And yet, her thoughts turned to Taako. As shocking as the news of his marriage had been, as skeptical as Lup was about the true nature of it, she could not help but long to see her brother again. Three months was too long. They had thought the holiday would do her good, but in truth the time she had spent at the Burnsides’ house had only brought her ill news from seemingly every front. She needed her brother.

If nothing else, she thought, it would be good to see him again. If he was not changed by marriage as she feared.

The carriage rumbled along the road, until she could feel it slowing, until she could feel the shape of an incline. She suddenly felt something like a great illness wash over her, a settling dread, and an exhaustion so acute and complete she almost wished not to be made to move at all. She leaned her head back against the wall of the carriage, and closed her eyes, and wished, suddenly, to be gone from this place, even to be locked up in her dingy room in Tostaada’s home, if only for the fact that it would be familiar. If only because it meant that so much had not changed, that Lup had a handle on the world, a foothold in it, and that her life was not being thrown into disarray in new ways each moment.

The carriage came to a stop. Her eyes snapped open. The walls of the carriage mocked her.

There were steps approaching. Lup breathed deeply, swallowed the lump in her throat. The handle of the door was jostled, and then it was open.

She did not recognize the man who helped her out, for the moment she cast her eyes upon the gravel drive before the house she saw him.

Taako.

Hurrying from the entrance to the courtyard of that fine house toward her carriage, a grin splitting his face as he looked on her, and Lup couldn’t contain herself as her feet touched the ground, and gathering her shawl around her she ran to her brother, threw her arms around his neck, and embraced him.

He was just the same, the smell of him and the shape of his arms around her and his head at her shoulder as it always had been, and Lup took a shaky breath and held him tight and god, how she had missed him. She must’ve looked a sight, exhausted from travel, unladylike and childish in her greeting, but she could not bring herself to care. She missed her brother too much to care.

“Lulu,” he said softly, in way of greeting, and like magic, nothing seemed as terrible as it had a moment ago. Taako was with her. What could she not weather with Taako beside her?

“I missed you,” she said, muffled in his shoulder. Taako chuckled.

“Missed you too, Lu,” he said, and then, all too soon, he pulled out of the hug, stepping back, smiling like nothing in the world was wrong.

And then he turned.

And for the first time since she arrived, Lup noticed the other man.

“Lup,” Taako said, “I’d like to introduce you to my husband, Kravitz. Kravitz, my sister.”

“Miss Lup,” Kravitz said, bowing low to Lup’s curtsy. Lower, she thought briefly, than her station deserved, comparatively. “Welcome to Astral. And please allow me to express what an honor and a pleasure it is to finally make your acquaintance. Since Taako first spoke of you I have been eagerly awaiting our introduction.”

He was handsome, Lup had to own. But the more she looked at him, the more she was convinced his features were rather too fine for her taste. They seemed to have been sculpted of marble, or invented at the end of a painter’s brush. Indeed, she studied the pleasant expression painting his face and thought it looked rather like the marbles she’d seen in the fine halls of the wealthy; each minute shift seemed choreographed to show itself to the highest level of beauty, and as such, Lup could find no earnestness in him.

But Taako was positively beaming beside him, and Lup had agreed to live in the man’s home. So she turned her face to a pleasant smile as best she could.

“Thank you for your kindness,” she said, a vague comment simply for the fact that it felt right to thank him, though Lup could not imagine what for. “I too have been awaiting our introduction since I received Taako’s letter.”

He could sense her hesitance, Lup was certain, but if he did, he played it off with much cordiality.

“You must be tired, after such a long journey,” he said, “come, let us retire into the house. I will have some of my men see to your things, and call up some tea from the kitchen.”

She was tired. Long days in the carriage always tired her. They had traveled more strenuously than they could have, but by the time Lup left home, she had been desperate to see Taako.

He walked beside Kravitz, and Lup trailed behind them, just slightly, as they entered. 

Each chamber they passed through, corridor and sitting room, seemed finer than the last. She could hear Taako and Kravitz prattling on about this and that but could not bring herself to listen, so amazed was she by the sheer wealth implied by each space. At moments, she seemed to forget she was not touring the house of a rich and distant lord, like so many other families on summer holidays through the country, and would not be asked to tip the housekeeper upon her departure.

