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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Elician

E lician’s spider companion survives the frigid winter, the uncertain spring, and manages to last all the way until the end of summer before finally curling its little legs inwards and dying on the sill. Elician wakes to see its body just as the first chill air of a new fall begins to curl through his room. A flutter of wings at the window announces the arrival of a sharp-eyed sparrow who snatches up the spider’s remains and flies off with it. ‘Such is life persevering,’ he murmurs, wishing the spider a good life when its soul returns.

‘Morsen . . . are you there?’ he asks. There is no response. Someone else must be on duty. Tucking his knees closer to his chest, he imagines himself somewhere else. At Soleb’s harvest festival, watching Lio and Adalei laughing, dancing. Then at their wedding, surrounded by oranges and yellows, autumn at its finest. They will have the most beautiful children, Elician knows. For years, he has known that he will never sire any child of his own. That he has no intention of creating a family just to watch them die. He couldn’t, and wouldn’t, stop Lio and Adalei from forming the family they want though, so he has resigned himself to loving their descendants just as he loves them. The future princes and princesses of Himmelsheim will want for nothing; they will giggle and run and play without fear or self-doubt. He will read to them. Make the world beautiful for them. And then he will leave it in their hands to build before the pain of losing them too becomes too much to bear.

He hears footsteps in the hall. Not Eline’s heels though. Someone else.

Gillage throws open the door. Elician opens his eyes slowly, wearily, from where he rests on the floor. ‘Get up,’ the prince orders, kicking under the bed and striking Elician’s shoulder. Pain blossoms then fades. Slowly, Elician crawls out. He looks up.

Gillage is dressed in the finest garb Elician has ever seen on him. The fabric of his tunic is a deep midnight blue. It glitters with silver sequins and reaches down to his mid-thigh. He has a wide belt around his waist and an almost comical-looking sword at his side, though Elician doubts the boy has ever used it before. Gillage’s curls have been flattened too, with some kind of substance that seems to have adhered each lock to his scalp. He is wearing a circlet.

‘Are we going somewhere?’ Elician asks, standing slowly, eyes fixated on the silver band. His knees creak as he rises. His body aches.

‘My mother has summoned you to court,’ Gillage replies. ‘I’m to escort you.’

‘Efficiency in this country really leaves much to be desired. She just discovered I’m here now?’

Gillage slaps him across the face.

‘I’m starting to think that’s just how your people say hello,’ Elician mumbles.

Gillage’s guards drag him out of the door so roughly that Elician trips over his own feet. Gillage laughs, kicking Elician’s knee to compound his difficulties, then daintily jumps over Elician’s crumpled body.

‘And I’m starting to think your people should stay on your knees, since you’re so desperate to get down there,’ Gillage says, affecting a bored undertone that gets right under Elician’s skin.

‘Well, why wouldn’t we?’ he grits out, struggling to stand. ‘Your flooring is the only thing worth mentioning in your entire country.’

Gillage’s face has returned to that splotchy purple-red that precedes most of his tirades. ‘If we were not on our way to my mother, I’d cut your heart out of your throat.’

‘Wrong part of the body, Your Highness, but it’s always a good idea to practise your anatomy.’

‘Your Highness?’ Nured asks, interrupting the boy before he can say or do anything else.

‘We don’t have to keep your little plaything alive, down in the cells,’ Gillage reminds Elician. ‘Remember that the next time you think about misbehaving. I won’t hesitate to send you bits and pieces of your friend until every inch of him lines your room.’

Elician nods, forces his expression to something approaching courtesy. ‘Yes, Stello.’ Gillage grins wide enough that Elician almost retracts the honorific that does not belong to the boy. Instead, he keeps his lips pressed shut and follows Gillage to the Queen.

They have not blindfolded him this time. Gillage and his entourage walk with such confidence that Elician half wonders why . He does his best not to appear obvious, but with every twist and turn they take, he memorizes the route and some unique feature to ensure he doesn’t lose his way. He spies one path that leads down to the courtyard of the palace. Another that leads out to a garden.

