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CHAPTER FOUR

Cat

E lician avoids speaking to Lio when he finally returns to them. He eats his soup, then curls on his side, falling into a restless sleep. He twitches and jerks, waking in startled gasps before forcing his eyes closed to try, try again. Cat spends the night watching Lio watching Elician. Cat wonders how much he saw. If he too had seen the pregnant woman falling into Elician’s arms, and Elician’s lengthy pause, bare skin pressed to her own.

When the sky starts to turn, Lio sighs loudly. He wakes Elician for a quick breakfast, then encourages them to pack and slip away from the rest area while all the other travellers are still asleep. The sun peeks above the horizon just as they guide their horses to the crest of the saddle between Great Dawn Pass, and the view truly is remarkable. A windowpane of stained glass shatters across the sky. Blues, purples, reds and golds cascade along the heavens, painting clouds with their majesty and the landscape with their love. It is breathtaking.

Cat has never seen something so sublime.

They pause there, crisp morning air warming as the sun rises, and embrace the glory of Soleb’s precious god of life. Cat cannot bring himself to begrudge the Solebens their prayers. It is a view worth praying over.

Lio restarts their journey when the sun rises high enough to no longer be quite as spectacular as fresh dawn. He also, finally, loses his patience with waiting. ‘What happened with that lady last night?’

Cat hears Elician’s breath hitch at his back. His arms tense on instinct, then relax slowly. Elician explains everything: Kassandra and her soup, the fall, the conversation – the healing that is apparently forbidden. ‘Why is it forbidden?’ Cat asks.

Lio startles. He swivels on his saddle, needing to stand up in his stirrups to manage it. ‘You speak ?’

When I want to, Cat thinks, pressing his lips together. It’s a show of petulance that would have got him in trouble in Alelune. Something that would have infuriated his brother, and all his brother’s entourage. If Cat were feeling particularly petty, he would liken Lio to that gaggle of sycophants. The trouble is, despite the near worshipful attention Lio bestows on his beloved prince, he genuinely seems to care about Elician. Lio worries and frets over each of Elician’s moods as if it were more than an obligation or necessity for political advancement, where Cat’s brother’s followers seek only to manipulate and control.

Cat knew someone, once, who had Lio’s penchant for loyalty, and he isn’t petty enough to diminish true friendship or commitment when it dares to rear its head.

‘We spoke some last night,’ Elician informs his friend.

‘Did he tell you why he killed me?’ Lio demands.

‘You were in the way,’ Cat replies. It is difficult to turn in the saddle to look at the prince. They sit too close. When he rotates in his seat, his shoulder brushes Elician’s chest, and his face is barely a handspan from the prince’s – crossing a boundary of impropriety that any self-respecting Alelunen would balk at. He feels Elician’s warm breath across his cheeks. Sees his lips too close, the carefully maintained beard that curves lovingly around his chin and jaw. ‘Why is healing someone forbidden?’ Cat asks again.

Lio squawks, indignant at his initial response, but Cat doesn’t pay the man much mind. Elician is answering his question, calm and serene. ‘Healing isn’t forbidden at all. But resurrection or bringing something to life, such as with a baby, is.’ His tone doesn’t match the tension in his body. He glosses over how the strongest, most impressive power a Giver has – the literal opposite of everything a Reaper is known for – is something that is rejected by a law his own father enforces.

‘The baby is not brought to life; it is already there,’ Cat says slowly.

‘It is a cultural difference, perhaps,’ Elician replies. ‘Until first breath, it is not yet considered alive. Any action taken to it, then, is an act of bringing it to life. Givers cannot interfere.’

‘Why did you do it, then? Heal or . . . give life to her child?’ Cat asks. It is not what he means to ask. Why rebel? Why ignore the edict you are meant to live by? Why not turn away? Answers to those questions would be closer to what he wants to hear. But instead, he simply qualifies his question with, ‘Why her?’

Elician’s dark lashes flick downwards, half shielding his brown eyes from view. He frowns. The corners of his lips dip into the soft edges of his beard. ‘Why not her?’ he asks in turn.