Finally, they came to a halt in a sitting room at the back of the house, overlooking the gardens and grounds beyond. The view was expansive out of the tall windows, and Lup ran her hands along the low sills as she gazed out. Flowers of every shade and kind, and trimmed hedges, and fountains, and beyond that, just as she had seen on the drive in, rolling fields, the most attractive countryside one could wish to see during an afternoon tea. There was almost a possessiveness to it, she thought, and the thought soured her tongue. She suddenly felt terribly out of place in her shabby travelling clothes, her day dress she had had since she was fifteen that was now faded from its original color, her plain shawl draped at her elbows.

She turned away from the window, looking back into the room, and Taako was seated on one of the sofas surrounding a low tea table, watching her, a discerning expression on his face.

For the first time she took in his clothes. The white of his collar was brighter than ever before, clean and pressed. The fabrics were of a finer weave, there was more color in them, more detail. And the fit… they were not handed down and taken in. These clothes were made for him, and she saw him holding himself differently in them.

He did not shrink away from the expansive space, the mirrors on the walls and the polished stone floors and frescos on the ceiling. Rather, he seemed to walk in a way that filled it, and it occurred to her then, as she took in the sitting room there, the vases on pedestals along the tapestried walls, the satiny sofas and marble tables between them, that as out of place as she must look, a shivering country mouse wrapped in her worn shawl, that Taako did not. That Taako was master of this house that seemed halfway to a palace, and that he believed it.

Somewhere, while Lup had been away, Taako had ascended, seamlessly, and Lup was suddenly terrified she would never be able to join him.’

“Come sit,” he said, his contemplative eyes still fixed on her.

“Where is Kravitz,” she asked.

“He left to see to a few details of settling you in,” Taako said. “You disappeared for a while.”

Lup laughed humorlessly.

“I’m sorry.”

Taako’s expression shifted, minutely, into a frown.

“Come here, Lulu.”

It was still her brother’s voice, and Lup, in all her life, could never deny him.

She sat beside him on the sofa. Tea had come from somewhere and Taako made himself busy fixing her a cup. There was platter too, of biscuits. Fresh fruit. A truly exorbitant number of cakes and tea sandwiches for three (now two) people.

“Who’s going to eat them?” Lup asked. Taako blinked in confusion for a moment before the understanding downed in his eyes.

“Oh,” he said, and then shrugged. “Servants, probably, to be honest. I’ve tried requesting fewer, but they don’t seem to have taken to heart yet that we don’t need several dozen sandwiches for one afternoon tea. You should try them, though, they’re… quite good.” He handed her the tea. She took a sip.

“You don’t like him,” Taako said, and Lup froze. He did not have to say who he meant.

“Taako,” she started, and what could she say? “He seems… very nice.”

“A glowing report from you,” Taako said dryly, stirring his own cup. He did not meet her eyes.

“Taako,” but there was no more to say. She could not defend herself. In her heart, a thousand worries bubbled up. The marriage had come so quickly, and with no warning, and upon meeting Kravitz he did not strike her with any strong impression other than that… he was rich. And after their aunt died and left them with Tostaada, she and Taako had been in dire straights, to be sure, but she had not thought it was so dire that Taako would -

“It’s just -” she blurted, and then held her tongue. But Taako waited, turned his gaze to her, raised his eyebrows over the brim of his teacup as though to urge her on.

“Do you love him, Taako?” It burst from her, she being unable to hold the question that had plagued her for two months any longer. She wished to take his hand, but he was holding a teacup. Hers, reaching out for him, landed indistinctly on his knee.

Taako paused a long moment, not looking at her. He set his tea down on the table, the soft clink of porcelain on stone seeming to fill the entire room. She could see the muscles of his jaw working, clenching and unclenching the way they did when there was something he wanted to say but was not sure he could. And she knew, in that moment, that she had been right the whole time, that the threat of poverty had finally overtaken Taako’s heart, and he had been too afraid to continue on without it resolved. And resolved it was. But at what cost?

In that silence before Taako’s answer she imagined a thousand things. Imagined Taako’s cold, distant life with a man he could not love, and wondered, sickly, if all of the comfort, all of the brocades and fine china and tea sandwiches in the world would fill the ache in his heart of a life without love.

And then Taako took a deep breath that seemed to shatter the room.

And he looked at her, and his eyes were deeper than the ocean as viewed from Magnus’s door, and were so earnest she felt fixed in place by them. She could see tears welling in the corners. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw Taako cry.