One hall is permeated with the smell of food. His mouth waters as he imagines juices on his tongue, savoury sauces, wines, vegetables. He has eaten nothing in months. There has been no need to feed him. He cannot die. He would call Gillage ‘Stello’ again if it ensured him even an apple. He also knows it is not worth the exchange. There are other, bigger things he would exchange for conferring the honour. Lio’s life and well-being aren’t comparable to an apple.

The doors leading to the throne room are massive. They are made of wood, intricately carved with beasts of legend. Griffons and dragons, phoenixes and harpies, a nightcat lurking in the shadows just behind. Two members of Gillage’s escort open the doors. He walks in first, head held up and smiling widely.

The hall is similar to the great hall in Himmelsheim. For half a moment, he is disoriented. Then, he realizes: the halls are inverses of one another. Twinned, even. Something hard shoves Elician in the shoulder, and he stumbles after Gillage along the mirrored hall. An assemblage of finely dressed men and women stand on either side of the Queen’s dais. Some carry marks and banners that denote their territorial allegiance. Elician’s book on Alelunen history gives him some perspective there, at least. He looks for the one that had interested him the most, but as far as he can tell, there is no representative from the Blue Palace here.

As they draw closer to the dais, the Queen quickly becomes his only focus. She sits on her throne wearing an elegant gown. Its shimmering fabric and the glistening embroidery speak to the finest craftsmanship in Alelune, potentially the world. Silver leaves on white branches climb from her skirt to her chest. The base colour is a deep midnight black, offsetting the glittering design so sharply and beautifully that Elician’s fingers twitch from the mad desire just to touch the fabric and feel how it’s been woven. Her collar is low cut, and an intricate necklace cradles her neck as a pendant nestles just above her bosom. A moonstone. Multi-coloured and glimmering.

Elician lifts his eyes higher, and when he meets hers, he cannot help but stare. Cat – Alest – looks just like her. Far more than Gillage does. Alenée’s brown hair is naturally straight, though styled into an intricate arrangement on the top of her head. Her chin rounds out towards a jaw that is perhaps a touch too wide to be considered conventionally attractive. But her eyes – she shares the exact same sea-green eyes as her oldest son. Elician had spent days looking at Alest’s eyes. They had been beautiful then, and the same shade pierces him just as brutally now.

‘I know your son,’ Elician says, not waiting to be introduced or bothering to care about protocol. He has been her prisoner far too long to care. He has no more patience for such a thing.

‘And I knew your father,’ the Queen replies. She snaps her fingers, and a chest is brought forward. The lid opens, and Elician glances inside. He wishes he had not. There is a head there. Drained of blood. Set with preserves. Someone is talking, but the words are washed out and unintelligible, drowned by a great echoing tunnel of noise that reaches its crescendo in a sharp ringing that leaves no room for anything else.

He knows that head. Knows that face. The attendant reaches down and plucks it out by its hair. Holds it before Elician’s eyes as if he needed it upright to recognize features not so unlike his own.

His father’s mouth hangs open. The skin around his eyes sags, mishappen and ringed with dark purple circles. Blood mars the flesh beneath his nose. No one had bothered to clean that during the preservation process, and his father’s usually richly tanned skin has lost its natural vibrancy, turning an unpalatable waxy sand colour. Aliamon’s long hair is a spongy mess of black, the locks sheared and shorn at the neck from whichever strike severed the skull from its body.

Sound returns.

Queen Alenée is speaking. ‘I sent the Reaper boy—’

‘Your son,’ Elician murmurs, unable to take his eyes from his father’s misshapen face. His own head tilts slightly, the weight of his body suddenly too heavy and too light in turn.

‘What was that?’ the Queen asks, not hearing him. Elician steps towards his father. What is left of his father. Decaying muscle and rotting flesh. He wonders when it happened. Laughs, almost, at the incredulity of that thought alone. Yet, logic is easier to process than anything else. It is safer than anything else.

