“
Could you have been content to live with Nighteyes among the wolves?”
“I would have been willingly to try,” I said stubbornly.
“Even if his late could never completely accept you?”
“Could you, for once, simply say whatever it is you are trying to say?”
He looked at me and rubbed his chin as if he were truly considering it. Then he smiled sadly. “No. I can’t. Not without damaging something precious to me.” As if he were not changing the subject at all, he asked, “Will you ever tell Dutiful that your body fathered his?”
I did not like him to speak that aloud even when it was just we two. My strong Skill-bond with Dutiful made him seem ever close. “No,” I said shortly. “He would see too many things differently. It would hurt him, to no good end. It would damage the image of his father, his feelings toward his mother, even his feelings toward me. What purpose could it serve?”
“Exactly. So you will always love him as a son, but treat him as your prince. One step from where you long to be. Because even if you told him, you could never be his father.”
I was starting to get angry again. “You are not my father.”
“No.” He stared at the fire. “And I’m not your lover, either.”
I felt suddenly weary and sour. “Is that what this is about? Bedding with me? You won’t return to Buckkeep because I won’t bed with you?”
“No!” He did not shout the word, but something in the way he said it stunned me into silence. His voice was low, almost harsh as he spoke. “Always, you bring it back to that, as if that is the only possible culmination of love.”
He sighed and abruptly settled back in his chair. He looked at me speculatively, and then asked, “Tell me, did you love Nighteyes?”
“Of course.”
“Without reserve.”
“Yes.”
“Then by your logic, you wished to couple with him?”
“I wished…No!”
“Ah. But that was only because he too was male? It had nothing to do with your other differences?”
I gaped at him. A moment longer he managed to keep his face straight in honest inquiry. Then he laughed at me, more freely than I had heard him laugh in a long time. I wanted to be offended, but it was such a relief to hear him laugh, even at my expense, that I could not.
He caught his breath, and said, “There it is. Plainly, Fitz. I told you I set no limits on my love for you. I don’t. Yet I never expected you to offer me your body. It was the whole of your heart, all for myself, that I sought. Even though I’ve never had a right to it. For you gave it away ere you ever saw me.” He shook his head. “Long ago, you told me that Molly would never be able to tolerate your bond with the wolf. That she would force you to decide between them. Do you still believe that?”
“I think it likely,” I had to reply softly.
“And how do you think she would react to me?” He paused for a heartbeat. “Whom would you choose? And what would you lose, either way, by being forced to make such a choice?
”
”