Snow

And then one morning, standing silently while the maid who wasn't one watched the dressers hovering around him, a thought came to him. As it bloomed it was like a flame inside him. The tan door and Gladys living behind it. She would still be there. She might--he stopped the thought before he could finish it.

The maid who wasn't one was watching him with flat eyes, and when he smiled at her she looked right through him. He could see Judith all over her.

He looked out the window. The gardens were as lovely as ever. He looked at the one shaped like the ocean and thought of the last time he'd seen Gladys, her red tired face and the look on it as she stared at what had been his door.

For the first time in what felt like forever, he hoped.

He asked that night and knew as soon as he did that he'd done something wrong because Judith smiled at him, the careful slow one she used when she didn't like what was being said, and let her gaze skim to Michael. He pressed his hands together and moved them off the table. Only the edge of the dish nearest to him was changed, a thin layer of ice coating over the roses that bloomed across it. It was hard to believe he'd once thought they looked beautiful.

"You miss her?" Michael's voice was as always, warm and kind. David nodded and then let one hand come to rest near Michael, close enough for the edge of his finger to curl up against one of Michael's hands.

Michael grinned at him. "You should go, then. Tomorrow, the day after that, as soon as you'd like." Judith didn't move at all but David watched her eyes flash.

"With an escort, of course," Michael added. "I don't want anything to happen to you."

"Of course," David said, and curled his finger around one of Michael's. He watched as Michael's skin paled, fading white.

"Leave us," Michael said, his voice gone soft, lost, and he wasn't talking to David. Judith bowed before she left and closed the door very carefully behind her. David pushed Michael down across the table. He breathed out once, twice, and let the happiness over seeing Gladys sink through him, fade away. It was easy.

He held Michael too tight, made everything too cold, and Michael had bruises when they were done, a crescent of them fanned out, finger-shaped, across his skin, and stared at David, wide-eyed with a face tinged a lovely pale blue.

"Come here," he said and David hesitated for only a moment before curling himself around him.

It wasn't until he was being walked through the tan door, carefully stepping past a row of servants with their heads bowed, blocking the street so that no one but him could pass, that he really thought about being back. He couldn't help thinking maybeas he walked up the stairs and knew what--who--he wouldn't see. He'd missed that, missed truly feeling, and was glad of it even as it ached inside him.

He saw the door at the end of the hall. Whoever lived there now had hung dried flowers on it.

They dangled from a faded ribbon. There were shoes next to the door. Five pairs; two big, three little, and when Gladys opened her door--he wasn't allowed to knock, the maid who wasn't one had trailed behind him up the stairs and did it for him--she looked thinner than he remembered, more tired.

"Oh," she said, and she didn't seem particularly glad to see him, opened her door with a strange pinched look on her face.

He realized why as soon as he tried to walk inside, the maid not holding him back--he was never touched, not directly, by anyone but Michael--but moving around him silently, turning so Gladys had to move back and David couldn't move forward.

"A moment, Your Highness," she said and David watched her carefully inventory Gladys' room, Gladys casting him a quick sideways glance he couldn't read before she started coughing and turned her head away. When the maid was done inspecting the room--a long stare at the burning flame Gladys had rigged and a thin compressed almost sneer at the bed, the closest thing to an expression David had ever seen on her face--she moved so David could enter the room. Gladys was still coughing, her face a dark almost purple red, and David went to get her a glass of water.

His robes snagged on a loose nail in the floor and the maid moved around him, poured the water and passed it to Gladys with her fingers holding the cup by one edge, face turned away. Gladys took it and David watched the maid's fingers twitch away from Gladys' raw hands still caked with traces of mine dust.

"Surprised to see you," Gladys said when she'd drained the water. Her face was still bright red and David could almost see the blood pumping under her skin. Even her eyelids were flushed, the skin so worn he could see the tracework of blood vessels lining them. The maid who wasn't one shifted a little and David watched her rest one hand on her side, on the hilt of the short curving sword.