better than you when you’re not being assailed.”
There was silence for a moment. Rosalinda bent her head. “ Then why does it feel like--” Those whispers were for herself, but Carter was near enough that they carried through the silent night. Then Rosalinda spoke to her. “I could have guessed you’d take her side.”
Carter pressed her lips together, turned away, then back again, restraining the snap in the words but not their content. “Have I ever tried to break you down?”
Rosalinda spun. “You tried to die for me. Twice. When I did not ask for it.”
Carter stared at her, her flushed cheeks, violent eyes. She thought she knew, but she needed to know for certain. She needed to hear the words. “And would that have broken you?”
“ Yes .”
Carter glanced away, looking over the water, needing a moment to let the cracking feeling in her chest dissipate. She needed just a little poise for this, a tiny bit of ability to string a sentence together that wasn’t just a garbled noise of I’m sorry, and please . “Noted,” she said.
Rosalinda snorted, more furiously than amused.
Composed enough, Carter looked back. “I won’t say I won’t do it again. But I’m trying some other things now, you know, to show how I feel about you. Dying for you really isn’t asked of me that often, and I can only do it once, and it always seems to just make you mad. Maybe if I was better at talking about my feelings, I could just tell you, but that’s not really enough for me, I guess. If I can’t do something, it’s all a little fancy fol-de-rol nonsense, not, you know, love .”
Rosalinda had gone utterly still, her eyes wide, her lips parting. She looked frightened . That wasn’t what Carter wanted at all. But she didn’t know how to do this, how to both say what she felt and make it not a terrifying thing. It was pretty terrifying on this side too. But she didn’t want to make it worse. She just wanted to stop things, stop feeling at sea, stop Rosalinda from hurting herself if she didn’t have to.
“Look,” Carter snapped. “I don’t know what you want , or what I have to do to make you take what you want. Do I have to array myself on a silver platter? Make the Honorable Board of—I don’t know—Costa Lunan Lawyers present me as an award that you will graciously accept? But you told me once that I was good for you, that you wanted me here, that I was something you wanted. And I don’t know what you meant by that, because I never know what you mean when you don’t want me to know, but I don’t care, whatever it is, whatever you mean by that, I want to be that. Okay? If that’s just this, what we are now, that’s fine. That’s great. I love it. But if you want to—I don’t know—put me on my knees and hike up your skirts and make me serve you, I am good for that too. And if you just want to be able to beckon and have me hold you when you need it, I want to do that too.”
“Carter.” Rosalinda’s voice had gone soft. “What do you want?”
Carter swallowed the lump that rose up in her throat. “I thought I made that clear. I want you to tell me what to do.” And that was probably an embarrassing thing to say, but it didn’t make it less true. Saying it, well, it made a lot of things make sense that hadn’t so much before. And that felt like a strength, like a steady place to stand.
“That’s not—”
“It is . It’s what I want. I want to be of service . I always have. So just tell me how. All right? Just tell me how.”
Rosalinda stared at her for a long time, clearly bewildered, and then she glanced out at the sea, her shoulders bowing. “When I brought you here, I thought I could have something I wanted, for once. Just me. I wanted to be selfish, just a little bit. I didn’t think. I didn’t predict the mess it would cause, how much succumbing to one tiny desire—to help my friend when she needed it—could create so much suffering.”
“It didn’t ,” Carter protested. She’d seen how Rosalinda had protected her people, let the vagarious winds of public opinion blow by and break nothing. “Because you didn’t let it. And seriously, if anyone’s to blame, it’s me, for letting my temper blow up and fragging my own Captain.”
Rosalinda gave her a clearly scolding look. But this was a hill Carter would die on. There were so many of those when it came to Rosalinda.
“I saw what you did to make sure the people of Costa Luna did not suffer.”
“There is always a cost.”
“Well, let me pay it back!”
Rosalinda was startled for a moment, startled enough that it felt like an opportunity, and Carter dropped to one knee and bent her head.
“Let me offer myself, everything I can do, everything I am, to the service of the people of Costa Luna, at the guidance of her queen.”
“Carter.” Rosalinda was shaking her head. “I know I am a terrible example of this, but you cannot give all of yourself to duty. You’re already doing so much. Some of yourself remains to you. You still have wants and needs that are not this. You still need to be a whole person.”
Carter laughed. “You’re right. You are a terrible example of this.”
Rosalinda pressed her lips together tightly, defensive. “I know. But that doesn’t make it untrue.”
From down on the stone walkway, she looked up at Rosalinda like she thought she’d always been meant to, and wanted to shake her. “Then listen to me. I am telling you, in every way I know how, what I want, how I want to be selfish, and you won’t listen to me!”
Rosalinda took a step back, startled by the vehemence in her voice. And she didn’t deny not listening. “Because you can’t want those things!”
“Why not? Because you don’t want to give them to me? Then just say so. I can handle it. I am a grown person with blood on my hands. I can handle a lot worse than knowing you don’t love me!”
Rosalinda didn’t say it though. She just stared at Carter, again bewildered, as if they’d been speaking two completely mutually incomprehensible languages. “Is that what you want?”
Carter slowly rose to her feet, rubbing the back of her neck. Had they been speaking two different languages? She supposed she could have asked for Rosalinda’s love, but it hadn’t really occurred to her. You couldn’t ask for love. It wasn’t a gift that could be given voluntarily. It just happened. Or it didn’t. “I . . . no? I guess it’s not really what I want, because— because I think I already know that you do.”
“ Oh .” The word was silent and small, but it wasn’t a denial.
“So I guess what I want is to know what comes next. You love me. I love you. So now what?”
“I don’t . . .” Rosalinda paused to swallow audibly. “I don’t think that’s an easy question to answer. We might have to form a committee to come up with some possibilities and make some recommendations.”
It was completely and eminently reasonable, and not what Carter was talking about at all. Carter laughed. “Sure. Sounds good to me. Any . . . preliminary ideas though?”
“I’m not joking , you don’t have to tease me--”
Carter put her fingers against Rosalinda’s lips. “I think I really do.”
A sudden scent of rhododendron wafted through the air, heady and thick. Rosalinda’s eyes went sharp and dangerous, as she got it, and put away, for the moment, all her wary forethought. Carter could feel her smile against her hand. A grip around her wrist drew the hand away.
“If I recall, you offered your service .”
“Of course, my lady.” Carter wiggled both her eyebrows.
“Shut up,” Rosalinda said, and caught her face between both hands. Then she kissed her. She broke away, her grip making Carter unable to follow. “I love you,” she said.
"I told you you did." And finally, freely unabashed, Carter kissed her back.
Later, in Carter’s room—because people didn’t just barge in there without knocking, unlike the queen’s suite—Carter, rumpled, her shirt open, still in her underwear, had ended up on her back on her bed, with an actual queen kneeling over her, with one hand on her shoulder and one on her cheek, chignon dislodged and sliding in a half-hairpinned spiral down one shoulder, that ferocious grin on her face that said, here, finally, is something I want, and it’s something I am going to have .
Carter let her eyes fall shut and focused on being there, breathing in her scent, feeling the weight of her body, hearing the quick, eager rate of her breath. Her goal had been simple. After she had given Carter so much, all Carter wanted was for Rosalinda to have something that made her happy. Just one thing, of her own.
If that’s me, you can have it all.
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