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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Elician

W hen Elician was eleven years old, Alelune’s Moon Prince – Stello Alest – drowned while swimming in a river. The news came while Elician had been chasing fireflies with Lio and baby Fenlia in the courtyard. They were laughing together. Running about and staining their white trousers in the dirt. Elician’s hands had snatched at a bug, trapping it between the cage of his fingers. He’d giggled and run to show Fen, just as a herald had announced the Stello’s death. His father had laughed, clapping his hands and cheering. He’d shouted the news for all to hear. King Aliamon had plucked Fenlia up from the ground and tossed her in the air, making her shriek in delight.

Elician did not understand his father’s glee. A boy had died. A boy younger than him. He looked at Lio, but Lio only frowned and shrugged as trumpets began the calls for a celebration. The rest of the week was filled with revelries. Restaurants filled large glass bottles with water and dropped small figures inside, selling the drink as the Drowned Prince . It became a favourite across the capital and can still be found in some particularly patriotic establishments to this day.

Nearly twelve years later, Elician lies in the same cage that had become that hated boy’s home, when Death decided his time was not yet done. Lio leans with his back against the bars, hungry and weak. And Brielle, the Reaper in the cage to their left, tells them the story of Stello Alest.

Her voice is low and deep. Elician imagines they, and those in the few cages closest to them, are the only ones who can hear her speak. The Reapers nearby are all watching too. They have been ever since Gillage came and wished Elician would disappear. They watch, and they wait. He does not know what they are waiting for.

Perhaps they too want to hear the story.

‘Most Reapers have their first deaths when they’re already old,’ Brielle tells them. ‘They are fully formed, some even wrinkled and frail. Alest . . . he was the youngest I have ever seen claimed. We weren’t sure if he would even grow, but he has. Slowly, and likely not as he should have, but he has grown from that day. Despite that, he should have died much later in life. What use does Death have for a child in need of growing? Why damn a boy without giving him a chance to know what it even means to be alive?’ Elician shivers at the question, at the thought. He presses his knuckles to his lips as she continues on.

‘Queen Alenée divorced Alest’s father when he made a mess of the war and still failed to provide her with a proper heir. She married Gillage’s father to solidify some support from a restless military. He was a general’s son, and it seemed prudent. But still: no daughter to continue her lineage, as is proper.’ Brielle laughs, low and rumbling. ‘It was Gillage’s father who took Alest swimming that day. Gillage’s father who let our stello dive into the deep and ignored him as he drowned.’

Murder , Elician surmises easily. Gillage’s father had murdered Alest to ensure Gillage took priority. A boy held little weight compared to a girl in Alelune, but a secondborn prince held even less weight than a firstborn. He imagines the new prince consort displaying his devastation when they fished Alest from the depths. He imagines the charade would have been convincing. He would have needed to be so, to escape punishment for the boy’s death.

‘He was the first one Alest killed when he woke.’ Elician sees it clear as day. A small child, lying on the warm stones by the tributary waters. Coughing and struggling to gain air. His stepfather hurrying to appear concerned, touching him and then falling dead the moment his hand made contact with Alest’s skin. And the boy, startled and uncertain, would just have sat there, coughing and stunned, as the royal family’s retinue of guards and servants panicked and screamed.

He remembers how, on the road to Kreuzfurt, Cat’s – Alest’s – expressions had at times oscillated from passive acceptance to terror. It is easy to imagine that same face only a decade younger, and so much more confused.

Brielle continues. ‘They threw a blanket over him, stuffed him in a sack. They brought him here.’ She points to the spot where Elician likes to sleep. The curved stone fit for a body. Where little arms and legs had curled up in a desperate attempt to keep warm. ‘He cried for hours, days. The guards didn’t know what to do or how to act. He was their stello. But he was now one of us.’

‘And then they branded him,’ Lio mutters, cracking his knuckles.

