Page 2 of The Moon Blessed King
Leonde jerks back from the bar. One hand covers her mouth even as Gio starts blaspheming through curses. Cieli shushes him quickly, panicked eyes looking all around her. He manages to regain himself but does so with his drink in his hand, downing the whole thing ina few strong slurps before setting it down with remarkable control.‘How?‘ he asks, mouth straining around the sound.
‘He’s a Reaper,’ Cieli replies softly. ‘When he died in that river – he became aReaper.’
‘A Reaper!’ The repetition does not make it feel any better. Leonde does not want to think about it. She cannot fathom the idea of that sweet, smiling little prince as the living embodiment of Death. It is foul and wrong. She shakes her head and scrubs furtively at her bar top. ‘You mustn’t say such things,’ she tells Cieli firmly. ‘It’s cruel to the dead.’
‘I swear on my brother’s life, Stello Alest is a Reaper. And there’s no law saying he can’t ascend the throne. He could still be our king.’
‘A Reaper!’ Gio repeats. He rubs a hand over his curling grey beard and moustache. ‘I tell you what, Myrte.’ Leonde flushes at the familiar use of her given name. The impropriety of it all! She is a widow: that name is for her loved ones to speak, and he is not amongst their number. ‘I tell you what,’ he repeats. ‘It’s a sad day when I say I wish for a Reaper on our throne, but even a Reaper would be better than…than thatthingof a child.’
‘Oh…surely Gillage can’t be worse than aReaper!’ Leonde gasps. They steal life and they end happiness. They do nothing but destroy ceaselessly, with no hope of salvation or love. They are unfeeling monsters. Cruel caricatures of humans that no longer have the capacity to care.
Gio grimaces as he shakes his head. ‘At least Deathchosehim for something! No one chose Gillage for anything at all.’ He burps loudly, pounding his closed fist on his chest until he finally exhales a long breath of stale air. ‘I was at a party over at Lord Tyron’s estate last quarter. Gillage was there. I tell you, that child had a servant boyflayedfor dropping a goblet of wine. It didn’t even stain anything, didn’t touch Gillage at all. But he demanded satisfaction for the embarrassment. He had that boy’s skin torn right from his body untilthe boy’s heart gave out. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen in my life. I’ll never forget it. Yes, Reapers kill with a touch – but I say that’s mercy compared to what Gillage does. To his own people no less. Can you imagine what he would do to his enemies?’
‘But…a Reaper? On Queen Alenée’s throne?’ Leonde is not sure she can countenance such a thing, not even if the stello she had seen all those years ago truly is still alive. She bites her lip and looks furtively around the bar, but no one else seems to have overheard their conversation.That’s good, she thinks. The fewer people know about this, the less trouble it will cause.
‘If Queen Alenée wanted to ensure it didn’t happen, she could have made a law saying so. They have one in Soleb,’ Cieli points out. ‘But she knew her son was alive…They sayeveryoneat court knew, and she didn’t do anything to stop it.’
‘They were just rumours,’ Leonde argues. She’s heard them for years. Every time Gillage did something that scandalized the sensibilities, someone would mutter about how Alest might actually be out there somewhere. But it was a dream, a fantasy. Nothing close to real. Nothing that came with an eyewitness account of the boy in the Reaper cells, trulyalive.
Cieli meets Leonde’s eyes, perfectly still and earnest. ‘They’re not rumours,’ she says, firm as can be.
Leonde bites the inside of her cheek. Someone asks for a refill and she hurries to do her duty, escaping Cieli’s insistence and Gio’s sputtering. When she looks back, Cieli has left the pub for the night and Gio has moved on to share the gossip with another patron. Alest, alive, and a better candidate for the throne than Gillage even as a Reaper.
She scrubs her bar, nervous and unsettled, wishing she knew what more to say on the topic. Though it seems Gio has no trouble finding the words. The whole bar is soon listening to his prattle. She does not tell him to stop.
Cieli packs her things and leaves the next day, but their town is altered in her wake. Everyone is talking about Alest. And more than a few wonder if it would even be possible to have a Reaper as their king.