To answer a question with a question is a lazy form of rhetoric that should never be utilized as a defence, the Queen of Alelune had once told Cat. He had just murdered someone on her orders. Her court had averted their eyes, pretending they could not see him, for he was not meant to be seen or acknowledged. He had died to become a Reaper, and dead things do not gain the privileges of the living. He is denied their attention, their understanding, their consideration. And no one would ever admit to seeing his face. If you are incapable of saying what you mean, his queen had said, ignoring a room that ignored him in turn, then don’t say anything at all.

And yet.

Why not her?

Cat adjusts his seat. Returns to facing forward. Elician doesn’t seem to expect an answer, and Cat has none to give him. The question he asked is the only answer that matters. It lingers. Festers.

Kassandra was no one. Her clothes were poor, her intentions less than honourable. She had admitted to breaking some kind of Soleben law that barely makes sense to Cat but everyone else seems to take hypocritically seriously depending on the circumstance. She had admitted it to a prince she had not been able to recognize, which only confuses Cat further. Why had she not recognized her prince? Why had Elician hidden his pendant, kept to himself, talked like someone lesser? Lower? Her impact on the world is and will be minimal . . . and yet he had chosen to help her anyway.

It was illegal, and it clearly could have consequences.

He had done it still. Cat’s queen would have condemned such an act.

‘Look,’ Elician says, pointing out over Cat’s shoulder with his right hand. ‘A pileated tree hopper.’

It is a green bird, with a blood-red crown and spindly little legs. It hops vertically up and down the trunk of a large fir, tilting its head this way and that, listening for bugs. ‘Damn it,’ Lio curses, falling back into the casual ease of a game that he lets Elician win.

‘Is it common for you,’ Cat murmurs, low enough that Lio won’t overhear as he rides ahead, ‘to heal people like that?’

‘No,’ Elician replies, just as quiet. ‘Perhaps you’re a bad influence on me.’ That sounds like a joke, though Cat cannot find any trace of humour in the tone. ‘I’ve healed more people since I met you than in three years of war.’

‘You never healed those soldiers? Truly?’

‘Truly.’

‘So why break the rules now?’

Lio points out a matted grey land sparrow. An imaginary point is tallied on a scoreboard that no one pays too much attention to. The numbers are as transient as the prince’s slipping judicial devotion. Cat’s question is too close to the last one Elician dodged. Cat does not expect a response. He doesn’t deserve one.

And yet, in the brief moments before that pileated tree hopper flaps its green wings and flutters back into view, Elician replies anyway. ‘Because I’m tired of seeing people in pain. Just once, I want everyone to get the happy endings they deserve.’

‘Will you be in trouble?’

‘If anyone should find out, undoubtedly.’

What kind of punishments does Soleb enact? He cannot imagine Elician being frogmarched into a dark cell. Held down by his wrists, ordered to obey and submit as a burning coal approaches his face to mark him to all the world as an outsider meant to be feared.

Once, long ago, Ranio Ragden had promised Cat a life beyond the bars of the Reaper cells he had made his home. Sitting in silence, ignoring the game that Elician and Lio play with an almost forced delight, he ponders the question that he has never dared to speak out loud.

If everything we do for the country means only imprisonment or pain, is it worth it?

He doubts the prince knows the answer to that question, but more than that: Cat fears hearing denial on the prince’s tongue. At least in the fragile space granted by the unknowing, some form of hope still remains. He is, he realizes, much like Kassandra in that.

Lio, however, holds no such hesitation. He scoffs loudly, turning in his saddle to look at his prince. ‘What kind of king do you want to be, Elician? The kind who knowingly allows his ailing subject to continue on until they suffer heartbreak and loss? Or the kind who helps them despite the risk to himself?’

‘What good is it to help one person now if it means I cannot help others in the future?’ Elician asks shortly.

‘Because you can help her now,’ Lio replies, just as short. ‘And you do not know what will happen later. You did good, Your Highness. You always do good, and it’s why I will support you regardless of your crown.’

‘It doesn’t feel good enough.’

‘Does it need to feel good, to be good?’ Cat asks, startling himself by asking the question out loud. Elician meets his eyes, lips parting in surprise. But his words seem to have failed him. He can only stare down at Cat while Lio sighs loudly.

‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but listen to the assassin,’ Lio says. ‘It doesn’t matter if it feels good or not. Do it because it is right, then worry about what happens next when it comes. It’s how we ended up with an assassin to lug around in the first place.’

