Page 35 of The Moon Blessed King
‘Like your parents,’ Cat suggests.
‘They’re here?’ Fen asks, turning to Lio.
‘That’s not my priority—’
‘Make it one.’ Cat says it like a command. ‘We’ve all lost too many family members of late. Find your parents, Lio.’
‘And what will you do?’
Cat shoves the pendant into his pocket. ‘Whatever anyone needs me to do.’ Finally, he meets Fen’s eyes. ‘Will you care for him?’
‘What— Of course. But…I could do more. Out there, if anyone needs help—’
‘No one needs that kind of help,’ Cat refutes. ‘Stay here. If he wakes up…he shouldn’t be alone.’
They leave.
They leave and she is alone. Elician is with her, but there is nothing else. Outside, there are so many voices. Parents calling for theirchildren. Soldiers trying to organize people into lines so they can all be checked and understood. The mayor is trying to take a headcount. Who is missing, who hasn’t come back?
But when music starts to play and singing echoes from one end of the city to the other, Fen lets the truth settle into her heart. No one is missing. They did what they had set out to do.
Or, Elician did. They saved the city of Altas, the Alelunen soldiers are apprehended. All is well.
Except Elician. Who still, for whatever reason, does not wake.
Cat relieves her at night. He sends her to her own room to find some peace and crawls into the bed at his husband’s side. He barely says any words to her in the transition. He waves her off as if she had not sat here, dutifully, at his command for hours. She leaves, not wanting to cause a fuss but feeling the hurt of it anyway.
Rodans is in the main floor of the inn when she goes in search of food. He beckons for her to sit with him and some of the others. He orders a plate from the innkeeper. ‘This is Fredian and Johanna,’ he introduces. She issues a polite introduction of her own. ‘We were talking about the King.’
‘How is he?’ Fredian asks, nervous and hopeful at once.
‘Resting,’ she replies. Rodans takes her hand in his.
‘After everything he did, he must be exhausted.’
‘Yes.’ It’s the best she can come up with.
‘We can’t believe it,’ Johanna murmurs. ‘The King…a Giver…’
‘He changed the law to allow it,’ Fredian says.
‘But should he have been able to if he knew he was a Giver in advance? That’s…’ Johanna glances at Fen, and she pushes back from the bench.
‘He just saved everyone’s lives – is that not what a good king does?’ she spits out.
‘I’m not saying what he did was wrong, but—’
Fen has heard enough.
She doesn’t care about the food. She’ll eat in the kitchen if she has to. She walks away. But Rodans chases after her. He catches her by her wrist. ‘She meant no harm,’ he says. ‘It’s just a shock.’
‘It is,’ Fen says. ‘But instead of focusing on that, they should be focusing on the fact that they are even alive.’ From the uniforms both Fredian and Johanna were wearing, they were part of the standing army that had been defending Altas in the first place. Most were told to stand down during the temporary truce around the Kingsclave, but the bulk of the army did not abandon the city. It was there when the Reapers came.
It fell when the Reapers came.
Both Fredian and Johanna died here in Altas with all the rest, and now they live – because of Elician.
‘Sometimes it’s easier to lash out against what you know than what you don’t know,’ Rodans tells her. ‘They don’t mean any harm.’