CHAPTER ONE
Fenlia
Fen wakes in the half-light of morning, where the sun is not quite risen but the moon has already set. She has not slept well. Simply the idea of lying down and closing her eyes was a difficult one to stomach, and when she did, it took hours to actually find any semblance of rest. As she blinks towards the pale blue light filtering through her window, she knows there is no point in trying to gain a few extra hours. There is simply too much to be done.
Slowly, she crawls out from under her warm blankets and sets her hair in braids. She washes and dresses swiftly, slipping her feet into the soft-soled shoes by her door, before quietly stepping out into the hall.
Last night, her brother returned to them after sixteen months of captivity in Alelune. Elician collapsed almost immediately, and they helped bring him up the stairs. Elena Morsen, her mentor and the best physician in all of Soleb, briefly looked him over.Exhausted, she proclaimed before ushering everyone out. Cat volunteered to stay behind and let them know if Elician woke. He never did.
Slowly, Fen steps towards the door. She lowers her hand to the metal knob and eases it open. She does not open it far. Cat and Elician are curled on the floor – sleeping together. Elician’s right arm is around Cat’s waist, his left beneath Cat’s head. Cat is holding on toElician’s left thumb, and they are breathing, slow and steady, in unison. Their bare skin touches each other with scandalous implications. Everyone knows that Cat is a Reaper, able to kill anything with a touch of his hand. But not everyone knows that Elician is a Giver, and thus incapable of dying. She glances over her shoulder. No one is there to see.
I should wake them, she thinks, but it is a half-hearted thought at best. She doesn’t know why they are on the floor of all places, but she knows this: they both look to be sleeping far more peacefully than anything she managed in the night. She doesn’t want to disturb their tender moment of grace.
She closes the door and goes down the stairs.
Cat never seemed to enjoy close contact with the people around him. Considering his affliction, he rarely sought contact to begin with, but even with those he could not kill, he shied away from such things. Alelunens are renowned for their disdain of affection of any kind, though Solebens are far more tactile. Still, the sight of him sleeping so intimately with Elician of all people strikes Fen as odd.Maybe he’s less uptight in his sleep, she guesses as she reaches the kitchen and takes inventory of her surroundings.
When she first arrived in Crowen some months back, Elena deemed it necessary for both Fen and Cat to be trained inlife management, so to speak. Each day, food preparation and household responsibilities were placed in their hands. They were not supposed to draw attention to themselves. They were meant to blend in as normal people, and normal people make bread.
Fen prepares her dough, sets the table and cleans the soot from the chute, before checking on the state of the oven. The sun continues to rise slowly, and with a flick of the wrist she starts her oven’s fire and sets her dough inside for baking. She busies herself for the next hour, running through her habitual chores until she hears footsteps on the stairs. She holds her breath, waiting to see who it will be.
It’s Elician.
He walks slowly, one heavy step at a time, down to the kitchen. He leans on the railing, still holding on to it even when he reaches the bottom. Dark circles lurk beneath his eyes. At some point during his time in Alelune, his once beautiful curly hair has been shorn short and now only scraggly tufts of growth remain. She does not like it. He sees her immediately, lips parting but offering no words of greeting.
She takes one furtive step towards him, then waits. Slowly, he shifts to open his arms for her, and with that invitation she throws herself to his chest. He stumbles, tripping on the stairs behind him but catching himself at the very last moment. His back rests against the railing in an awkward twist. He holds her close, and she is stunned at the idea that her cheek can rest against his. That her arms go around his neck with surprising ease and there is no need to stand on her toes to manage it. She’s got taller again, and she hadn’t even noticed.
He squeezes her tight, breathes steadily along her throat. ‘I have missed you, little sister,’ he murmurs, and they are the exact words she wanted to hear yesterday when he all but collapsed against her. He kisses her cheek. Her forehead. Her hair. He pulls back and cradles her face between his palms, examining her as if seeing her for the very first time. ‘You grew so much.’
‘So did you,’ she says, though it is slightly less accurate. He is far too thin. His beard is tangled and ill-kempt. But she can tell that he has aged. He is not quite the man he was when he left Kreuzfurt. His fingers tremble as they hold her face. She asks, ‘What’s wrong?’ and slowly lifts her hands to wrap around his wrists.
