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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Fenlia

E lena gives Fenlia and Cat different tasks, then leaves Fransen to supervise as she runs off to address her other responsibilities. She works with many who come to live in the House of the Unwanting. Fen follows her only once, eager to fill her notebook with observations. What she finds is not what she had expected. There are no executions at the House of the Unwanting. There are no screaming wails of agonized souls, clinging desperately to life as a Reaper comes to end their existence once and for all. All the scary stories her peers had told her before she left for Kreuzfurt are . . . false.

Adalei had lived here, once. She knows that. Fen had been too young to visit when Adalei was ill, but she had always pitied and mourned for her cousin’s childhood spent behind these glass walls. She had imagined a place of unending sorrow and horror, her cousin valiantly trying to hold on to life even as her surroundings dared to drag her into Death’s waiting hands. At court, she remembers King Aliamon arguing with Adalei’s father about placing Adalei in the Reapers’ care. Lord Anslian had refused to budge. Fen had always thought him cruel for it.

But the House of the Unwanting is not the villainous lair of her nightmares. It is simply a place where people die. Some are elderly and wish only to have someone there when they pass on. Some are young and ill, like Adalei, and tremble at the thought of a Giver intervening – when their life or death should be entirely natural and without interference. Some here believe the powers of Givers and Reapers do not come from the gods, and Fen had thought only fanatics felt that way. She supposes these people must be fanatics. And yet, they still come to the House for something despite these beliefs. Perhaps only to die, but still: for something.

She goes back to the library to study, and she applies herself to her new lessons fully. She reads about anatomical theory and practice, the differences between neurotransmitters and neurons, the histories of the scientists who discovered them all, and the work physicians do when they cannot rely on a Giver to heal the sick with a touch alone. She talks Cat into playing a game of catch with an apple and is desperately amused at how bad he is at it. But once he gets that trick down, they expand to trying their powers on the poor, abused fruit by killing and reviving it in turn.

In truth, it is not proper killing on Cat’s part. When he catches the apple, he cradles it between his bare palms, concentrating on it until it starts to decay. Decomposition, she has learned, is a whole separate step from the act of dying. For a Reaper, encouraging something to rot is not as instantaneous a process as ending its life. But he can do it, breaking the apple down to a squishy mess that she winces at the feeling of, but relishes the opportunity to return it to proper firmness: resurrecting it to juicy apple perfection.

‘Which book had rotting in it?’ she asks as she tosses the apple towards him once more. He catches it, frowning as he turns it over and over in his hands.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘You were looking at them all last week.’

‘Looking, yes.’

‘What does that mean?’

Sighing, he holds up the now thoroughly shrivelled fruit and prepares to send it back her way. ‘I can’t read them.’ Fen fumbles on the catch. The rotted apple squishes as her fingers try to close around it and it splits in half, splatting to the library floor.

‘You can’t read ?’ They are in a library filled with books. They have been looking over anatomy texts and scientific diagrams for nearly three weeks. Elena has assigned them endless bouts of research to conduct, and Marina even gave a book to Cat when they first started these lessons. ‘How can you not read ?’

‘Soleb uses a different alphabet. And Lunae . . . I haven’t needed to read anything in that since I was young. It’s . . . difficult. I forgot a lot.’ Lunae has one of the most obnoxious alphabets that Fen has ever seen, with letters that barely differentiate from each other and are wholly dependent on strange bits of swirling accents or curling serifs to indicate anything from possession to plurality. Soleb, by contrast, has letters that are stark and straight. Words are written with distinct gaps between each independent letter, and these only vary depending on the writer’s social class. Nobility cast accents to the left, while lower classes slant their accents towards the right.

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ Fen asks.

Cat shrugs, cheeks tinging red. It strikes her, suddenly, that he’s embarrassed. ‘There’s no point in saying something that does not need to be said,’ he mumbles.

‘This is something that needs to be said.’ But something else in that phrasing catches her attention. ‘How did you even get away with it? How have you been learning anything?’

‘I memorize the lessons.’

‘You memorize – is that how you learned to speak Soleben in the first place? You just memorized the whole language? And now during our lessons, you just . . . memorize all this science stuff too?

‘Yes.’ His shoulders curve inwards at her criticism, like a pill bug preparing to curl up and roll away.

He is brilliant. Genuinely brilliant. But—

‘That’s a stupid way to learn something.’ He curves forward even more. She can barely see his face as his long brown hair curtains before it. ‘What if you forget? You need to write things down and read them and . . .’

He appears utterly miserable in the face of her incredulity. Terrified, too, like he is expecting her to do more than point out how dumb he is. Hit him perhaps. Which is stupid on its own. How can anyone be afraid of her ? She is too useless to hurt anyone.

‘I’ll teach you,’ she offers. It is what Elician would want her to do. And it should not be too hard if he is so good at memorizing things. ‘Here.’ She grabs one of the books that Elena had given them. Scanning the first page, she sets it aside for something else. They are in a library, there has to be – ah! There. ‘It’s about nightcats!’ She grins. ‘Like you. Look—’ She reaches for his wrist, and he pulls back in alarm. ‘Can you just stop being so scared all the time? I’m not going to hurt you. ’ Cat freezes at her tone, eyes wide, mouth falling open. At the window seat, Fransen chokes on a snore, sniffles loudly, then settles, still asleep.

