I’ve been such an arse.
Both Lien and Jei trying to court each other only because they both thought I had my mind set on it? I’ve caused all kinds of pain to two people I consider like family because I got carried away with some stupid romantic idea that ‘oh, wouldn’t they be great together?’
And they both cared for me enough they went along with it despite being clearly incompatible, and I’ve hurt the both of them through it and made Jei doubt our friendship. When will I learn not to -meddle-?
Sure, Jei seems lonely, and sure, Lien could use an advantangeous proper marriage to settle her down, but I should have been able to see what everyone else did, that it was a bad idea. It makes it worse that they went along with it because of their regard for me, a regard I’ve abused by being an insufferable fatheaded idiot.
And now Lien evidently wants to go back to consorting with either the idiot Stirke or the utterly foul Saoishe or maybe both at the same time, how should I know? Though if she thinks Jei is worse than Saoishe she’s beyond blind. Still, I’m the one who’s driven her right back to them. And it’s clear she’s manipulating me to high heaven to get the truth out of me, and yet I can’t do anything but give it to her, no matter how much danger it puts me in.
…So I say “things are going so well, something has to go wrong!” and this is what I get.
Bene’s dead, and probably as much of his own choosing as anything else. Jei’s clearly hurt by me having to divert my resources to backing the King rather than him, and any attempt to fix that would result in hurting someone else terribly or forfeiting the one promise I made to the King in return for my title. Not to mention this whole courting debacle, which is evidently my own fault. Things with Lien have flared up AGAIN. Bryne and I had that massive quarrel over something I didn’t even do, and I don’t know if he even grasps that flogging someone for disrespect can ever be justified.
It’s so frustrating. I keep thinking some day I’ll stop messing everything up, but even when I have the best intentions, it all goes wrong. It’s probably good I turned down the position. Lithmore would probably be on fire by now if I hadn’t.
Well, time to probably get myself killed by trusting my duplicitous ward.