‘Your son,’ he repeats, no louder than he had the first time. The hall is silent, though. Silent save for his footsteps. They echo. They echo like the beating of a drum, the steady thumping of his heart. He reaches out. The attendant holding the head looks back at the Queen in her beautiful dress. She must make some kind of gesture because soon the head is thrust at Elician’s chest. He catches it with both arms. It is not heavy. Not really. Shouldn’t it be heavier? He holds it close. ‘Not the Reaper boy. You sent your son to your enemy.’

His hands touch the weathered flesh, but there is nothing there. No soul to call back. No tether to make whole. Without his father’s soul, there is nothing Elician can do. He is almost certain he could remake a body if he needed to, reforming it from only a head. But a body is nothing without a spark of Life. And Death has seen to it: Aliamon will never return. It’s forbidden to revive a king, Elician thinks hysterically. Vertigo tips him forward. Militant determination keeps him upright.

‘The Reaper’s job was to—’

‘Alest.’ Elician looks up. Don’t look back down. Don’t look and see! He meets those sea-green eyes. The skin on his father’s face shifts beneath his touch. Nausea spirals through him. He does not want to think of his father. Does not want to have this conversation. Not at the same time. Not all at once. But he must. He has no way out. He meets her eyes and says, ‘Alest, Stello of Alelune, heir to your throne. That is who you sent to Soleb. Your son .’ The head feels so wrong in his hands, and he can’t bear it a moment more. Elician places it on the floor, tears off his filthy shirt, and then swaddles the head tenderly like a babe. Shocked and surprised voices burst out all around him. ‘You sent your son to murder the Soleben royal family. And yet, he did not do this. This is not the mark of a Reaper’s work.’ Alest did not kill his father. This, he knows .

‘You’re quite certain,’ she says. But she does not sound surprised.

‘A Reaper doesn’t need to commit this level of violence to kill someone. Stello Alest would not have needed to do this.’

‘The head was severed after death.’ She shrugs. ‘But you are right. Your father died falling from his horse. Though, with some help. Your uncle was kind enough to do this’ – she flicks a hand towards the swaddled head – ‘as confirmation of his work.’ Elician blinks slowly, trying to check definitions of words he knows he knows. His understanding of Lunae fails him, though; her words spill forth and he can only stare at her, uncomprehending. Syllables arch across his consciousness, and all his mind can do is skip back to the last thing he truly thought he understood correctly. Uncle.

‘My uncle killed my father?’ he says in the most basic conjugations he thinks he can manage. He must have interrupted her. The Queen stares at him for a moment, lips pursed in displeasure before returning to that placid predator’s smile.

‘At my request. A sign of friendship, to end this bloody war.’ No. That does not make any sense. His uncle loved his father. Loves their family. Elician blinks. Hard. He shakes his head.

‘Why send Stello Alest to Soleb if my uncle was going to kill my father?’

‘That thing is not the Stello. I am!’ Gillage hisses. Elician had forgotten all about him the moment the head had been revealed, but now he finds the boy. He’s lurking like a gargoyle at the base of the dais leading to Queen Alenée’s glittering throne. His face has gone purple as he clenches his fists and trembles visibly. Elician wonders if the boy will slap him again in front of all these people. He cannot find it in him to care.

The Queen intercedes. She says, ‘Enough, Gillage,’ as if her child is little more than a yapping dog. But, like a yapping dog, Gillage ignores the command.

‘Mother, I’m the Stello.’

‘Alest is your firstborn son,’ Elician says, talking over Gillage. ‘He is alive. He is alive and in Soleb, and you know this.’ He glances at the courtiers, the guards, the people who are all in attendance before their queen. None of them are surprised. ‘You all know this,’ he murmurs.

‘My son is dead. The Reaper I sent to Soleb is that which replaced my son when he died.’

‘And yet he lives, and breathes, and speaks . . . and he did not kill the king you sent him to kill.’ Murmurs start up around him. His head spins. Vertigo swivels his senses, producing a violent tremor. He is shaking, he realizes.

The Queen persists, dogged in her relentless pursuit of something Elician cannot quite understand. ‘Your father is a traitor to his country by not seeking terms to end this war.’

‘To end it? You’re the one who breached the Marias Compromise!’

