Page 8 of The Moon Blessed King
‘There was a game Elician played on the way to Kreuzfurt…naming all the birds he could see. I want to play it with him again.’ He wants to see Elician smile. He wants…
‘I’ll get you a book on ornithology,’ Marina promises. Cat thanks her. It seems like the only logical thing to do.
‘Do you think it’s a bad idea? Getting married?’ Cat asks. ‘Adalei was against it.’
Perhaps they have been hasty. Perhaps it was too much last night. Perhaps he pushed the thought too firmly. Elician had looked at him, brown eyes brimming with passion for the hope of a future better than the one they have now, and Cat had not had it in him to say no. He felt, instead, consumed by the idea. As if every part of him had been enveloped by a new sense of potential and being. As if every fear and every uncertainty paled in the face of one simple promise.Together. We’ll stay together. Cat could return to Alelune, he could set things right, he could save his people and stop a war. Prove to everyone that Reapers are not people to be feared, and that he never should have been sent away to begin with. And through it all: he would not have to face the gauntlet alone.
‘Yes,’ Marina sighs. ‘You’ve seen how Soleb treats Reapers. That prejudice will not fully subside merely because Elician offered you his hand. You are both a Reaper and an Alelunen, and that will be even worse. You and Elician both want to stop the war because you believe in peace. That’s fine. But there are people inbothcountries who want this war to happen because they want to eradicate every last trace of the other nation’speoplefrom existence. And they will never want peace, and so they will never want you.’
‘You’re a Reaper, and Alelunen. They do not treat you so bad.’
‘I’m a prized pet,’ Marina replies. ‘I’ve been here for so long that I’ve been granted an exception.’
‘Much like how I’m Fen’s exception to her own prejudice.’ He knows full well that Fen still mistrusts both Alelunens and Reapers alike. But for him, herbest friend, she will close her eyes and ignore everything that makes him who he is, because it suits her to do so.
‘One day, perhaps you’ll be granted an exception at court too. If for no other reason than to keep up appearances as their prince consort, but Soleb likes its traditions, and they don’t like change, and Elician is asking them to do both in a very short period of time. But…Elician is also right in that if he simply calls you his betrothed and allows for a prolonged courting period, it gives each one of his detractors the opportunity to intervene. By marrying you during the coronation, he forces the point to be made moot. Heisgoing to help you get your crown, and suing for peaceisgoing to be the strategy they will all be forced to accept. It is not an ideal circumstance, but it is not inherently without its merits. Adalei was right to question it, but she’ll support it. As will I.’
There is something in her tone though, grudging or forced. Cat shakes his head, pulls away from her gentle touch. ‘But you don’t agree with it.’
‘I agree with the politics to an extent. You don’t have any power at all until you become king, and thereisa long distance to go before you get there. And…there is more to marriage than politics. Cat, you’ve never had the opportunity to explore, to be with another person in an intimate fashion, or even discover what you like. You’re marrying a man you barely know, and I wish you simply had more time. Because in the end, the future I want for both of you is one where you are content.’
There was a Reaper couple in Kreuzfurt. Two men Cat eagerly avoided ever getting to know because the mere sight of them made his heart race and his cheeks burn. They walked hand in hand, sideby side, always leaning towards each other like flowers to the sun. His mouth watered when he saw them. Elena always teased him when she caught him staring, yearning,imagining. Scandalous notions of impropriety, of skin touching, hands ghosting across each precious limb. They pulled the breath from his lungs and he wanted to know what it felt like as much as he was too terrified to even consider what it could mean.
‘It’s better to be content with what you have than yearn for what you will never get to see,’ Cat murmurs. ‘I’ll get to know him. And I will be content with whatever life gives me. And I hope…somehow…I can make him content as well.’
Marina’s troubled expression does not clear. But she nods her head. Pats his cheek. She looks about the room, and asks if he needs help packing. But he doesn’t. He tells her so, and she leaves, letting him sit there and try to come to terms with the weight of a decision that felt so right the night before. It still feels right now, but it has gained more gravity. He wraps his arms around his own body, holds himself close and breathes.
He never thought this path would be easy, but he hopes, truly, that when it is all over at least it will have been worth it.
It takes a week to travel from Crowen to Himmelsheim, and Cat is singularly sick and tired of constantly travelling from one city to the next. And of every journey so far, getting captured and marched to forced imprisonment was actually the most enjoyable experience.
Elena and Jonan Morsen stay behind in Crowen. A carriage is supplied for Adalei, Fen and their belongings. Some of Crowen’s city watch are even reallocated as a polite escort. The extra eyes on their party seem to ensure that there are precious few moments to talk about anything important at all. Lio still looks like a man whocrawled from his own grave, and Elician’s ability to heal him is stymied by their onlookers. He relinquishes the task to Zinnitzia with a kind of grudging acceptance that crackles through the air.
Lio has no wounds. There is nothing truly for Zinnitzia to piece back together, but she calls Fen over every evening of the journey and walks her through what it feels like to encourage muscle to reform, add excess fat where previously there was so little and help a body to simply go from a state of enfeeblement to strength. Adalei hovers nearby, holding Lio’s hand as he lets the pair work. Cat doesn’t think a single person in the party is especially pleased to be doing any of it at all.
‘He’ll be all right,’ Cat says to Elician anyway.
‘I know,’ Elician replies. But he watches over the proceedings with a fretful anxiety despite himself.
Night falls on their first day, and Elician refuses the carriage to sprawl instead by the fire. Cat doesn’t mean to doze off before him, but he wakes some time later to the sound of Elician and Lio whispering to each other in the dark. Cat can’t quite tell where their guards are; he knows they’re there, somewhere, just beyond their fire line, but they’re not hovering over their king or their king’s dearest friend. It’s rather kind of them, all things considered.
Cat keeps his eyes shut. Wills himself to go back to sleep. But—
Lio hisses, a sound that is too familiar to Cat from the cells to fully ignore. Instinct presses a response to his tongue but he swallows it back. ‘It’s not your fault,’ Lio says next, passionate and sincere. Cat opens his eyes, squinting through the gloom. Their backs are to him. They’re both upright, shoulder to shoulder by the fire, heads down and hands clasped.
Elician is not convinced by Lio’s comment; he shakes his head, shoulders stiff. ‘When we were in Kreuzfurt, you told me Cat couldn’t consent to a relationship with me.’ Cat’s breath catches in his throat. He tries to remember when that could have been. The answer is immediate. Elician hugged him, only once. He had fallenasleep on Cat’s shoulder. They went for a walk after, all around the gardens of the enclave. And then, just before they parted, Elician pulled Cat into his arms and it felt like coming home to a place he had forgotten could even exist. The following day, Elician all but ignored him. He was gone not long afterwards. ‘You told me that,’ Elician grinds out, ‘and the first thing I did upon seeing him again was bind him in marriage.’
The fire cracks. Sap popping in a loud burst. Lio pokes at it with a stick. ‘If he came up to you in the morning, said he changed his mind – that Gillage is his king and he wants to return to Alelune and be with his Reapers in those cells – would you let him go?’
It’s a choice. In the quick rush of everything that happened, Cat never really thought of any alternatives after he spoke to Elician. But…he could do it. He could go back to Alelune, walk himself into the cell where he spent his childhood. Be with the people whom he loves most in this world. He would not be their saviour, but he had never proven himself to be one in the past either. They had loved him all the same. He had never dreamed of being king, and it is always so very dangerous to hope for something as necessary as freedom.
‘No,’ Elician says.
‘Do you expect me to judge you for that?’ Lio asks him.
‘Someone should. If it’s his choice and I stop him from doing it.’
‘I won’t.’