‘And we could always use more of those, I’m sure,’ Elician says, finally smiling somewhat. ‘Tree hopper.’ He jerks his chin towards a branch above their heads.

‘Doesn’t count!’ Lio shouts. ‘That’s the same one as before.’

‘Prove it.’ That smile only grows bigger. As if his heart is somehow more at peace with just a few words of support.

He is , Cat thinks, desperate to make everyone else happy. It is not what he would have expected; nothing about this experience so far has been what he had expected. He doesn’t know how he feels about that either.

Their journey drags on beyond the ridges of the mountains separating the west from Soleb’s far flatter east. Fewer civilians are found along the roads. Those they do pass are quickly bustling along to whichever home or business they’re hoping to reach before nightfall. Their steps only cross for mere moments, and never again at night.

Elician still sleeps poorly. He sits up by the fire, peering out into the woods as if searching for something that never appears. He cuts a fine figure, there, with orange light flickering across his face, threading charming gold in amongst the black of his hair. Cat falls asleep before the prince on most nights. There is little point in trying to stay awake. He meant what he said. He does not know where to go now, and he has no intention of escaping.

He cannot just return to Alelune. It would serve no purpose at all. And yet . . . to wilfully let himself be taken prisoner chafes at a memory best left buried, a pride that has no place in his life as it stands. This is an opportunity. Foolish as it all is. This is an opportunity spawned from the simple fact that he had been sent to kill an unkillable prince. There is nothing else that can be done on that front. Not even he can undo the will of the gods.

Cat lies down each night cognizant of the loose bindings on his wrists and the genuine lack of effort that would be required to run away and never be found. He closes his eyes rather than plotting his escape. And he dreams. He dreams of sunrises over mountainscapes. Birds he doesn’t know the names of. A golden prince of Soleb, shrouded in light, smiling as if he has been instructed all his life that smiling is what must be done but still hasn’t managed to perfect the trick. He dreams of his family promising that it is all right to leave them behind.

He wakes to a hand at his shoulder. He gasps, jerking back. It’s Elician.

The prince crouches at Cat’s side, holding up one finger to his lips. Quiet. Cat’s body stills. His lungs pause, holding in all the air he’s swallowed. Carefully, Elician helps sit him up. Lio is still asleep. The fire has burned out. There is light though. Strange light, flickering above them. Elician points up and Cat looks.

The sky is falling.

Thousands of bright streaks stream across the heavens, each star above swiping from right to left as if they have better places to be than their usual celestial homes. ‘It’s the Gods’ Tears,’ Elician murmurs softly, glancing quickly to make sure he has not woken Lio.

It is not called that in Alelune. There, the star shower is Death’s Rain . It happens every year, but often the summer storms inhibit anyone from seeing the sky beyond the clouds. He has only seen it properly once – long before he became a Reaper. Every other year the storms had blocked out the sky. Even on that night, rolling thunder had crashed for so long that Cat had fallen asleep waiting for something magical to happen. Then, in the hours before dawn, the sky had finally broken, and his father had woken him up to see. It had been glorious.

‘It’s sacred in Alelune, isn’t it?’ Elician keeps his voice low. He shifts, his arm settling in against Cat’s side. ‘We don’t celebrate it here, but I remember learning . . . you have a festival for it, don’t you?’ He seems to be searching for a word, then finds it. ‘Tomestange?’

Cat nods. A night of change.

A night where everyone wears masks and plays pretend. Where some people swap masks and costumes multiple times in the night, slipping in and out of existence on a whim. It was the one night a year he had been allowed to slip from the Reaper cells and mingle amongst the people, so long as every part of him was hidden away; no one could know who or what he was. He could play games and eat good food, and no one would ever know.

He closes his eyes, then rubs his fingers against them. When he opens them again, he looks towards the prince.

‘I want to ask you something,’ Elician murmurs in Lunae, phrasing academic and precise. ‘You don’t have to respond in any way, really. But I wanted to ask.’ He runs a hand through his disobedient curls. They spring back into position, unrepentant. ‘Do you think . . . it would have changed things if you had killed me? I mean, do you think it would have ended the war?’ He meets Cat’s eyes, earnest and hopeful. The prince of his nation, and he almost sounds willing to die for that nation so long as it would help. Starlight streaks across Elician’s face.

