Page 23 of The Moon Blessed King
‘I don’t expect that from you.’
Of course not. This is a political arrangement. Peace is what Elician wants. It is all he has said he wants. They may share spacetogether, but Elician wants nothing more. And it would be better for Elician in the end if that were the case. There is no fear that if Cat were to die for good it would break Elician’s heart in exactly the way he has feared since childhood.
Cat should be grateful. He can’t quite muster the energy to make it so. ‘I suppose all her advice was for naught,’ he tries to joke.
‘Yes. Don’t think about it.’
But he has thought about it. Just as he once dreamed of what his own wedding day might actually be like. He never dared imagine someone as beautiful as his husband, but he wanted to know what it was like to breach that one barrier of intimacy. To step forward beyond the realm of cultural impropriety and embrace that which can only be known once two souls are bound by both the law and the gods. To earn a kiss from an intimate and know they care enough to defy all norms and conventions to prove to the world: he is theirs. Elician smiles at him when he finishes changing into his less formal wear. He offers Cat his right elbow and leads him back into the hall, where cheers erupt and the music is too deafening to be good.
Cat sees none of it. None of the dancing. None of the banners fluttering. None of the food that is displayed on a hundred different tables. People come up to speak with them, but really, it’s to speak with Elician, and that is fine because Cat has nothing at all to say. Empty platitudes are easy to manifest when pressed, and he offers them when he feels eyes slipping his way.
‘Are you all right?’ Elician asks again, just before they’re pressured into dancing for the crowd. Marina taught Cat the steps in advance, and he doesn’t even look down at his feet as he’s swirled this way and that.
‘You’re beautiful,’ Cat confesses. The corners of Elician’s eyes crinkle as he smiles.He’s my husband, Cat thinks, dizzy suddenly at the thought of it.We made it official.Then, ‘I wish my father was here.’ Elician’s fingers spasm against his. His eyes stop crinkling; his smilefades away. The back of Cat’s throat nearly closes up entirely. He swallows every other thought and shoves them straight back down to the depths of embarrassment.
Elician doesn’t respond to Cat’s words. Cat knows he should be ashamed for having brought up the topic of fathers when it’s an issue Elician will likely never overcome, but the unspoken desire does not disappear. Even when the dance is done and Elician kisses his hands once more before stepping away to speak with well-wishers, leaving Cat to sit quietly at the head of the table with no one but Marina at his side, the thought doesn’t vanish.
He watches Fen dancing with that foolish Rodans boy. Watches her flush and titter and laugh too hard. They have been spending so much time together lately. They almost look sweet, side by side. But then he sees Lio and Adalei, and it is something entirely different. Theirs is, perhaps, the only true love in the whole of the palace, and all of Himmelsheim knows it. He hears onlookers whispering about when the next royal wedding will be, but Elician says nothing about the timeline. Cat half wonders how long Elician intends to put it off, and if, without any permission at all, Adalei and Lio will have a field wedding of their own.
Cat’s eyes wander. He imagines his father by the punch bowl, Captain Partho at his side. Laughing. Smiling. He imagines his mother fussing over his jacket, a fine royal blue with golden accents in honour of his husband, silver stars subtly sewn onto his collar. He doesn’t think of her as the Queen. His queen. Not here, not now. But as his mother, and his father, and their life frombefore. He wishes they could be here.
Queen Mother Calissia is in attendance, of course. She approaches her son, and Elician permits her to say some words to him. He even dances with her; it is short and perfunctory, but respectful. Cat wonders what it would have been like to dance with his own mother. If he would ever have had the chance.
‘Alest?’ Marina murmurs. ‘You look like you’re about to cry.’
A bad look for a wedding. He squeezes his eyes shut, swallowing back his grief. He opens his eyes and looks back at his husband. Gorgeous. More gorgeous than any other time before. He wishes he knew what his father would have told him before he got married. Before he signed himself away. He wishes he had someone to give him some kind of advice. Someone motivated only by affection for him, rather than power or politics.
Alelunens don’t show great displays of intimacy outside their families. Weddings are supposed to be the great moment of acceptance, of crossing the threshold into the next step of a relationship. Cat wonders what Brielle would say if she could see him. What any of his Reapers would say.
‘Can we have another wedding?’ Cat asks, not really sure who he wants to answer, or even if he wants a response at all. ‘After I get my throne in Alelune?’ Can he have one more chance to make it right?
‘You can do anything you want when you are king,’ Marina replies.
‘If I become king,’ he mumbles.
‘Yes…if. But those are dour thoughts for a day meant to be filled with joy.’ She places one hand at his cheek, wipes tears from under his left eye with her thumb. ‘May I give you something?’ His eyes slide to a far-too-wide table stacked high with gifts he doubts he will ever remember receiving.
‘I have too much already.’
‘This is not like that.’ She removes a small leather-bound journal from the inside of her jacket. She forwent wearing any kind of dress, preferring men’s formal attire, black and restrictive all the same. She gives it to him and he goes to open it, but she stops him. ‘I have been working on this for some time, especially in the past few weeks. Read it later,’ she requests. ‘But do read it.’ He hesitates, then nods, tucking it into his own jacket so it sits nestled against his chest. ‘For now, though, dance with me.’ And he does, for it is expected and it is hiswedding. And his heart aches, wishing she were someone else all the same.
When the night is over, he and Elician walk from the dwindling lights of the party down the long halls to the King’s suite. No eyes follow them. The hall is quiet, still, and so far removed from all parts of life. There are no echoing voices, no laughs or cheers. He wants to say,Kiss me. Make it official. Make this feel right, but when they enter the room, Elician keeps his back to him.
Elician takes off his clothes. He puts on a nightshirt Cat has never seen before and crawls into bed like a man preparing for his own funeral. Cat takes off his own layers. He sets Marina’s book to the side, not to be opened, and he lies down beside his husband. Back to back. It is uncomfortable. Painful even. They do not speak, and they do not sleep.
Sometime in the night, Elician moves to the floor. Cat joins him. Elician’s arms wrap around his body, and that alone is better than the bed. And Cat is so tired of pretending otherwise.
PART II
It is Death who hears the creature speak. She finds it in the evening, bathing beneath the shining silver light of her great moon. ‘What are you?’ Death asks, approaching it as she would any other. She holds out her hand, and it considers her as no one else ever has.
‘I am a watcher,’ it says. ‘I am all.’
‘And what does that mean?’ Death asks.
‘I see all there is to see, and I know all there is to know.’
‘You cannot,’ Death refutes. ‘For there are things not for you to know.’
