Page 39 of The Moon Blessed King
‘Do I offend?’ he asks absently, an afterthought. Lips press against Elician’s neck. Tingling sparks of insensibility scatter through his unsteady mind.
‘Never,’ Cat swears. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘I wanted to talk to you.’
‘I’ll stay.’
Elician’s consciousness slips away.
For the first time in days, he does not dream of water.
Lio brings them breakfast in the morning. He helps arrange the bed so Elician can sit up comfortably. He provides a convenient lap table that holds plates and cutlery and a drink with no problem. He loiters only long enough to confirm that Elician really is awake and sensible, then leaves – pressing a kiss to Elician’s brow on departure. Thankfully, in the light of the day, Elician is more cognizant.
He is also ravenous. His stomach clenches unhappily as he eats his way through a selection of eggs and toast. Cat nibbles on some fruit, and they are mostly silent as the sounds of the city grow louder. When the food is all gone, Cat politely picks up the tray and sets it on top of a small chest of drawers near the door. He sits back on the edge of Elician’s bed, and with Elician’s permission, explains all that has happened during and after the melee. Elician doesn’t interrupt him. He waits all the way until the end to ask about the pendants. But when Cat reaches into his pocket and removes one, he is still not ready to actually see it.
‘I’ve looked at the remains of the others,’ Cat says. ‘Examined each one. Most, I think, used your blood. This…’ There’s something white adhered to a piece of the darkened leather ball, charred by his sister’s actions but still visible. It’s a piece of bone. Elician’s right pinkie spasms in his lap. As if it remembers sacrificing that piece specifically. As if it would like it back, even though his finger is fully formed and perfect now, just as it has been in all the months since he lost the tip to begin with. He heals quick. He always has.
He wonders which other pieces Cat found. How many bones, how many slices of organic material? Did they all have the same effect? What was Eline de Carsay’s testing procedure like back in Alerae? Did she have vials upon vials filled with the rolls of flesh she had sheared and the organs she had harvested, all ready to be entombed in a shimmering necklace, drenched in his blood?
Fascinating, she had said as he’d lain on his back on a bed that bent his spine and twisted his neck.And it truly all just grows right back? Simply fascinating.
‘I don’t think the others fully understand what these are,’ Cat continues. ‘Fen might have guessed. She knows you were involved in some way. Lio…I’ve avoided telling him much of anything.’
‘How did you manage to keep it from him?’
‘The same as you.’ Acidic words form on Elician’s tongue. His lips pull back in a snarl, ready to spit venom at a victim undeserving of the pain. ‘You did not want him to know,’ Cat says with a loyalty Elician has never deserved, ‘and so I did not let him know.’
Elician seals his mouth shut. He swallows the acid down. His stomach aches with it, nausea rising in its place. ‘Thank you,’ he manages to say. ‘How do they work? Did you figure it out?’
‘Yes. It took time, but yes.’
‘Tell me?’
Cat rotates the pendant between his fingers, grimacing as he explains: ‘The exterior is flesh. Your hair served as a cord to keep its shape before it was attached to a hollowed bone and strung through with a chain. I looked inside this one. The fire destroyed much, but I could…sense it. Blood. Bone, strips of organ – your heart, if I had to guess.’
‘Yes.’ There were many days during his captivity in Alelune that he longed to forget. Butthatday had been particularly bad. The pain had made him lose consciousness again and again. He’d woken up to his blood drenching the prisoner he was supposed to be resurrecting, barely aware of anything save the knife still carving at his heart as it tried to piece itself back together again.
‘When the soldiers wore them, these cast a continual and repeating call to heal and to return from the dead. In truth, I doubt it needed to touch their skin at all – your command was so strong. I imagine Eline took her…extractions while you were actively healing something or someone.’
‘Yes. Who knew bodies could have intentions after the fact?’
‘It would be fascinating to know had she not learned it from torturing you.’
There was that word again…fascinating. Elician swallows thickly and says, ‘I’m fine.’
‘Yes. And as you told Lio, Marina, Zinnitzia, Fenlia and me: nothing happened to you in Alelune.’
‘Are you angry with me?’
Cat sounds angry, in truth. In the few months they have been working together, intertwined in both politics and homemaking, Cat’s voice has rarely risen beyond a tepid show of acceptance to all he has perceived. He is an agreeable man. Alwayssoaccepting of his circumstances and expecting nothing but what he has been given.
‘There is no point in being angry with you,’ Cat tells him.
‘How easy that must be. There is no point in speaking, so you do not speak. No point in being angry, and so you are not angry. Do you do this with all things? Weigh the value of the action before determining if it is worth engaging even the least bit of effort?’
‘Yes.’ Elician had meant to get a rise out of Cat, but it’s so hard to do so when he refuses to be shamed by his own actions, when he simply accepts himself fully and shows no inclination for change. ‘I am not angry with you,’ Cat says, ‘because I am neither displeased, nor annoyed, nor hostile. I am not upset, nor discomfited.’ He lists all the possible definitions and implications of the word, making sure to leave nothing out, as though he has academically inspected the Soleben language and found it utterly lacking when it comes to his emotional distress. ‘I know why you lied,’ Cat concludes. ‘I won’t force you to talk about it if you do not wish to. But you should know that I know. And I won’t lie to you about that understanding.’
Elician should leave it there. Take the escape that Cat is offering him. He should refocus on things that are important. Altas. The people he saved.Hispeople. And yet, his mouth asks, ‘Why do you think I lied?’