Cat does not have to answer. There is no need to. He knows full well that it is something that his queen would not approve of. And yet – it is the night of change, and Elician is being too foolish for a response to make any difference at all.

‘No,’ he murmurs back in Soleben. Elician’s lips part and his eyes widen. He leans in like he wants to start talking more immediately, but Cat presses on. His throat is scratchy and his voice is hoarse, still thick from sleep, but he swallows and continues. ‘But it is what my queen declared necessary.’

‘Do you think it’s necessary?’

‘I think . . .’ Cat pauses. It has been a very long time since he has told anyone outside his family about what he thinks . Often, what he thinks are things that will get him into trouble. Better to stay silent than to encourage wrath. But Elician sits across from him with a kind of earnestness that demands honesty. ‘I think,’ Cat starts again, ‘that my queen wanted you dead from the moment your father threw a party the night her son died.’ Elician flinches. Cat licks his lips, swallows to wet his dry throat. The conjugation for what he wants to say next is more difficult. He pauses, running the sentence through his head a few times before carefully saying, ‘It did not matter if it would have ended the war or not. She wanted you dead. And so, here I am.’

Elician tears his eyes away. He looks up towards the stars. Some slash across the sky quickly, point to point in mere seconds. Others take their time in their journey, spiralling over the arc of the world at their own pace. ‘That’s . . . fair,’ Elician murmurs. ‘I remember when we learned of Stello Alest’s death.’ Cat blinks in surprise. It was the right name and the right title. The heir to the throne of Alelune is always a woman, and her title is always Stella . But Alest had not been a woman, and the title had been uncomfortably altered to fit him until a sister could be born. None ever had. And still, despite the irregularity, twelve years after the tragedy, Elician has used both the right title and name without thinking when it is commonly butchered by others. Cat often heard people bemoaning their dear stella’s death during the festivals, and they were proper Alelunens who knew better.

‘We were at a family gathering,’ Elician murmurs. ‘Close friends and relatives only. Lio and I were in the garden . . . my sister, she wasn’t adopted then, her father was still alive, but he was my father’s best friend and – it doesn’t matter. She was only two or three at the time, and we were swinging her about by her arms when the news came. My father announced it. Picked my sister up and tossed her in the air to make her laugh. Everyone started cheering and clapping and . . . I couldn’t understand why everyone was so happy. Just a few years before, we’d signed a treaty with Alelune to ensure Marias could go back and be with his son. And that same son . . . Alest was nine years old when he died a horrible, painful, awful death, and they were celebrating it. I still don’t understand why they did.’

‘Well, no one in Alelune could understand why you celebrated it either.’

Elician flinches again. He stares up at the sky, jaw clenched and fingers curling at his sides. ‘I had a dream, you know. It was foolish, probably. I didn’t even fully understand the River Wars back then. Fighting over the place where Life breathed all of existence into being – it felt silly. I thought it was mean that Anslian captured a prince in order to force Alelune to give up the river and . . . I thought everyone would just be happier if we gave it back.’

That does not make sense. Cat shakes his head. Nothing he says ever makes sense. Then he asks, slowly, ‘You wanted to give the Bask back to Alelune?’

‘I wanted to share it. Surely, since it means so much to both of our people, we could share the river?’ Elician laughs bitterly. ‘I was a child. And then, when the Stello died and everyone celebrated, it felt like there would never be a chance to fix things. That it was beyond something I could do on my own. Then the war started again, and now it’s hopeless, I suppose.’

‘The Queen has another son.’

‘Gillage? He’s what . . . thirteen? How many more people will die before he is old enough to sit across the table from me? And would he even want to? At this point, I doubt it.’

‘You want this war to end, truly?’ Cat asks.

‘Almost more than anything else I have ever wanted.’

‘What else have you wanted?’

Elician shrugs, bites his lip. He watches the stars and Cat doubts he will say anything more. But he does, eventually. When the crescent moon has shifted in the sky and the stars seem to be streaking less desperately, he says, ‘Kreuzfurt . . . it really is a prison, you know. Regardless of what Lio or Anslian said, it is a prison. It’s just meant for people like us.’

