Page 60 of Garden of Poisoned Delights

“I know, I—all right.” Victor breathed out, slowly. He gave Sava a wild look. “Will you go back to the trials? You have time, if you wanted.”

Sava shook his head. “No. It would be unfair, given I have come home, taken a bath, eaten stew. It is all right,” he assured Victor. “Perhaps I was not meant for being kuvar. Dragan will find someone better suited.”

“Or you can do it again? It feels like this is my fault.”

Sava stared at him. “Little owl, how would it be your fault?” This, he had not expected. Perhaps he would have, in Victor’s first few years here, but not now, when Victor understood his worth, and how much Sava loved him.

“That boy is Gerakian and he came here for me.”

Sava smiled. “Why is that a fault, then? You know we protect children here.”

“But you should be kuvar,” Victor said, looking miserable. “You would have been.”

“Not at the expense of the life of a child, Victor. Surely you do not think that of me.”

Victor hurried over to the bath and kissed him. “Of course I don’t think that. You know how I am. It’s easier to think on that than figure out how a fountain sprite brought the child here.”

Sava finished his bath, combed through the tangles of his hair and trimmed the beard that he’d grown to give him warmth for the trials. As he moved around the house, dressing in warm clothes and settling down to eat a bowl of soup and warm, fresh bread—a luxury after two days of jerky and dried fruit—he realized that he should tell Victor what he’d seen. “When I found the child,” he said, softly, glancing over at the boy asleep before the fire, “he was wrapped in fox-fur. There were prints in the snow—fox prints.”

Victor, who was barely eating his own dinner, blinked like the owl Sava always called him. “I’ve never been sure what to think about her,” he said, after a moment. “I don’t want to disrespect our legends here, but…you know I don’t believe in gods. Gerakians don’t, for the most part. I thought the Fox Maiden was more of a metaphor.”

He sounded apologetic. Sava shrugged a shoulder, pleased that Victor said our legends, though he felt the same trickle of unease he always did when Victor spoke about them. They’d never quite come to an accord on that. The Lukoi believed in spirits more than gods, but Victor always had some rational explanation for them. Sava admitted that those explanations made sense, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t quite that easy. Yes, the Lukoi feared madness that might draw them too soon from their homes in the false spring, and yes, he supposed he could see that the Fox Maiden was simply a tale made up by the exiled to give this worry a tangible face, a name.

But Sava did not think humans were all there were here, and he did not think the exiled had survived on Lukos without some divine touch aiding them. Perhaps it had been spirits of the land itself, or perhaps gods, or both. “It doesn’t matter, he is here, now. But perhaps he will tell us, when he wakes.”

“To prove you’re right?” Victor asked, and laughed outright when Sava flushed. “You’ve been living with a Gerakian too long, my love. I’ve rubbed off on you.”

Sava smiled. “Often, yes.”

Now it was Victor’s turn to flush. “Sava, shhh!” He gestured to the sleeping boy, Zeno, who was clearly not awake.

“He doesn’t speak our language, little owl, and if he is to live here, he should get used to me teasing you.”

Victor smiled so sweetly at him that Sava’s heart thumped. “We’re keeping him?”

“Of course we are. He came here to find you, and he has. Fox Maiden or fate or fountain sprite…whatever brought him here, it doesn’t change that.”

Sava had to hurriedly put his spoon down as he suddenly had a lapful of Victor. He was kissing him, hands on his face, eyes shining behind his glasses. “Thank you. I never thought it would be possible, but I’d always hoped I could give a home to a child who needed one.”

Though it meant he would not meet Dragan and take up the leadership of their people, Sava couldn’t find it in himself to mind too much. If the rest of his days were to be spent here with his clever Victor, his snowcat, and now a young child who could grow to love the harsh land of Lukos, that felt like victory enough for him. In his heart, he knew he’d done the right thing. And though Dragan would perhaps be disappointed that Sava had failed the trials, he was sure his kuvar would feel the same.

* * *

It took some time for Zeno to stop shivering. He took a bath when Sava was certain he wouldn’t experience shock from the sudden heat, and when he put on his borrowed clothes again and wrapped up in the blankets in front of the fire, Speedy came over to investigate. At first, Victor tensed, unsure how a snow cat would respond to a sudden, strange child in his home, but Speedy simply flumped down half on top of the boy and started demanding pets.

“You said he was a kitten,” Zeno said, a little accusatory, as Speedy made biscuits on the cushions with his enormous paws.

“Kittens grow fast here.” Victor was pleased to find he’d eaten, at least, and drank most of his tea. He set the plates aside to wash and sat on the edge of the pit, his back to the fire. “We looked in your bag when you were asleep. I’ll ask next time, but we wanted to find out who you were.”

“Oh. It’s okay. Did you see my workbooks? Three gold stars. Gold stars are good,” he added to Sava, who was lowering the bed for the night.

Victor leaned forward, hands clasped. He tried to think of the boy he’d been at the Goldstreet orphanage, desperate to seem useful enough for parents who wanted younger children, until he’d given up entirely and started working on his college applications instead. That desire to be good, to be useful, still reared its head when Victor tried to pick up a task and wasn’t automatically perfect. It helped that Sava was patient, and didn’t need perfection to love him. Still, the impulse was strong enough that Victor could see it written all over Zeno’s face, the desperate, quiet plea not to toss him out.

“I should tell you something,” Victor said, and Zeno straightened a little. Speedy, displeased to have his cuddle time interrupted, rumbled and draped his arms over Zeno’s lap. “You know how there are entrance exams and applications if you want to go to a good vocational school or college?”

“Yeah, Sabino says they’re biased so we need to get rid of them.”

Victor smiled. “Maybe. But you just underwent one, a test, and you passed it.” The boy frowned at him, and Victor gestured to the shuttered windows. “Making it to Lukos is the test. Getting here means you passed. It’s the same test every Lukoi underwent when they were exiled. It’s sacred. Do you know what that means?”

---