‘And you’re the ones who forced that compromise into place. You’re the ones who broke the Night Accords that granted us the Bask in 876—’

‘But that’s all we ever do! Both of us. You take the river, then we take the river, then—’ Elician shakes his head. He shakes it again. He squeezes his eyes shut, struggles to regain control of his emotions even as his father’s head is nestled against his chest, and when he opens his eyes, he meets Queen Alenée’s unflinching gaze. ‘Do not speak to me of traitors when you abandoned your rightful heir to be tortured in your own prisons.’

Gillage begins to screech, ‘I am—’

His mother cuts him off. ‘Silence, Gillage.’

The whole court is silent. It is as if no one dares to even breathe. She isn’t denying it, Elician thinks dully. Alest is still her heir. He glances at the little goblin prince, the cruel and desperate boy at the bottom of the dais. It must burn, to be so unwanted.

Queen Alenée raises her hand and flicks her delicate fingers to the left. ‘Bring him in,’ she commands. Elician waits. All he has done since he was captured is wait. A side door opens to the right, and he hears the sound of dragging steps, making him turn to watch who enters. He’d been determined to stare at the Queen until inspiration somehow struck on just how to murder her on her precious throne. Until he could find a way to sever her head from her body, just like his murdered father. But the steps are getting closer, and the Queen is watching the door—

‘Lio!’ His oldest friend is dragged across the floor and thrown to the ground at his feet. Elician kneels at his side. Lio struggles to push himself upright. Their hands collide, then Lio’s fingers shift to grasp Elician’s forearm.

‘You’re late,’ Lio tells him in their tongue. Not Lunae. Soleben. Their own language. And even the relief of hearing it, in its remembered beauty, is overshadowed by Lio’s evident decline in health. Lio is emaciated and filthy, and his hair has started to fall out in clumps, leaving bald patches along his scalp and behind his ears. Elician places a hand to the back of Lio’s neck and touches their brows together – offering comfort. Lio is the one who pulls back first, staring down at the horrible token Elician has wrapped in his own shirt. ‘What . . .’

‘My father’s head,’ Elician explains breathlessly. Lio’s lips part. He stares at it even as Elician repeats himself, ‘I’m holding my father’s head,’ and laughs, hysterical suddenly, at the realization he has no idea what else he is meant to do in this circumstance. It is possible, he realizes, that I’ve lost my mind.

‘As I was saying,’ Queen Alenée announces. Elician flinches. He glances her way. He holds the wrapped head closer and squeezes Lio’s neck just a little. Feels every ailment in his friend’s body through his palm. He is starving, dehydrated, malnourished – and several muscles are in various states of atrophy. Absently, Elician starts healing the muscles first. It feels so good , healing something and experiencing the sensation of success for a change. Each muscle stitching itself back into working order sends a thrill through Elician’s body. There is no Reaper here tearing his work apart. There is no Eline writing on her clipboard, taking notes and blood – and studying, always studying. This is the way it is meant to be. The only way it is meant to be. ‘Due to your own reported demise, Prince Elician, your uncle Anslian is now King of Soleb. In a matter of days, we will sign a peace treaty at the Blessedsafe neutral zone. The terms are still in negotiation.’ Blessedsafe. That’s not what it’s called in Soleben. It’s the Kingsclave. She intends to meet Anslian at the Kingsclave.

‘Elician’s not actually dead, and you both know that though,’ Lio bites out. The Queen’s eyes snap to him. Elician’s heart pounds faster. He digs his nails into Lio’s neck in warning.

‘Here are my terms prior to the signing.’ The Queen stands. She leaves her dais, and her courtiers bow their heads and avert their eyes. Elician and Lio do not do the same. They watch her as she approaches. As she crouches down to their level. Her skirts fold outward like the lapping waves of a perfect pond. The moonstone shimmers gloriously as it dangles between them. She dips her voice low, a quiet conversation between her and them. An appeasement to their circumstances, a bargain over the head of her enemy laid in the hands of a king without a crown. She says, ‘You are a Giver. Thus, it is within your ability to give me a child using your . . . unique talents.’

And Elician, expecting land or fiscal benefits, says, ‘What?’

