Page 34 of The Moon Blessed King
‘Elician will be king,’ Aliamon continues. ‘He will carry on this line.’
‘Then make it easier on him. You refuse him the basic rights any child deserves. The boy is perfectly capable of making friends, but you won’t allow those friendships to transition to allyship. You refuse to grant him leave to learn from his own mistakes or to grow. You terrorize him with thoughts of his Giver status being discovered. So, change the law. Let him ascend with all the world knowing who and what he is.’
‘You are not king, Anslian. It is not your place to make demands of me.’
‘It is my place, brother. What will you do if he is discovered? If he gets found out and all of this is for nothing? Will you deny Adalei then? When she is hale and healthy and brilliant?’
‘She will not be able to carry this line forward.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I do. I’d rather see my son as a stud bull, whose purpose is only to breed the next generation, than put that girl on the throne and hope she manages to survive it. And if he proves a disappointment in that regard too, and our line is to be ended, then I will find another to replace him. Not her. One strong enough to withstand the next millennium.’
‘You are more focused on the children they will have than the lives they are living now.’
‘Someone must be.’
Adalei steps away from the wall. She turns left, walking with more poise and dignity than is owed to any of them. The boy Elician once was runs after her. He has no such grace, no self-respect nor candour. He touches her skin, his fingers threading through hers, arresting her forward momentum and pulling her back so he can hold her. She clings to him.
Elician, separate from himself, cannot hear what the boy whispers to his cousin. But he knows the words he spoke. The promise he made. He knows, too, the meetings they had in secret afterwards. The plans they made. The mission they put in place.
Beneath their feet, the hall in this dreamscape turns to water. It rushes from one end of the corridor to the other. Lio, behind them, wades towards them. The water rises higher and higher, over their hips, their waists, their shoulders. It covers their heads, and the dream shifts from memory to fantasy.
The palace walls morph. Seaweed grows from the carpeting. Paintings twist into coral. Tiles shatter to sand. And up above, so far above, the chandelier solidifies into the bright light of the sun. A splash breaks through the silence. An object falls from the ceiling, shimmering faintly as it sinks to the bottom. Then a boy, small and lithe, dives through that same ceiling, kicking strong legs down, down, down, squinting in search of a shimmering bauble that has long since disappeared.
The peaceful water does not stay peaceful. It swirls suddenly. Roughly. It wraps around the swimmer’s body and air bursts from the boy’s lungs. He gasps, making it worse. Inhales, then chokes. He tries to turn back towards the sky, but the water shoves him again and again, catching him in one current and then the next. The boy crashes against the coral, smashing against the sandy bottom. His hands claw and scramble, his legs kick. Elician tries to aid him, but he has no body. He is not actually here. He cannot help. He can only watch. For this is just a dream and dreams are not real.
The boy is caught, encircled by currents that will not let him go. His small hands reach outwards. He weeps tears that are lost in the water that’s killing him. He reaches out and grasps at nothing. And then his face goes slack. His lips move, answering a question Elician never hears being asked. The boy drowns. His eyes close, peaceful and calm. He sinks to the bottom, his outstretched hand finding a black cord in the sand, a forgotten bauble lost in the detritus of the river. But his fingers are too limp to take hold of it. He loses it as the current shifts and his body moves. He is lifted back towards the surface. Soon, he will be found. Elician looks at the cord. A blue stoneglows beneath a lump of sand. A blue stone carved in the shape of a crescent moon. A blue stone fit for a prince.
Who am I?someone whispers in his ear as the water fills his lungs but leaves him breathing. As he is carried towards a memory, to a death, to a coronation, to a forest. He opens his mouth to speak.
But this is a dream, and there is no one there to hear.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Fenlia
The Alelunen soldiers are bound in chains and sent to an old school building with a lecture hall large enough for them to be stored in. The windows are quickly barred, the doors secured, and they are kept out of sight from the furious Altasian civilians who call for their blood. The Reapers, none of whom Cat apparently recognizes, are secured in another room down the hall. Marina stands guard before the door, allowing no one in or out as decisions get made.
Elician does not wake.
Lio carries him to a grand inn near the eastern gates of the city, laying him out on a large bed with the most tender show of care. Fen holds her brother’s limp hand. She closes her eyes and searches for some sign of pain, some broken, faulty thing – perhaps an organ failing, a synapse misfiring or a clot somewhere dangerous. But there is nothing. Nothing at all. Every part of Elician’s body functions in exactly the way it is meant to, except he does not respond when they call his name or shake his head this way and that. He lies there, looking for all the world as if now, finally, he is sleeping.
Cat perches at the foot of the bed, rotating one of the Alelunen pendants between his fingers. He has examined every single one ofthe pendants that the soldiers wore. Most were destroyed utterly, leaving behind only viscous remains. But this one is almost intact, its leather exterior scorched but its shape retained. He turns it over and over, again and again, as if the mere act is enough to enlighten him as towhatexactly it even is.
‘Canyousense anything wrong with him?’ Fen asks. Sometimes he is better at it than her. He sees deeper, feels so much stronger. She doesn’t know how he does it, but she knows he studies more than her. His understanding of anatomy is far greater than her own.
But he says, ‘No,’ and keeps his attention on the pendant.
‘Do you know whatthatis?’
‘No,’ he repeats.
‘But itwassomething that had to do with Elician, right? Did it do this to him?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘You can’t stay here,’ Lio says. ‘There are things that we need to do in the city. Figure out exactly what’s going on in Altas, who has been brought back and who hasn’t.’
