Page 93 of The Moon Blessed King
‘Ah.’ Alest reaches for Elician’s hand. Elician takes it. It is still warm. It is still flush with life and power, and Alest nearly sighs in relief at the thought that some things have not changed even while others almost certainly have. For he can feel it now.The possibility.
Alest looks at his brother’s body. Gillage was a child, spoilt and arrogant and terrified of being thrown away. A child raised by the jealous and the plotting, and his mother never saw to his education either. She never wanted him at all. Gillage watched their mother try desperately to replace him. And failing at that, she still preferred something the world perceived as nothing more than a deadthingover her living son.
Alest moves to Gillage’s side. Elician offers commentary as Alest kneels. ‘You said something to Death, I couldn’t hear, and then Gillage had that knife, and he went to stab you, but…’
‘He died instead,’ Alest finishes.Someone always dies during this challenge.It makes his heart ache. He reaches for the knife in hisbrother’s hand. He takes it away. Then he rests his palm on Gillage’s cheek.
There are wounds on Gillage’s body. He looks as though he exploded from the inside out, bursting at the arms and legs. These are symptoms that point only to Death. ‘The death of Death is Life itself,’ Alest explains softly. He feels Elician shifting at his side.
‘You are Death,’ Elician says slowly. ‘And so you are Life.’ Hedidhear something after all. Alest smiles faintly.
He feels his brother’s very essence through the palm of his hand.He isn’t finished becoming what he needs to be yet, he prays. Then he ends everything that was winding down to death. He demands the symptoms to cease, the termination to end. He tells platelets to move, kidneys to activate, a heart to beat. He undoes Death’s work.Live, he orders. Live to die another day, at another time, when a different water will come and reclaim his soul.
Gillage gasps awake. His entourage startle in stunned amazement. Elician’s hand clasps Alest’s shoulder. ‘You’re not finished, brother,’ Alest says to the child that died before he understood what it actually meant to live. ‘You have mistakes to fix. And your victims deserve a chance for you to fix them.’
Gillage stares at him, mouth gaping wordlessly. His crown fell off his head some time ago, leaving his brown curls wild and free. Alest offers him his hand. Gillage does not take it. He just stares, dumbfounded beyond belief.
That is fine too.
After all, they have plenty of time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Fenlia
In truth, Fen didn’t think Hamad would come. She sits beside little Aniya, holding the girl’s hand, and when Cieli tells her that Hamad is here, she wants to laugh a bit at the absurdity. ‘Show him up,’ she whispers. They’re alone in Fen’s room in Elena’s home. Separate and away from prying eyes.
She very rarely spends time here anymore. These days, she sleeps in the butcher shop next to all those who need her. But this requires privacy, and the secret passage into Elena’s home is exceedingly convenient when it comes to mitigating unexpected outcomes.
Fen holds Aniya’s hand. She senses her, understands her, knows her to her core. Her genetic code still feels like it’s been shaped by Elician, for all that its structure is perfectly Kassandra’s. She is a gift given to this world, the product of what a Giver truly should be striving to achieve.
The door opens. Hamad walks in.
‘Is she…?’ he asks. He can’t bring himself to finish the question. He can only look at the fragile body of the little thing he’s pinned all his hopes and dreams on, a fractured shell that he never understood the worth and value of – his little merchant girl he deigned to make a queen.
‘She died an hour ago,’ Fen tells him. She keeps her eyes onAniya’s precious face. It lies pale and still. Like so many other faces in the butcher shop, in the city, in all of Alelune and Soleb, she is no different. So much fuss over one life, when so many others have died.
‘How?‘ Hamad asks. He curses. Steps forward, then stops. Shakes his head. ‘She was our one chance!’
‘Yes,’ Fen agrees softly. ‘But all things must die.’
‘There’s no one else that can…’ Hamad shuffles closer, lowers his voice. ‘Who else knows who she is?’
‘No one,’ Fen tells him. She doesn’t need to look at him. She doesn’t need to see his face or his expressions or his posturing. She can feel his presence in the air, the body of a man who is certain and strong, who knows what it is he’s meant to do and why. He’s a construct of wealth and power: his stomach is full; his musculature is fit and shapely. He’s healthy, and he’s the way he is because he has the means.
Fen hasn’t eaten today. She doesn’t need the bread.
‘Bring her back,’ Hamad says.
Fen smiles. It’s a bitter thing. ‘Bring her back?’ she repeats. ‘That’s forbidden.’
‘No one else knows.’
‘Healing her would have been one thing. But an heir to the Soleben crown cannot take the crown if they have died once before. They are giftedonelife andonechance to rule.’
‘If we don’t have an heir we can’t remove Adalei from the throne.’
She stands slowly. She gently rests Aniya’s little hand over the blue and green and gold seams of her pretty dress. Fen closes her eyes. She nods, turns and looks up at Hamad. ‘The council will never accept this,’ she says. ‘Elician’s advisers will never agree to a Giver-born child twice raised. Parliament will object.’