‘I have tried for twenty years to have an heir worthy of my throne. Instead, I have a dead thing and a monster. Give me a child, and you will be returned to Soleb. You can take up your throne, and the peace between our countries will remain. Giverborn are always female. I’ll have my heir and you’ll have your kingdom.’

‘And what of Alest? You already have an heir.’

Alenée pauses only for a moment. Then, with perfect precision, says, ‘With a female child, he would no longer be my true heir.’ Gillage gasps; some of the assembly murmur, talking amongst themselves, but Alenée ignores them. She presses on. ‘He may stay in Soleb and live a long and happy life far from our borders, never to return.’ Elician falls still. This woman, a mother twice over, looks back at him. ‘We each have our roles to play, young prince. Give me this daughter, and you can go back to playing the role your family set out for you. You can keep Alest, you can keep your kingdom. The war will not reconvene. It will be over.’

It would not take long. A hand pressed against her abdomen. A desire for life to bloom in her already capable body. He would need to stay for the gestation. Stay until the Stella was born and first drew breath. After that . . . he could go home. Alelune would have its heir. Lio and Adalei would finally have a chance to be together and have a child of their own. Both countries’ futures would be secure. Anslian . . . He does not know what Anslian would do, but would that matter? He could manage the chaos his uncle has caused once he gets home. Home. He could go home. Elician glances past the Queen, towards her son.

Maybe culture and custom demanded the Queen’s actions towards Alest, her son and heir. She is the leader of both faith and country. Maybe she was not in a position to deny centuries’ worth of tradition just because her son had unfortunately become a Reaper. Their laws demanded she imprison him. Their laws demanded she keep him separated from her people. Maybe she had arranged for Alest to escape to a better place. Maybe she had known all along that he would not kill Elician or his father, but that he could find a better life in Soleb.

But that does not explain Gillage.

That does not explain why Gillage is so brutal and violent. Why he has no clear confirmation of his position in court. Nor how he can be allowed to torment the Reapers in the cells below, and relish in his cruelty. Gillage is so desperate to prove himself, and so lacking in any kind of alternative path forward, that he still clings to his ill-fitting title of Stello with hands and teeth.

Queen Alenée may not have had a choice with Alest, but she did have one with Gillage. And giving a child to her would be condemning that child to the same kind of life her brothers have faced. A potential for abandonment, exile and torment. A life that, Elician is certain, would have no peace. ‘No,’ he says quietly. ‘I won’t do it.’

The Queen does not seem surprised. He doubts anything could surprise her. ‘The agreement with your uncle necessitates a child,’ the Queen says. ‘My line secured, for the war’s end. He promised this to me . . . either by your hand, or by your sister’s.’

‘My sister’s not very good at being a Giver,’ Elician tells her. ‘She cannot give you what you want.’

‘It does not matter if she can only fix a broken bone or a runny nose, she is a Giver one way or another. If I cannot have a daughter, then . . . I will give your sister to Gillage as a bride. She just turned sixteen last month, isn’t that right?’ Lio stiffens beneath Elician’s touch. The muscles that Elician has just healed turn rigidly tense once more. Elician’s senses flare in discomfort as he feels Lio’s limbs beginning to tremble under their sudden strain. ‘And one thing that’s certain about Giver-mothers . . . they always bear healthy children.’

‘Gillage and Fen are still children themselves,’ Elician murmurs. It is a terrible argument. It is not even an argument. The words slip out and he is too exhausted and worn low to know what he is supposed to say. But Gillage is . . . fifteen now? That is insane. It has to be insane. This cannot be right. This cannot be. ‘Nineteen is the marriageable age in Soleb—’

‘The truce your uncle and I are brokering begins when my heir is born. How long that takes is up to you and your sister. But one of you will provide me with a proper Stella.’

