Confessions

I am Mentathiel of House Katilas, a respected diplomat from the southern kingdom of Vyska and scion of a lesser-known house.

Except that I am not.

I am whatever men need me to be to put them at their ease. I am a pretty face (though not always my own) and a sympathetic ear. You would be forgiven for thinking that I am perhaps a courtesan, but my talents do not lie in that direction.

Why am I playing coy here? You are the only person I can truly unburden myself to, so I should just come out and say it: I am Mentathiel Katilas and I am a spy for hire. I know the subtle magics which let me take any face I choose, the skills to open any door and lurk in any shadow. I trade in secrets and sometimes, when the need arises, in death.

There are very few who know that secret. Most of the people who ever learned of it are dead, though you should not think it was my doing; ours is a dangerous business, our lives short. I have lost so many friends, lovers and allies over the years. Worse than that, I will lose more.

Unless this business kills me, which it still might, I will lose them all. Old age will take them all long before me, a blessing and a curse, a legacy of my father’s blood. I never told you about him, but I never told anyone else either; I suppose that makes it better, knowing that I never favoured anyone else above you.

You see… Like you, I am not human.

I always thought you might have half-suspected, but you never made anything of it. I used to lie there thinking of you, of the brief moments we shared, of the words I wished I could say, but secrecy is a hard habit to break. When your life depends on your ability to keep a secret, on passing for human, it’s even worse.

You would know…

I wanted to tell you what I was, why I fell in love with you, how happy I was to finally find someone who I could grow old with, but I was too scared then and I’m too late now.

I don’t know, perhaps it was for the best. It would never work out, they said. There were too many good reasons to stay quiet, not to fall for you.

My people are long-lived, but yours are truly deathless; could I have condemned you to the fate I was trying to avoid for myself? I would have grown old eventually, even if it would have been long after your detractors were nothing but dust, and left you alone in a world that hated you for what you were and what you represented.

And what then? Would you have fallen back to your old ways? They called you evil, but I knew you were not heartless, that you could understand love and sacrifice and tell right from wrong. You had a gift for justifying your actions, I know, but I saw the strain in your eyes each day when I asked you to stop your killing, to find another way to live.

I can only imagine the pain of losing the one thing that kept you whole for over a century, of the one voice that meant more to you than your drive for revenge, of the person who made you want to put all that death behind you. If I had let myself love you, let myself be with you, would I have only made it worse when I moved on without you?

Once, that question kept me silent, but now I know that I was a fool to worry about such things.

It has been nine months since they hunted you down, nine months since I lost the woman I loved to the fear and hate and grief of fools. I might have been too scared to say it then, but I love you. They told me that your death would set me free, that I was enthralled and enchanted, but they were wrong. I watched the ashes of your body scattered to the winds and it was all I could do to hold back the tears because it didn’t. There was no evil magic forcing me to love you, no sorcery that died with you.

Oh, but I pretended to curse your name, trying to save my own skin. I have spent a lifetime deceiving the people around me with lies and disguises, so even then it came so naturally to me to play my part. The pain I felt made it so easy to call up my anger. The betrayal I felt at what they had done, I pretended to direct at you. The tears I could not openly cry for you, I blamed on anguish at your deception.

I was forced to watch them kill you, to hear you beg for mercy they would not give you. I was forced to listen as they boasted of threats you did not make and dire warnings they fabricated to make you sound more evil. The most notable tale was that you cursed them all with your dying breath, prophesying doom on each of them within a year.

But I was there. I remember the last words you spoke before the flames took you. I remember your eyes on mine, filled with tears as you said the words I could not.

"I love you…"

Well now I am not too scared, too ashamed or too proud to say them too.

I love you and I always did.

I miss you and I always will.

Forgive me, but I let them have their lies. Perhaps I didn't speak them, but I kept silent. When they boasted of empty threats to kill them all, I hung my head and said nothing.

For nine months, I couldn't bear to face you. Not here, where they murdered you in front of cheering crowds, not when I had let them slander you. It took me this long to make it right.

They refused to remember you for who you were, the woman I loved, but they will remember you. They will remember your curse, even if you never spoke it, because they will remember the bloody fate of those who stood in judgement that night.

They will say that before they killed you, you told them that they would be dead within a year. Even on that, they were not quite right.

It only took me nine months…

Author's Note

I wasn’t really sure what I was writing when I started, only that I wanted to try a different voice than normal. It was a confession that became something else. It’s also an experiment or perhaps the culmination of a study; I have spent a while teaching myself to write in another voice and this is the result.

I’m happy with it, though I see room for improvement.