Page 45 of The Moon Blessed King
‘That man murdered our queen!’ a prisoner yells, pointing at Elician, his passion sending him careening straight into another coughing fit.
‘My uncle murdered your queen,’ Elician replies, calm as a pool. ‘But I brought you back from the dead during the melee, and I’d prefer it if you didn’t die here when I’d far rather send you home to your families. So tell me, when did your symptoms start?’
‘The day after the fight,’ someone says. This person’s blotches are climbing up over their face. Their nose is swollen, their eyes set deepinto their skull, their lips tinged blue. Each breath they draw is strained, wheezing in and out as if they’re being strangled.
‘These soldiers feel like death. But it’s…wrong,’ Cat says. ‘I can feel them dying, and yet…it’s not Death that’s killing them.’
Fen avoids the irritant who spat at her brother and goes to the next-closest prisoner. This one, a middle-aged woman with hair pulled back in a knot and an exhausted expression, does nothing as Fen kneels at her side. Raising her hand, Fen touches the woman’s black-splotched skin.
Billions of cells are rushing this way and that. Organs are pulsing, squeezing and constricting. Enzymes are speeding from one direction to another. All of it at an accelerated pace that is far more extreme than anything Fen has ever felt before. She feels what Cat already said: it is death.
But it is also life.
‘All the cells are reproducing at a faster rate,’ she murmurs. She does not know all the words in Lunae, so she keeps to Soleben as she explains. ‘These…’ Her fingers trail over the stains. ‘It’s excess blood and bruising. The veins are literally bursting fromtoomuch blood, but then healing over too quickly for them to bleed out. Their veins are getting harder. Stronger. But that is putting pressure on their organs, which are working faster than they should be. It’s like…their metabolism has gone into overdrive. All of thatshouldbe killing them, it’s why they feel like death, but…but instead there’s…’
‘Too much life,’ Elician whispers, keeping to Cat’s native tongue rather than his own. ‘Like Life himself has been let loose.’
‘Those pendants, could they have…lingering effects?’ Lio asks suddenly. Heads snap up in all directions. ‘Tricked their bodies into constantly living?’
Elician nods absently but does not make a move to approach any of the individuals spread out in heaps before him. He wants to save them, that much is evident, but the longer he stands still, the longerFen wonders if his decision to help nearly forty thousand people back from the dead has left a greater mark on him than they realized.
But eventually, he turns back towards Cat, whispering something to him that Fen cannot hear. It is too quiet, and clearly not meant for her ears anyway. She doesn’t try to listen in. Squinting from face to face, Fen makes a personal assessment of the prisoners based on what she can pick up just from observation. Some are clearly worse off than others. But it is the root of their ailment that bothers her the most. If every part of their bodies is working as efficiently as possible, how can they bedying? At best guess, from everything she’s learned about her powers, they have tapped into a wellspring of Life himself, receiving a command tolive live live. But that command is coming out twisted. Wrong.
Fen fidgets as she stands, impatience pushing her to dosomething. Cat’s lips keep drawing in tighter and tighter. He is not responding to whatever Elician is telling him, but he does not like what he is hearing. Then, Elician turns, calling her name.
‘Brother?’
‘We need your help,’ Cat responds, casting a wary eye over the assembled group.
‘I can heal multiple people at once,’ Elician says calmly in Soleben. ‘But you cannot. So, Cat is going to stop the processes that are overworking in their bodies. He is going to kill those at their source. I will…reach out to them all with my own power, and you should be able to feel them through me.’ He wiggles his fingers at her. ‘I want you to focus on healing any excess damage that happens to them in the process. I should be able to amplify what you are putting out – and the methodology you are using to affect them all in turn. The point here is to end the overproduction, and then restart that which keeps their balance intact.’
‘Why do you even need me? Why can’t you heal them on your own if you’re already connecting to them all?’
‘Because the problem is their connection to Life and Death,’ Catreplies. ‘Cells die every day. Blood is replaced, chemicals and hormones are processed through the liver and spleen. Every single safeguard that would ensure the death of something is failing, and the result is this:too many thingsworking as efficiently as they ever have. Flooded with life but absent of the death it requires. Elician…and all Givers heal by encouraging things to live, but these soldiers don’tneedmore life. They need some death. I need to kill everything that is wrong in their bodies, but once I do…those faults need to be healedcorrectly. And you know how to work with death. You excel at fixing that which is already dead. Elician will connect you to all of them at once, but you will be…’
‘Healing them through you?’ she asks, turning to her brother. ‘Have you ever done this before?’
‘No,’ Elician replies. ‘But I know how it feels to have another one of our kind working on the same person at once. I have an idea of what it would mean if we did this together.’ Fen wishes he hadn’t said that. The guards at the door are still so close, and it’s as much as confirming what everyone already suspected: he’s known for a while that he is a Giver. He does not care. He holds out his palm. ‘Take it; you’ll feel my presence when we connect. At the very least, I will try to follow your lead. It seems like it’s your turn to teach me something new, sister.’
Cat waits until she nods her assent, then he takes one step closer to his people. They flinch at the gesture. ‘A Giver cannot heal you,’ Cat says carefully in Lunae. ‘You have too much life and…it’s out of balance with the death within you. I don’t need to touch you, but I can heal you, if you will let me. You are my people, and I—’
‘You’re aReaper!’
Cat flinches. The voice is the strongest out of the crowd yet, but even so it ends in coughs filled with disdain and hatred.
The voices get louder, surer of themselves even as they strain around their despair. ‘We’d rather die than let you near us!’ someone says. The one closest reiterates that point by asserting they wouldrather die than let him be their king too. One after another they each say their piece, hateful and cruel, shouts of protest straining from the lungs of those who can barely inhale from the constricting pressure of too-strong veins and too-thick muscular walls. With bruises spreading in deep black stains showing just how brittle their bodies are even though they keep trying to repair themselves faster and faster.
Cat’s breath catches in his throat. Fen bites her lip, struggling to keep from telling them all to do just that: die and stay dead. Marina has been silent since she entered the room, but now she touches the small of Cat’s back in support. He leans into the touch as he closes his eyes and gives the assembled prisoners of war a slight nod.
‘I’m your king,’ Cat says. ‘I don’t need your permission to save your lives.’ He holds out his hand. Elician takes it, then reaches for Fen. Her fingers wrap around his.
All her senses come alive.
It is nothing at all like healing the Reapers, nor is it like the work she did with Elena Morsen, studying the changing metamorphosis of cellular structures in the body and how they react to different stimuli. She understood the basics of her craft, but she could never find the source of an ailment unless she physically touched someone. Her skin was what enabled her to focus. For Elician, he needs only to exist, as if the air itself contains the information he needs to diagnose and treat.
That same air now turns tight and concentrated, electrified as a spark ofsomethingseems to travel through Cat and Elician into her. She can smell ozone in the air. Water. Rain. She can feel a chill start to settle around her. Panicked voices rise up, and Cat stands stalwart before them. One of the prisoners tries to charge forward, leaping towards Cat as if they could physically stop what he intends to do. Lio uses his sheathed blade to throw the man back. He takes hisplace in front of Elician and Fen, perfectly prepared to restrain anyone else should they try as well.
Cat holds out his hand. Voices break amongst the crowd. Shattered wails rise up. Fen’s skin prickles and twitches as electricity sparks along her vascular system. Elician’s energy dips and rises, and just as she starts to wonder how she could possibly heal whatever it is that is going wrong, she sees it: death in need of changing.