‘You’re the one frightened of me ,’ he points out, crossing his arms over his chest and tucking his wrists both out of sight and out of reach.

‘ You’re actually capable of hurting people,’ Fen snaps. ‘What do you think I’m going to do? Heal you to death?’ She laughs. An unhappy sound. ‘I’m not the one who’s a threat, but you’re the one who always reacts like I’m some kind of monster. I never did anything to you.’

Cat’s jaw clenches. His arms tighten around his core. He glances away from her, glaring at an anatomical drawing Elena had pinned up on the library wall. ‘You’re right,’ he grants her with gracious mutiny on his tongue. ‘You didn’t do anything.’ He draws in a breath, long and steady through his nose. When he looks back, it is almost as if he has forced his shoulders to relax by will alone. ‘Sorry. Yes. I would like to read.’ Rigidly, he reaches for the book she’d found, bell jingling tremulously on his wrist. She refuses to give it up. His cheek twitches. He turns his face to the side, the black scar catching her eye.

She hasn’t done anything. But someone did once.

Elena had spent two weeks showing them what dead skin looks like, and Fen had learned the particulars of what she needs to do to heal it. She had watched necrotic flesh piece itself back together again as a result of her ministrations. Her first successful foray into what it means to be a proper Giver healer.

She hadn’t done anything to Cat. She was angry at him for pulling away. She was leery still about touching him. But she hadn’t tried breaching the barrier between them, even though Elician had bid her to try . She wants him to stop acting afraid. It annoys her.

Well then. The King always said you need to give something to take something.

‘Do you want it gone – your mark?’ she asks him quietly.

He glances back at her. Frowns. He touches his cheek, and she dares herself to step closer, ignoring the strange smell that still radiates from his body, to peer at the scar. The skin is dead. She can heal the dead. She can—

She lifts her hand, reminding herself needlessly, I’m a Giver, he cannot hurt me, even though her heart beats wildly in her chest. Cat’s fingers fall, granting her space to try. She cups his cheek. The flesh is gnarled and wrinkled beneath her palm. Live, she commands in her mind. A useless word of hope-filled intention. Nothing changes beneath her touch. She closes her eyes and tries again. Tries, searching for the right intention, the right connection to a power she still struggles to grasp. No. Don’t just live, she thinks. Be free.

And the skin moves.

It moves, it slides, it changes. She tilts her hand to one side, fascinated, as the black stain does not vanish so much as is pushed from his skin. The blackness falls from Cat’s face as if it were a fine coating of dust, staining his shirt and her hand as it leaves his body. The process is slow. Slow and uneven. The apex of the mark heals at a different rate from the bottom and its sides, but it heals . The malformed skin becomes smooth as the charcoal is forced from his flesh – until all that is left is a too-pale cheek and a small mole at the corner of his lips.

She lowers her hand. Black stains her fingers. He looks down, then snatches at her wrist with a grip so tight that she yelps. He grabs a carafe of water and upends it all over her palm, splashing liquid against the hard floor of the library but – the soot falls away. He rubs at her hand, and it becomes clean beneath his touch. ‘You did it,’ Cat murmurs. Awed.

‘Yeah,’ she realizes at the same time. ‘I did.’

‘Elician tried,’ Cat says. ‘He couldn’t do it.’

‘Don’t lie to me,’ Fen snaps. She tugs at her wrist, but he does not let it go.

‘I’m not. I wouldn’t. I meant it. Thank you, Fenlia, Princess of Soleb.’ It is stiff, formal. He bows his head, and she flushes, finally breaking her hand free. ‘Thank you.’

‘We should tell Marina, Zinnitzia . . .’ she says. He glances at their so-called chaperone, but Fransen is still dozing peacefully, baking in the sun-drenched window seat without a care in the world.

‘Yes,’ he drawls, rubbing at his face as if to confirm that the scar really is gone.

‘And after . . . tomorrow, I’ll teach you to read.’

‘Why?’ he asks. ‘There is no need.’

‘Because . . .’ It seems like something that should be done. It makes her stomach clench uncomfortably that it is something he cannot do. As if that, more than the scar on his face, was the real act of barbarity that Alelune inflicted on its people. He really hasn’t read anything for over ten years? Alelune is supposed to be a country of science and learning and education; they pride themselves on it. Discovering all sorts of things that Soleb would never manage on its own. And yet, Cat cannot read. And that feels . . . wrong.

She cannot say that, of course. The mere thought of saying it makes her blush. Elician had wanted them to be friends, before he’d even asked her if she thought he could trust Cat. It will be a test, Fenlia decides. If he’s really someone trustworthy, then he can prove it now. And Elician will be pleased.

‘Elician told me to be your friend,’ she tells Cat. ‘And friends help each other. So you’re going to be my friend, and I’m going to teach you how to read.’

He frowns at her, as if he cannot quite work out her intentions either. But he nods. Accepts. Agrees with a faint, ‘All right.’ Then he rubs his bare cheek once more and says even more quietly, ‘I’ll be your friend.’