Page 11 of The Moon Blessed King
‘I’m all right,’ Elician murmurs.
Clacking heels approach against stone, and the sound encouragesCat to lean back just a little as Calissia steps around the corner. Fenlia is just behind her. Elician does not have the energy to put up a brave face in front of her too. ‘Cat…I need to talk to my mother alone for a while. I’ll see you and Fen later.’ Cat slowly stands; Elician catches his wrist before he goes. His bare fingers wrap around the fabric shielding Cat’s skin, missing the smooth slide and seductive magnetism of true contact. ‘Thank you. For what you did.’
‘Always,’ Cat replies. Then he bows his head to Elician, to Calissia, and without comment leads Fenlia away.
Elician peers up at his mother. ‘We need to talk,’ he says shortly.
And his mother, it seems, has the good sense not to argue.
His father’s office is perfectly neat. Elician doesn’t know what he expected. Catastrophe, perhaps. Considering the increasingly disastrous decisions Aliamon made, Elician half hoped the office would reveal that madness. It does not. Everything is in perfect order.
Calissia stands with her hands folded before her, chin up and eyes wet with tears. His father would have been furious with him for making his mother cry. Elician can almost imagine his voice – loud, angry, aggressive. He can almost feel the subtle reverberations of sound waves shuddering across his skin from the echoes of a reprimand that will never come. ‘How much did you know?’ Elician asks her, removing his father’s crown and throwing it onto the too-neat desk.
‘About what?’ his mother asks.
‘About what my father planned. How much did you know?’
Calissia has always been steadfast in her desire to see him gain his crown. Despite the law forbidding any Giver from ascension, she had been meticulous in ensuring no one save their immediate family and sworn confidantes knew what he was. He spent a lifetime hiding this part of himself from the rest of the world, all so he could get a crownhe was not legally permitted to have. She succeeded in the end. He is here. The coronation on the horizon.Leadership, she has frequently told him,always comes at a cost.‘I knew everything,’ she confesses.
‘You knew he would have Lio killed, and me sent to Alelune in chains, on the off chance that it would lead to Queen Alenée attending the Kingsclave? You knew that Father wanted to die, and for Uncle Anslian to take the fall for it? You knew that his actions would send Anslian to his death after Alenée’s murder?’
‘I knew,’ she agrees.
‘And at no point, while he was plotting this madness, did you think to tell him that itwasmadness?’
‘It worked, did it not?’ she asks.
It worked.The words loop upon themselves in vicious repetition. His head aches at the clamouring refrain. ‘Yes,’ he grants her. ‘Yes, I was adequately tortured, Lio was brutalized, three monarchs are dead, and any path to peace we have is in shambles. Yes, it worked.’
‘It was a risky plan,’ she begins, patronizing, as if she has the right.
‘It was aninsaneplan. It was beyond extreme. You know this. Tell me youknowthis.’
‘I know this.’ She nods. Nods again. She steps towards him, but he steps back – holding one hand outright to ward her off. She always avoided him before, too nervous about what would happen if he somehow lost control of himself and healed her when he never should have been able to. Now, she seems to want to close the distance she built. He doesn’t want it. She reaches for him again, and again, he avoids it. This time, she falls still.
‘You must have been furious when Alest refused to murder his way across this country. When with each opportunity our supposed enemy was given, he chose another path. That Uncle Anslian did the same.’ The image is almost a comical one. His father desperately trying to get himself killed over and over again, thwarted only by the sweet kindness of a foreign prince and the genuine love of a brother.
‘You would have been freed far sooner had Alest assassinated—’ She presses her lips closed.
‘So, it is his fault? For not playing blind executioner?’
‘It was unexpected, is all. He…he’s a good boy.’
‘He is,’ Elician agrees. ‘And Anslian never deserved the dishonour you forced upon his name by setting him on the path to the Kingsclave.’
‘You’re king now.’ Nominally. Tentatively. The official coronation has not yet transpired, but Zinnitzia had placed his father’s crown on his head and called him king.
‘Maybe Ishouldn’tbe,’ he snaps back. ‘Maybe I didn’twantto gain a crown through the death and manipulations of my blood relatives. Maybe, by the very virtue of who I am – it is something that should not take place.’
She looks towards the door, nervous, perhaps, that the guard stationed just outside might overhear. Might gossip. And that is what drives her to shame. Not him standing before her. She has already come to terms with his wrath, expected it, it seems, and clearly finds it unnecessary to bother with. But for anyoneelseto hear? His hands shake as he curls them into fists. The tremors radiate up his arms.
‘You could do so much good on that throne, you know that you could,’ she entreats.
He shakes his head. That is not the point. Not now. Not with her. ‘Why did you allow him to plan this?’ he asks. ‘What could possibly have made it all worth it?’
‘Alelune is destabilized, you are king. It is what your father has always wanted.’
‘He’s dead. Anslian is dead. Queen Alenée—’
