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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Elician

E lician’s mother fell ill the moment he was born. She lay in bed, burning from fever and unable to lift her hands to hold her babe to her chest.

Elician remembers the story as he sits, once more, in the cold dark of the Reaper cells. In Alest’s cell. In Lio’s. His father used to tell him that Verine d’Altas had only given birth to Lio a few weeks before Calissia gave birth to Elician. That she came to the palace to nurse the infant prince, and when the rest of the court fluttered fitfully around the Queen, she watched over Elician and her son. Never again had either boy been parted.

Even when his mother recovered and could tend to him on her own, Elician screamed and howled and wailed for his milk-brother, only calming when he could cling to the chubby baby he had known from his first day alive. Then it simply became accepted. Lio became the youngest sworn member of the royal court, and Elician was given the most precious gift he had ever had.

Lio had been there when Elician first fell and noticed his hands healing before his eyes. He had lied to everyone they’d ever met about who and what Elician was. He fought harder and faster than anyone Elician knew, desperate to be a guard worthy of a prince. Worthy of Adalei, too.

Adalei. Elician presses his hands to his face. He can almost imagine the feeling of Lio’s skin beneath his palm. The sweat that had beaded on his neck as they’d listened to the Queen’s demands. Adalei’s going to kill me, Elician thinks. He almost feels relieved at the notion. He is too tired to live anymore. To face a future existence that goes on for ever, knowing Fen is soon to be deposited in Alelune – forced to bear a child for a sadistic prince far from home. Also knowing that his father had died at his uncle’s hands. Knowing that he could not even save one person. Not one person he actually cared about. What was the point of all these years of lying?

Even the guards he killed while defending Lio had been brought back to life while he had been unconscious. A trick Gillage had delighted in informing him of. They had only needed to move Elician’s hands to their bodies, and without conscious effort at all, the guards sprang to life as if nothing had happened. The mere thought is more violating than it has any right to be.

The Reapers watch him in their cells. Some had been singing when he first awoke, half-naked and cold in Alest’s cell. Their song was a strange kind of celebratory relief that hurt worse than any funeral dirge he has ever known. Finally, it’s over, the song seemed to suggest. Finally, Lio was at peace. And they were glad for it. He swipes at the tears on his cheeks. He thought he didn’t have any more crying left in him, but he supposes his body is healing that too. Providing them endlessly, to show his misery is real. That it is ever present. That it cannot be taken away by Gillage, the Queen or Alelune.

‘Where do they take the dead?’ Elician asks the Reapers of Alerae. Somewhere, someone, maybe Morsen, is walking down the endless hall. Footsteps echo, but no voices. ‘If someone dies’ – Elician wipes his wet cheeks – ‘where do they take them?’

‘You mean, where did they take Lio?’ Brielle corrects from his left.

‘Yes.’ A childhood memory of skinned knees and lies floods him. Promises made under fireflies. Poems written in the night for a girl Lio had been destined to marry. Thoughts run through Elician’s mind. Images and memories, shattered dreams and desperate prayers. His desperation seems fitting, as he lies where Alest once lay. Where a frightened boy had been sentenced by his mother. The same mother who wants to turn Elician’s sister into a broodmare and call it peace.

‘There’s a pit.’ Brielle points down the hall. Points as though her finger could spear through wall and stone and darkness, emerging into the world above and reaching a target with the accuracy of a seasoned hunter.

Elician shifts to his knees. He places his head on the ground, his palms shoulder-width apart. His brow kisses the alabaster stone, and he turns towards where Lio’s body lies, and he stays there. Eyes shut. Hands cool against the earth.

This is not a prayer.

Come back, Elician wills. He reaches out with his mind as much as he can. Come back.

The first time Lio died, they had been climbing the walls. Elician had just reached the top and Lio was right behind him. Then the crevice he had been using as a handhold failed. Elician watched, horrified, as his friend plummeted back to the earth – shattering his spine and his skull in the process. He had been too stunned to scream. No one had been watching them. Why would they need to? They could not get hurt.

Except.

They could get hurt. Lio could get hurt. Elician had scrambled down the wall as fast as he could. He pressed his palms to Lio’s body, trembling as he thought what if . . . what if . . . what if I can’t . . . but Lio jerked upright only seconds after Elician made contact. His spine straightened, his veins filling with the exact amount of blood he needed to survive. And Lio held Elician as he sobbed apologies and promised never to climb the walls again.

(That, like promising to never again bring someone back to life, was a lie.)

