Crucible of Fate

onto something that should not be held?”
    It was a very good question.
     
     
    A FTER dinner, I walked through the lower gardens with Mikhail, around the pools, watching the koi swim from one pond to another, and realized how pissed I was at Yuri. How could he keep secrets from me?
    Maybe he didn’t know , Ebere had said earlier.
    Mikhail set me straight, inhaling the night air and all the scents swirling through it. “He knew. I confessed, but I also made him swear to tell no one, especially you.”
    It was a betrayal… and yet I understood. Friends had to be counted on to keep secrets.
    “If you knew, it would have weakened you and the choices you made for her and me.” Mikhail mused.
    “And now what will you do?”
    “I’ll send her back to Boston to finish her master’s degree so she can have the life she wanted.”
    “And never marry her.”
    He shook his head. “This is not where she belongs.”
    “Maybe not three years ago, when her father had her brought here, but people change, and maybe she wants to be by your side. Did you think of that?”
    “She’s young; she doesn’t know what she wants.”
    “She’s twenty-six, Mikhail. My guess is she knows herself all too well.”
    He didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to yell, so I let him go to his quarters so they could talk.
    Later, as I sat on the thick stone edge on the balcony of one the sitting rooms on the second floor, I heard movement behind me.
    “May I come out there with you?”
    “Sure,” I mumbled. With my head resting against the wall and my ankles crossed, I was sort of precariously balanced. It was funny; Yuri never allowed me to sit like that, too afraid of me falling. Heights made him nervous.
    Koren moved quietly near me but stopped far enough away that he couldn’t touch me.
    “How can I just walk up on the semel-aten?”
    “The guards are on the first floor,” I answered. “Only trusted people are allowed on the second, and only Yuri and I are allowed on the roof.”
    “I see,” he said, and I saw the green eyes glint in the lantern light.
    “Why are you here?” I was annoyed as I studied him.
    “Because of course I figured out who I really wanted the second I was informed that you weren’t coming back.”
    “Of course.”
    He moved closer. “What are you playing at?”
    “Meaning?”
    He was staring at me, missing nothing. “Yuri?”
    “What about him?”
    “Since when, Domin? Since when do you even see Yuri?”
    The dark blue summer sky was slowly succumbing to dusk. It was beautiful. “I saw you stare at Samani Baro today, the former hathen of my house. She is lovely, isn’t she?”
    “She belongs to Mikhail.”
    “Not what I asked. I asked if you thought she was lovely.”
    “Well, yes, very.”
    “When I got here, I found out that my predecessor had a harem. In fact, every semel-aten has one. Did you know that?”
    “No, like I said earlier, I had no clue.”
    “And why would you? But for me, without her, I would have been lost. I mean, what in the world was I going to do with a female harem? I’ve been gay all my life.”
    “I don’t get what—”
    “But had you become semel-aten and found yourself with a harem, you would have had no problem with that.”
    “Domin—”
    “I have no issue with you loving women,” I said, pinning him with my eyes. “What I do have a problem with is you confessing to one thing while your gaze betrays you.”
    “You’re serious?” He scoffed. “I’m in trouble because I checked out Samani earlier? You notice a beautiful woman when—”
    “Yuri doesn’t see anyone but me.”
    It took him a second. “It’s new, Domin! It’s brand new! Of course he doesn’t! If I had been carrying a torch for you since I was sixteen years old, I—”
    “Precisely,” I interrupted. “If.”
    The silence was brutal, awkward and drowning.
    “You’re being ridiculous,” he finally said. “You can’t compare years of us to months of Yuri. I know you. He has no idea.”
    “Whatever he doesn’t know, he can learn,” I said, getting down off the railing, ready to slip by him.
    He grabbed my bicep tight. “You can’t love him just because you think you should—because you’ll be safe.”
    My eyes met his.
    “You have to let your heart get hurt. You know Yuri would never hurt you, and because I did it so many times, too many times, you picked him when he offered himself up on a silver platter.”
    I eased my arm from his grip. “You don’t