‘But she can’t give you that either. She’s not your blood and Death’s line has to pass down via a female heir – or you can’t prove their child is Death’s chosen line.’ Cat’s explanation, from well over a year ago now, rings through Elician’s mind. Alelune requires proof. Proof that the line is unbroken. A child born from a woman’s body is undoubtedly the blood of that woman. Gillage is Death’s line, but even if he were to lie with someone there would be no way to prove that the child that woman gives birth to is his. She could have taken another lover. And the line could be broken. In all past circumstances, another queen was chosen, from an earlier break in the line. Or, failing that: Death herself chose a new queen. Perhaps she should now. Perhaps a god’s intervention is exactly what they all need.

‘We could prove that it’s his child,’ the Queen says slowly. Elician thinks of the option Cat had suggested, abandoned because it was an unconscionable decision then, and still is now. Imprisoning the woman. Keeping her under constant observation to make certain no one but the Stello has access to her. ‘We would only need to prove that she truly carries his child. Then the line is unbroken.’

‘No,’ he says again. ‘You cannot have her and . . . I will never give you a child.’ His child. Made because of him. He . . . he cannot. He will not. He will not think about it.

The Queen sighs. She stands up. Her skirt moves in a fluid wave, fabric folding beautifully back into position. Her hands fold charmingly in front of her, and she nods to Elician. A bargain struck whether he wished it or not. He has no control over the former and she cannot pursue the latter. It does not matter what he says. He cannot stop this.

‘Then I have no need to keep you comfortable,’ she informs him. ‘Kill the spare.’

The Queen turns back to her dais. Her courtiers lift their heads. ‘What?’ Elician asks, stupid and slow. He cannot die. She cannot kill him. He will survive any blow they give him.

His fingers spasm on Lio’s neck. The Queen sits on her throne and Elician meets his best friend’s eyes. The guards are coming.

His father’s head falls from Elician’s grasp. Elician stumbles to his feet, pulling Lio up with him. He swivels on his heel. There are too many and they advance from all directions. Marching like ants to a rotted fruit waiting to be carried back to their nest. ‘No.’ Elician shakes his head. He pulls Lio closer. He does not know where to go. Does not know what to do.

‘Elician,’ Lio murmurs.

‘No!’

Somewhere, he hears Gillage laughing. Laughing and clapping his hands in glee. But how can Gillage be pleased, when earlier he had been delighting in the chance to give pieces of Lio to Elician as a gift? Enjoying the prospect of his slow torment? If the guards kill Lio now, Gillage cannot torture him later. They cannot find a way to escape either. They cannot get out of this.

Swords are being drawn. A hand grabs at Elician’s arm. He whirls about and punches the man who tried to restrain him. More bodies are coming. More hands. Blades are swinging through the air. Elician shoves Lio out of the way and feels one slice brutally through his own arm. Blood splatters all around them, but the wound heals quick as can be.

‘No!’ Elician yells. He fights with every ounce of energy he has. He throws himself at them, kicking and scratching. He twists a sword out of one guard’s hand and takes it for his own. He spars. Dizzy, and without having expended this much energy since he last fought on the front lines, Elician throws himself at the men who come to end Lio’s life.

He thrusts his blade into their bellies. He parries and ducks and dives under their relentless brutality. He carves open arteries and veins, and he beats them all back from where Lio lies, weakened, behind him. ‘Idiot,’ Gillage laughs.

Elician turns. The would-be stello has drawn the ceremonial sword that he has been toting about as if he knows how to wield it. He grins, savage and wrong. He swings it down, and Lio mouths a word that never sees the light. The blade lands right against the soft expanse of Lio’s throat. Blood gushes and spurts from the terrible wound. And Elician is falling forward, hand outstretched. Heal, heal it, I can heal it! But hands and blades descend on his body.

He is crushed to the ground, Lio just out of reach. ‘ NO !’

‘You know my terms,’ the Queen says, bored and uncaring.

‘ NO !’

She flicks her hand. ‘Clean the mess, take him away. Congratulations, Gillage, you’re engaged.’ She stands once more and seems to float from the room, her dress shimmering with each step. Elician screams after her. Screams as they drag him back. Screams as Lio’s body is lifted by its ankles and pulled farther and farther away.

‘Lio! Lio!’

‘Oh, shut him up,’ someone grumbles.

A sharp pain slices through Elician’s brain, a mockery of his first day in captivity, and he knows no more.