Elician has resurrected Lio far too many times since. Sometimes, he felt like he was in a constant tug of war with Death. Death wanted to take Lio for her own, but Elician refused to let him go. Refused to part with the only person he had ever felt truly comfortable with. Who had always known every part of Elician’s soul and who had never once turned his back on him.

I’m going to die of old age one day, Lio had told him once, years ago, covered in blood from a day of fighting a war without end. Elician, too tired to say anything, had only rolled over to look up at him. Waiting. Expecting. Lio smiled. I’m going to leave you with a couple of kids who’ll take care of you, just like me. His smile grew bigger and bigger. And you’ll never be alone, little brother. You’ll always have someone there with you, no matter what.

Elician squeezes his eyes shut. He breathes in deep through his nose and out through his mouth. He grinds his brow into the alabaster. He pushes against the earth, commanding it to bend to his will and his will alone. Lio’s skin is a feeling Elician memorized years ago. His heart a steady thump thump . . . thump thump . . . thump thump . . . that speeds up only in combat or when he looks at Adalei. Adalei.

I promised to bring him home to you, Elician thinks. Come back. Come back, brother, come back. I promised Adalei you’d come back. So come back. Come back.

Two hundred and six bones, six hundred and fifty muscles, one hundred and eighty-seven joints, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus, but most importantly: soul. The soul. It rests in the body. It shines and sparkles with life more than anything else. It is the first thing that shatters under a Reaper’s touch. The precious ether that keeps everything running, dissipating the moment a Reaper begins their trade. But so long as there is a soul Elician can reach . . . then anything is possible. Anyone can return.

Elician has spent enough time lately fighting Reapers for control over a person’s soul, and he can trace the exact form and shape of Death’s influence. He can picture it like a painting formed of shadow. The feeling of a soul: electric and vital. It is pepper and mint, hot and cold, sweet and salty. It is clashing flavours and wondrous sensations. Rain before it falls. Ozone right before lightning strikes. It is the feeling of resting your head against a warm chest and listening to a heart beating right beneath your ear. It is an invisible force, constantly in motion, felt but never seen.

Come back.

Gillage’s blade cut Lio’s trachea, his jugular and his carotid. He bled out in seconds. Elician is still drenched in the blood that should be in Lio’s body. He can feel it. Every atom. Every molecule. Every twisting strand of unique matter that makes Lio Lio .

Come back.

Elician’s palms become warm. The blood that has soaked into his clothes, Lio’s blood, feels suddenly fresh and vibrant with life . . . and falls onto the stones. He breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth. He presses his hands even harder against the ground. In his mind, he sees Lio lying in a mass grave. Sees him with his star-bright eyes staring up at the heavens. The moon. Staring up at the moon. He sees Lio’s torn throat. His lax posture.

Come back.

He imagines the wound closing. Elician’s hands burn against the alabaster. Someone hisses. The Reapers always hiss when they want to pass messages, but Elician does not care. Cannot care. Everything is meaningless. Everything except for the thread between him and his friend – his brother.

Come back.

The throat closes in Elician’s mind. The wound heals itself perfectly. There is not even a scar. Blood replenishes itself in Lio’s body, produced by will and dedication.

Come back.

Lio’s heart starts to beat. Even at a distance, his heart starts to beat. Elician sees it in his mind. Feels it in his hands. He can even feel the ground trembling beneath his palm. Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump. Electricity sparks within Lio’s brain.

Come back.

And the soul. Lio’s soul . . .

Elician presses his head as hard as he can to the ground. His tears mix with Lio’s blood, fresh and wet against the alabaster. ‘Please, brother . . . come back.’

Lio’s eyes snap open in that other place. He jerks for air, and Elician throws himself backwards in his cell. His head clangs against the bars behind him. He gags, trying to breathe but finding no air. His body is burning. He is on fire. He is on fire . His clothes are alight, and he beats his palms against them, coughing against the smoke and trying to catch his breath.

He gags as the fire is finally put out. The Reapers are hissing louder and louder to each other. Something clunks at the far end of the hall. Something loud. A guard. Elician coughs and tries to find fresh air. He swings his hand through the smoke. He does not know where it all came from or how. The footsteps are approaching faster now. Voices are sparking all around.

Elician slaps his hands against his eyes. He rubs as hard as he can, and when he finally manages to see, a figure has positioned itself in front of him. Keys jangle loudly as the cell is unlocked.

Morsen kneels down to look at him. ‘Your Majesty,’ he says softly. Majesty. Not Highness . Because his father is dead. And that would mean . . .

‘But my uncle’s king now,’ Elician says, correcting him.

‘ You are the rightful king, Your Majesty.’ The bars swing open. A hand is extended. ‘I can get you out.’