Brielle nods. She touches her own scar, the thick black stain of death that marks her as an Alelune Reaper, and as a source of eternal shame. ‘They dragged him to the Queen. Released him and told him to go to his father. And when Alest went to him . . .’

‘He killed him too,’ Elician finishes. He had known the former prince consort had died. He had learned the news in passing, an afterthought swallowed up by the more alarming discussion of Alest’s death. He tries to remember what his reaction had been. Grief? Pity? Maybe something closer to acceptance. Marias had loved his son, so perhaps it was a blessing not to live without him.

‘His father’s bones made the paste for the brand and—’

‘What?’ Lio asks, turning sharply and crawling as close as he can to the bars of the cage.

Brielle frowns, then starts again. ‘In Alelune, the father is tasked with one thing: providing the mother with a child. If the child is unsatisfactory, it’s the father’s fault. In the case of Reapers, it’s tradition for the father to be executed, and the bones ground into the paste that marks the brand. Sealing the cause of death into the product of Death itself.’

Elician’s fingers touch his own face. He can remember Cat’s brand. Alest’s brand. The way that it felt beneath his touch when he attempted, and failed, to heal it. A permanent reminder of how Alest had murdered his father simply by running to him when he was scared.

‘Marias was a traitor for breeding a Reaper, and so . . .’ Brielle shrugs. ‘Afterwards, the Queen sent Alest here permanently and Gillage took the title of Stello.’

‘What a life for a prince,’ Lio whispers.

What a life indeed. Light flickers at one end of the long hall. A guard is approaching. Brielle falls perfectly silent and still. She folds over and keeps her head down. Lio and Elician watch the guard pass before their cage and keep on going, moving down the hall until even the last flickering of his light fades away.

Only when it is safe does Brielle speak again, her quiet voice whispering for them and them alone. ‘Gillage does not deserve to be stello. He is a monster .’ A few quiet hisses of agreement sprinkle in from the cages around them. ‘They say the Queen has never confirmed Gillage as her heir.’

‘What?’ That sounds wrong. Elician sits up a little more. ‘Why would she not declare him stello outright?’

‘Because he is a monster.’

‘He was a toddler when Alest first died. He could not have possibly been a monster then.’

‘Mothers know,’ Brielle says. ‘She knew. Or she would have done it. Declared him as heir. But she did not. Alest is still Stello of Alelune, Reaper or no. He is still our prince.’

Still heir . . . He is still the heir to the Alelune throne despite being a Reaper. So Gillage has no claim until Alest dies for good, and Alest cannot really die unless Death herself wills it. He could liv e as long as me, Elician realizes sharply. He could shape this world as long as I could . . . If the gods give us a chance, we could fix everything, together.

‘Why talk to us now?’ Lio asks. ‘Why tell us any of this now? We have been here for days.’

‘What point would there have been if your stay was merely temporary?’ she asks idly. ‘But it seems your stay won’t be. And so . . .’

‘Alest speaks Soleben,’ Elician interjects. ‘Very well. Did you teach him that?’

‘Yes. We taught him all we could, whenever it was safe to speak. The Queen encouraged it, even. She told us to ensure he could understand the world he lived in.’

To train him to one day rule. Elician grinds his teeth. ‘Why? Why not let him be free? She is queen .’

‘And if she is murdered for being kind to her child? He would be here regardless. There was no other option. Not for him. And not for her.’

‘Would they?’ Lio asks. ‘Would someone have killed her for that?’

Brielle seems surprised he would ask at all. ‘Of course – to kill an adversary is to gain power. If Death did not want them to die, then the murder would not occur. But if they did die . . . well, then it only proves the action just. Queen Alenée had already sacrificed a River War and Altas for Marias. To do more for her son? It would have been suicide.’

She was trapped. Bound. Elician almost laughs at the irony. The heirs of Alelune and Soleb, both exalted and both bound by the laws made to control those blessed by the gods. Both their parents had done what they could, Elician forced to lie each day of his life, holding himself back from true attachment in all things, Alest separated from the world, an education provided between iron bars.