‘Out?’ The words do not make sense. Elician presses his palms to his face. He rubs the tears from his eyes. Slowly, he returns to a crouch. He crawls, on hands and knees, towards Morsen, and lets the man pull him the rest of the way out of the cage. When he stands, his head spins. He loses his balance and leans against the bars behind him. His breath shudders.

Morsen braces him. Keeps him upright. ‘Come with me.’ Morsen motions down the endless hall, peers into a darkness where Elician has never been. Elician shakes his head in response.

‘Lio . . .’

‘He’s dead, Your Majesty. You are the Soleben king. You need to return home. The Queen is leaving for the Kingsclave to meet with your uncle. If that new treaty is signed—’

‘Fen.’ Elician’s brain feels like it is a step behind. Many steps behind. He tries to conjure an image of his little sister, still in the middle of growing up, her limbs too long, her joints too bony, her anger entirely justified. He trembles as he thinks of her in any state of captivity. Of her being here , under Gillage’s sadistic care.

Adalei is going to kill him, Elician knows this, but hopefully she will do it after he keeps Fen from suffering an even worse fate than Lio. He shakes his head again, like a wet dog throwing loose every stray droplet of pain and despair. He tries to get his feet to cooperate. His legs. He shifts on his heel and looks up. Brielle.

Brielle’s brown eyes are staring straight at him. She emerges from the shadows, glowing in the faint light of the torch that Morsen has brought with him. Her lips are pressed together. Her hands wrap around the bars as she looks straight into Elician’s soul. ‘Unlock her cage,’ Elician murmurs.

‘What?’

Elician makes a haphazard grab for the keys in Morsen’s hand. He gets them on his first attempt, and it is likely the shock that has Morsen just give them to him. Stumbling a little, Elician lets himself fall, boneless, before the lock to Brielle’s cell. He tries the first key. It is not a good fit. He goes for the next.

‘Your Majesty—’

‘Can you . . . can you get them out?’ Elician asks Brielle, gesturing to the many cages. ‘Get them all out?’

Her hand reaches through the bars. She touches his knuckles. Wraps her fingers around his palm. ‘We took care of Lio as best we could,’ she tells him softly, her wizened voice resonating in his soul. He nods, tries another key. It does not fit. He goes for another. ‘He was a good boy . . . a sweet boy.’

He pushes the key into the lock. Hears Morsen shifting about, nervous and unsettled. ‘He was my brother,’ Elician says. He turns the key. The lock slips to the side. The cage opens, and Brielle shifts to wrap her arms around Elician’s neck. She holds him close, maternal and kind. The kind of hug that Alest should have had growing up. The kind he knows from the bottom of his heart that Brielle would never have given Elician had she not deemed him worthy of receiving it. He asks again, ‘Can you get them out?’

‘They may not wish to leave,’ Brielle tells him. ‘Where would we go?’

He does not know. He cannot even begin to know. He feels like he has never known anything in his life. As though every year of his past has been a useless charade of experiences that have led him to a point of pure stupidity. He is at the top of a wall he wanted to climb in his hubris, and Lio is down at the bottom: shattered and broken. Only this time there is no fixing him. There is only imagining a resurrection that is impossible to achieve.

‘Why stay here ?’ he asks instead. ‘Here, like this . . . for ever?’

‘Because there is nowhere else to go. And there are countless cells just like this all over the country. We will be caught and returned either to these cells or another. There is no other life for us.’

That cannot be it. That cannot be good enough for her. For them. He trembles in her grasp. He cannot just leave her here. Like this. He cannot seek freedom without all the rest getting theirs too. He cannot face Alest and tell him he left them all behind. ‘Brielle—’

‘Tell our stello we follow him ,’ Brielle says. ‘And we will wait for the day he comes back to us.’

No. That isn’t fair. Elician pulls away. He meets Brielle’s dark eyes. ‘He’s free,’ he whispers. He cannot imagine finding Cat in Soleb and ordering him home. Cannot imagine sending him back to his mother and this viper’s nest. ‘You can be too, please ! Let me help you.’

‘You’re not our king,’ Brielle tells him. ‘But he will be.’

‘You don’t know that. Gillage—’

‘I believe it. I believe in him.’ She places a hand on Elician’s cheek. She kisses his brow. Then she pushes him back and closes her cell door. The lock snicks closed. All around them, voices rise in unison, all saying the same words. Our king. Our king. Our king.

Elician shakes his head. He tries to speak, but no words form on his lips. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right . But the Reapers hold their faith. And they will not be swayed.