‘Did she want him to be free?’

‘She did what she could,’ Brielle replied. ‘It was not always enough. The guards . . . There are consequences if a Reaper attracts attention here. You’ve seen that already.’

Lio makes a disgusted noise under his breath. It is almost a growl. ‘They did that to him?’ he asks sharply. ‘The guards? Just . . . shoved a stick in a cage and beat him with it?’ Before Brielle can answer, he presses on. ‘Did they do what Gillage did to you? With the torch? Is that all normal ? For life down here?’

‘Lio . . .’ Elician warns.

‘He was nine years old,’ Lio snaps back. ‘ Nine. Fen was only a bit older than that when we realized she was a Giver too. What would you have done if your guards – if I – had hurt her because of what she is? Or because she talked out of turn?’ A light is coming. An Alelunen guard on their usual rounds.

‘Hush . . .’ someone whispers not far away. ‘Be quiet.’

‘Getting yourself worked up is not going to save him now ,’ Elician insists, lowering his voice, even though his hands have been clenched ever since the image rose in his mind. Cat’s sea-green eyes in a child’s face, weeping in terror and loneliness in the cold dark of a cell.

But Lio’s always been less restrained than Elician, and when the guard comes close, he ignores how all the Reapers duck and turn away. Lio shouts, ‘You put your hands on that child?’ And the guard startles at being called out. He turns and squints down at Lio. ‘Your stello , your real stello, the one you assholes buried alive because he had a gift. Did you put your hands on him?’

Elician grits his teeth. He shakes his head. He cannot control his friend. He never could. Lio obeys him only because he believes in him, and if he believes in something more , Lio will follow that to its end instead.

Lio’s hands grip the iron bars. He shakes them – hard. He snarls and spits, taunting until the guard is stupid enough to slap a baton against the cage and tell Lio to shut up. Lio snatches at the baton in the split-second it snaps against the bars, fingers moving with preternatural speed. He wrenches at it with all his strength, tearing it from the man’s hand.

More lights are glittering at the end of the hall as Lio’s shouting draws attention. More guards are coming. But this one, right now, is furious enough to reach for his keys – to unlock the cell to retrieve his weapon. The moment he does, Lio is on him. He slams the baton hard into the man’s body. He beats him and beats him long and hard, shouting and screaming profanities even as Elician crawls from the cage and drags his friend off the man.

‘You’re going to get us both killed,’ Elician growls, throwing Lio to the ground. But it is not an escape Lio wants. It is vengeance he craves, twelve years too late. Lio leaves the first guard only to move on to the next. To save Lio from a beating in turn, Elician joins the fray.

These guards are largely untrained. They may be perfectly capable of wandering up and down a hallway, but they are not soldiers and they are not fighters. Even weak as Lio has become, his adrenaline forces him forward and Elician follows on instinct. Elician swings a torch into one man’s face and bludgeons a woman with the still-burning end. He sweeps the legs of the first man, then kicks at his head as hard as he can. It kills the man. An action instantly reversed when Elician’s bare skin brushes against his flesh, as the prince turns to face the next one in line. Another kick, a third. Elician backs away to avoid restarting the process all over again.

He swivels to check on Lio and finds the woman he’d pummelled has been knocked out or killed and the two others that had come to assist are being summarily dealt with too. Lio has broken one’s arm and is striking the second’s throat with a particularly brutal blow from the baton.

Someone has managed to strike Lio’s eye. It is bleeding and swollen. Elician heals it with a harsh shove of his palm against the wound. He ignores how Lio hisses, muttering to the guard, ‘You fucking deserve this,’ even as the cacophony of more guards echoes on all sides.

Reaching down, Elician collects a baton of his own. Lio’s rage has not been quelled, and escape is a non-starter. Even from here, Elician can see the next round of fighting is going to involve dozens of men and women. Dozens more than Elician knows they can handle. Taking a deep breath, he does the only thing he knows how to do in such a circumstance.