Morsen pulls Elician to his feet, takes the keys from his hand and places them well in reach of Brielle – in case she changes her mind. In case any of the Reapers change their minds. He pushes Elician gently down the hall. Elician’s feet trip and stumble, but all around him the voices keep speaking.

Our king. Our king. Our king.

It is not him they are talking about. It will never be him. These people will never be his people. But their words resonate through him anyway. They fall in line with the beating of his heart, the step of his feet, the breath in his chest. Morsen leads him down the hall without end. They pass cage after cage. Reaper upon Reaper. Each one chants the same words, hollowing out a promise that Elician is not sure he will be able to keep. He cannot force Alest to return. He wouldn’t even want to.

They keep walking. On and on they go. Time flutters across Elician’s consciousness. His legs burn from the strain. His feet shuffle-slide the whole way, but he moves. He has to move. He has to reach Fen, has to stop his uncle, has to stop the Queen. He does not know how he is going to do any of that, but he knows he needs to do it.

A ladder finally descends from one of the stone pillars, one without a torch. Morsen gestures for Elician to wait as he climbs up. Elician waits. He leans against the ladder and his eyes are wet again. He’d held his father’s head in his arms. His brother had been nearly decapitated only a few moments later. His sister—

‘Your Majesty . . .’ Elician looks up in a kind of shock. Morsen has reached the top of the ladder. He throws open a trapdoor. He peers down at Elician and Elician knows he is supposed to climb. So, he climbs. Hand over foot, he climbs. He gets to the top and wipes his face. He lets Morsen continue to lead him. He does not know what else he is supposed to do.

They are on the main level of the palace now. The gardens are nearby. The courtyard. The kitchens. The throne room where Lio died. Elician flinches away from it, keeping his head angled downward as Morsen hurries them along. It is pre-dawn. The guards are few and far between. At each vague sound of a possible interloper, Morsen huddles him into an alcove. They hide until they are certain it is safe, then keep walking.

They stop only once. Once, where Morsen hesitates before a wooden door, glancing over his shoulder at Elician. ‘This leads to the pauper’s graveyard of Alerae,’ he says carefully. He waits as Elician processes that bit of information, as Elician imagines the line that Brielle had drawn in the air, from her finger . . . straight to here. ‘He was buried hours ago,’ Morsen continues. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’ Morsen says it bluntly. Too bluntly. For a moment Elician cannot fathom if he is talking about his father or Lio. Maybe both. Maybe his father was buried in Lio’s arms. Maybe in death, at least, they are not alone. ‘We have to pass through it, but we cannot stay there long; it is too open. There are palace windows that look out across this land. Do you understand?’

‘Do not try to find him,’ Elician translates quietly. ‘Just keep going.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, Your Majesty.’

Apologies mean nothing. Morsen did not order Lio to die. He had not been involved with them getting taken in the first place. His greatest crime has been serving Alelune. Perhaps, technically, from Alelune’s perspective, his greatest crime is what he is doing tonight. ‘Why are you helping me?’

‘Ranio Ragden was my mentor,’ Morsen says.

The words echo through Elician like the snap of a slingshot and he stares at Morsen as the name pierces his mental fog. ‘Fen’s father,’ he murmurs. ‘He died in Alelune . . .’

‘He died trying to rescue Alest from the Reaper cells. They followed this exact route. They made it almost to the border when something went wrong.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know. Alest was put back in the cells and Ranio’s body was put on display. He was my friend for many years. I took his place after his death. I’m sorry it has taken this long to free you. I was not sure where to find you and then . . . I wasn’t sure how to get you out.’

Elician shakes his head. It doesn’t matter. None of it. He pats Morsen’s arm. Says, ‘Let’s go home.’ He does not want to think anymore. Does not want to think about the chain of events leading up to this moment. Does not want to think of Ranio Ragden’s death. How Ranio had come incredibly close to saving that terrified child – who somehow had become wrapped up in all their lives, despite the odds against him. Does not want to think how, all those years after Ranio died, Elician had been the one to place Alest into Ranio’s daughter’s care. A daughter who had become a Giver.

Morsen opens the door to the graveyard. They step out into the half-light of the muddy field. In places, rough grave markers have been erected. Others have fallen in the ill-tended grounds. Elician keeps his eyes on his feet. He cannot trust himself not to look. Cannot trust himself not to stare desperately at each patch of soft earth and wonder if that is where Lio is buried. If that is where his father is buried.

They walk, slow and steady, down the rows. Their feet quietly plod across the mud. There is an outer wall and a gate not far ahead. Elician can see horses on the other side of the gate. His heart clenches at the sight. It really is an escape route. A way out. His eyes burn one last time. Pain lances through his chest. He should not look for Lio. He should not . They are almost out, and yet:

He looks anyway.