He plants his feet and makes as much of a stand as his best friend. They fight back to back, defending and protecting and avenging. Elician cannot heal Lio mid-combat, but he feels it when his friend starts to falter. Senses the sharp rise of exhaustion, and instinctively responds to the shift in the fight’s rhythm as the melee drags on.

At the border, the battles wage for hours. There are constant waves of fresh troops sent out to provide relief to the ones already there. The first wave is sent out, then the second, then the third. Actual combat is fast, as the human body is only capable of operating at full capacity for short bursts. In the end, victory depends on which army can outlast the other. And Lio, for all the adrenaline that had motivated him from the start, is not in good shape.

Lio doesn’t care.

He screams taunts and curses and jeers. He keeps his vicious tongue wagging with insults: child-beaters, murderers, weaklings . He grows more creative the more times he is struck. When he knows he will fall eventually but is not yet ready to concede, his insults escalate: ‘Limp-dick spermless cunt . Ball-less goat-fucking whore! Spineless cow-shit-eating worm . Piss-gargling philanderer .’

The last one makes Elician laugh hard enough, in his own battle frenzy, that he is entirely distracted when something hard and excruciating smacks him right between his teeth. He feels half his mouth shatter at the impact, but he is still laughing when he blacks out. After all, what did Lio even mean ?

Elician wakes up in more or less one piece. Lio wakes up in far mor e pieces. Many bones have been shattered, his chest crushed. Elician jerks badly when he sees the state of his friend, and it takes him hours to piece him back together. Healing this amount of damage requires more energy than he has to spare, and it takes time to mend each broken bone and torn muscle. Elician needs to eat, to rest, to recover from his own injuries in peace. But Lio does not have the time for him to rest. Elician pushes himself past the exhaustion. By the time he finishes, he is dizzy and close to swooning.

Lio sleeps through it all. Elician is grateful that he does. The pain of waking would have been unbearable. When a guard passes them on the usual route, tentatively walking over the bloodstained alabaster like a nobleman over a mud puddle, Elician bares his teeth and earns a verbal rebuke but nothing more.

They have not gained any friends with the staff . Elician does not care. Even if the outcome had been certain from the beginning, he cannot deny how good it had felt to take some of his anger out on something physical. He is surprised that they managed as well as they did, weak and exhausted as they are.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ Brielle chides.

‘Your stello deserved far more than that besides.’

Brielle is quiet for several moments. She sits with her arms crossed and her knees pulled up to her chest. She watches him, like an owl in a tree. ‘Who is that boy to you?’

‘Lio?’ he asks.

‘Yes.’

‘My brother, in a way. The only one I’ve ever known, at least.’ He huffs, running a hand through Lio’s bloodstained hair. ‘I was afraid of everything when I was a child,’ Elician tells her. ‘My cousin was dying of some disease no one could understand, and my parents were terrified I’d cut myself and someone would see me heal. I wasn’t allowed to play with anyone but Lio, because I might make a mistake, and someone might see . I was barely allowed to go for a walk on my own in public.’ He reaches a knot in Lio’s hair. There are always knots, but he has no comb to set it straight. ‘So Lio brought the world to me. He played the games I couldn’t play and he told me how they felt. He helped me sneak out at night and let me try all the things I couldn’t when someone else was watching. He said all the things I couldn’t to all the people I had to be polite to. And he . . . he has never liked bullies. No matter who they are. And maybe we shouldn’t have done this.’ He jerks his chin towards the bloodstained ground and the mess they’ve made out of everything. ‘But Lio wanted to do it, and I will support him until the end. He was there for me every moment I ever needed someone, and I’ll be there for him too. And . . . I hope one day someone can do the same for your stello, Brielle. Because he deserves that too.’

The door at the end of the hall opens. More torches come. Elician sighs. He rubs a hand over his face and prepares himself for whatever comes next. He is only a little surprised to see Gillage himself and Nured. Eline is following silently behind with the usual gaggle of guards. He supposes their ruckus had been hard to ignore.

‘You haven’t been behaving yourselves,’ Gillage scolds. The boy’s voice has not broken yet. It is still high-pitched and infantile.

For years, Elician has ridden into battle and faced down enemies. When Anslian disciplined him, he had done it with military swiftness. When his father issued commands, he had done it with the firm knowledge that Elician would follow without question. Elician does not even think his mother has ever chastised him like this, wagging her finger to show her displeasure.

Elician cannot help it. He laughs. ‘Admittedly, Your Highness’ – he struggles to show some modicum of respect – ‘there’s little entertainment to be had otherwise.’

The boy’s button nose scrunches, all pert and dissatisfied. ‘You killed my men.’

‘Yes.’ Elician applauds. ‘Yes, I did.’ Then, more soberly, he leans forward. ‘Your men saw fit to torture and abuse a child – your older brother – for twelve years. It did not sit well with us.’

Gillage’s mouth falls open. His eyes go wide. He glances towards Nured, then straightens his back. Postures, and asks defiantly, ‘You did all this for that thing ?’

‘Alest is not a thing,’ Elician says, voice low and quiet.

‘It’s not a person,’ Gillage recites. ‘You do realize that, right? It’s not a human being . It’s a dead thing walking, nothing more or less.’

‘Your brother is more human than half the men I have met in my lifetime. He can kill if he wants to, but he does not want to. And I hope one day you understand even a fraction of what that’s like. To have power over someone, to be able to do anything you want, but choosing to do the right thing anyway – simply because it’s right .’

Gillage gapes, then glowers. He snarls like a puppy angry that someone has touched his food. He takes a step closer to the cage. Nured mutters a quiet word of warning, but Elician does not hurt children. Neither does Lio. The boy is safe and will remain safe. ‘You think that’s what it’s like?’ Gillage asks. ‘Some sweet little thing? You’re wrong. It’s a murderer. That’s all it is, that’s all it ever will be. A murderer.’

‘And what will you be?’ Elician asks. Gillage stares at him, lips parted as if he wants to respond but does not have the words. ‘Why are you here, Your Highness?’

The child looks uncertain. He glances back towards Nured and Eline. It is a quick look, but Elician recognizes it. He has seen looks like that before. A subordinate checking in with a superior, or someone who thinks they are in charge looking for guidance from the ventriloquist at their back.

‘We will be changing your location,’ Eline says, stepping forward. ‘Since you cannot behave together, then perhaps separation will do you good.’ She tilts her chin at Nured. ‘Open the cage.’

Elician expects the man to chafe, to wait for Gillage to give the order instead, but he doesn’t. He follows her command with ease, unlocking the cage for the second time in only a few hours. ‘Giver,’ Gillage commands in his squeaky child’s voice. ‘Come.’

‘I’m a prince, Your Highness,’ Elician says. He traces a hand along Lio’s wrist. He will panic when he wakes to find Elician gone. Elician glances to his left. Brielle nods subtly in the gloom. She will explain. He hopes it will be enough. ‘Perhaps you could show me some of the courtesy I deserve.’

‘Come here, and I won’t have Nured slit your toy’s throat. There’s my courtesy.’ And there is the savagery of the child he first met. The brutal bloodlust that does not coincide at all with what Elician has seen in the boy’s older brother. Elician crawls around Lio’s body. He slips outside and holds his hands to the side to accept the manacles offered.

The door is closed behind him. Eline smiles brightly. ‘I am looking forward to getting to know you better,’ she says. ‘Come, you will be upstairs. It is a long way.’ A rough hand shoves him forward, and Elician glances back. Lio is still asleep.

‘See you soon,’ he promises. He hopes it is not a lie.