He turns and scans the entire expanse of the graveyard. He lets his eyes roam over the lumps and pits and valleys and all the good and bad and possible options that there can be. He trembles under the weight of the knowledge that he will never bring Lio home. Lio’s body will never be burned, his ashes scattered by the hands of those who loved him most. Elician will likely never come back to Alerae. Even if he does, there will be no chance to find the body. They would have to dig up the whole graveyard to manage it. Even then—

‘Your Majesty?’ Morsen murmurs from the gate. It is time to go. Time to leave.

Something moves at the corner of his eye. He stops. Stops and tilts his head back. The earth on a grave mound is moving. No, not the earth, something on top of the earth. A shape is shifting about, awkwardly. Perhaps trying to push itself up . . .

Elician is moving before he can think about it. Morsen hisses his title behind him. It does not matter. He runs, feet slapping loudly on the earth. He skids to his knees and his hands snap out. His fingers dig into the mud-stained flesh of the man who is doing the best he can to pull himself from the ground. The man’s face lifts.

‘Lio.’ He is alive. He is alive . Elician drags him up to his knees. He clutches Lio’s face even as Lio’s eyes blink blearily in his direction. Clumsy hands clap Elician’s sides. His arms. His wrists. Every part of Lio is coated in mud. It streaks through his tatty hair, paints his face, stains his naked flesh and hides his skin from sight. He has never looked better. Elician tugs him forward and chokes on a sob, wrapping his arms around Lio’s body. Feeling Lio’s breath against his neck. Hearing the hitching gasp as he breathes in Elician’s ear.

‘If you’ve turned me into a Giver or a Reaper,’ Lio warns hoarsely, ‘I’m going to be extremely upset.’

Morsen is there now, crouching at their sides. He pulls off his outer coat and wraps it around Lio’s body. When he touches Lio’s skin, he does not die. ‘Not a Reaper,’ Elician informs him dully. He reaches forward and presses his fingers against the place where Gillage’s blade had ended Lio’s life. The wound has healed. But when Elician touches him with purpose, he can sense that there are other wounds. Nails torn from digging himself out of his own grave, skin shredded against rocks, trachea still damaged from the blade. Not lethally damaged but strained enough to cause pain. ‘Not a Giver.’ All of that would be healed if he were. Lio is as he always has been – perfectly human, with a soul that Elician could recognize from all the way in the Reaper cells.

‘I brought you back,’ Elician whispers. ‘I didn’t touch you but I . . . I brought you back anyway.’ Shock threatens to overtake relief. Uncertainty wars with elation. Elician clings to Lio, feeding him every ounce of energy he has to fix every problem his senses can pick up. And Lio can do nothing to stop him because that would require Elician to stop touching him. Although, maybe not. Maybe I could heal him from afar.

‘Stop,’ Lio croaks. ‘Stop.’

‘You’re alive . . . you’re alive and I—’ How far away had they been when he’d saved his friend? The graveyard was on the complete other side of the palatial compound, and besides that: how long had it been since Lio had been buried? Long enough for the Queen to have prepared for her journey to the Kingsclave, and long enough for Morsen to arrange for their escape. And yet still – still – Lio lives. Elician has never heard of a Giver trying to resurrect someone after that length of time . . . and yet now that it’s happened, he cannot help but wonder: is there a limit? If the soul could still be retrieved . . . would any of the rest truly matter?

‘We need to leave, Your Majesty,’ Morsen says. ‘We cannot stay here.’ Elician looks up at the tower windows. At the palace looming just to his right. He shivers unconsciously, then grasps Lio and hoists him to standing with all his strength. Morsen wraps Lio’s right arm around his shoulders, clasping him to his body to help support him as they go. There is no question of leaving him behind, no murmured complaint about only having prepared two horses. If nothing else, Elician is grateful that Morsen understands that leaving Lio is not an option.

They flee through the back gate. Morsen holds on to Lio as Elician mounts his horse. ‘Do you want me to hold him?’ Morsen asks only once, but Elician rejects the idea with a firm shake of his head. He fully intends to fix every part of his brother’s body before they leave the outer borders of Alerae. He does not want to test if he can heal from afar either.

It takes a great deal of pushing, pulling and hoisting – the poor horse shuffling unhappily the whole time – to get Lio seated in front of Elician. When there, though, he leans back against Elician’s bare chest. Elician rearranges Morsen’s coat to drape over Lio’s front. Neither of them is dressed for the weather or for a ride, but there are few options in an escape such as this.

Morsen loosens the ties keeping the horses in position, mounts his own horse and leads the way forward to freedom.