‘Cages underground?’ Cat asks, unbothered. It is what Alelune does – why should Soleb be different?

‘Cages above ground, with invisible bars that you cannot see until you’re already behind the padlocked gate. When I’m king, I’ll open that gate. Permanently.’

‘Then where would you keep me?’

‘I told you already: you could go home.’ To the underground. To the Reaper cells. To continue following his queen’s orders until the day she dies and Gillage takes her place. Then, wherever Gillage sees fit to send him. Probably somewhere worse. ‘Or . . . wherever you want, in truth. Once I’m king, all the rest won’t matter.’

Cat stares up at the sky. Stars are still falling, and when they cross in front of the moon, it almost looks like they are dancing together, shimmying this way and that across a backdrop of black. Ranio, Brielle . . . even, he suspects, his queen, had wanted better for him. Once.

Elician’s fingers twitch, then reach out into the space between them. Cat flinches, pulling back as the prince’s hand lingers just above the black scar spanning his cheek. Elician hesitates, fingers curling inwards as he sheepishly murmurs, ‘I could try to heal it, if you wanted.’

‘No one would be able to know what I was if you did,’ Cat points out. Elician seems to like being told useless, obvious things. If Elician were to fulfil this incredible offer, Cat wouldn’t need to hide his face each time they passed someone on the street. He wouldn’t need to pretend. Not here, and certainly not in Alelune.

‘Do you want it gone?’

It has never been something Cat has thought would happen. The moment the scar started to fade, the guards in Alelune’s capital city of Alerae branded his cheek once more. Gloved hands pinned his wrists to the ground, his head held still by fingers in his hair. Orders. So many orders. Stop moving. Stop screaming. Just obey. Behave. Do as they say. The same orders, the same trauma, playing on repeat the same as it had every few years since the moment he had first become a Reaper. It is a violence that haunts him in a way nothing else ever has. A violence without end. To remove the scar would only mean that soon it would be reapplied. When the war is over. When he goes back to Alelune, and the cells underground.

And still, he nods.

Elician’s fingers are cool, his skin smooth. Cat’s eyes flutter. He leans into the touch, breathing through an instinctive panic and relaxing at the simple notion that he can be touched at all. By flesh, and not fire. By tender hope, and a heart that seems keen to heal all that is forbidden to be made whole. Elician cups his cheek. Cat almost imagines his magic working too. His skin warms beneath the gentle caress. But when Elician pulls back, Cat can still feel the tight flesh tugging awkwardly at his jaw. The scar is still there. ‘It’s not . . . it’s not a normal wound,’ Elician murmurs.

If it were, I’d have healed it instantaneously myself, Cat thinks wearily. He shrugs. It doesn’t matter. He had not expected it to work. And perhaps it is better that it hadn’t. There will be no need to reapply it . . . at least for another few years. It will take that long for his body to finally adjust. And by then . . . it will be more than time for it to be reapplied. Nothing has changed.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t do it.’

‘No, I didn’t.’ For some reason, Elician still looks terribly sad about that. Cat’s stomach clenches uncomfortably. He rubs at his face, pushing at the rippled skin with his knuckles.

I don’t want to talk about this, he thinks, biting at his bottom lip. ‘You know, I wanted to kill you for that party too.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He apologizes far too much for a prince.

‘It wasn’t your party,’ Cat mutters. ‘But . . . I’m glad that when I finally did have a chance to kill you, you didn’t die.’ This time, Elician smiles, and it’s as bright as the sun. Cat shakes his head, stomach squirming at the sight. No one should be that happy about something as unimportant as Cat’s opinion. But Elician is pleased by it. Brilliantly so.

‘Can I ask you something else?’ Elician leans closer, licking his lips. His curls slip into his face, partly obscuring one of his eyes. ‘What’s your name? Really?’

There is no point in telling him. Not now. The name Elician has given him is a meaningless nonsense word, something born from the monsters that stalk the woods in the night, never seen but always feared. If he has to have a name, there is a kind of poetic irony to being called by this one. His queen will not be happy with him, but then again, it has been a long time since he has made her happy. She should be used to the disappointment by now.

Slowly, he holds out his hand. Elician takes it. ‘My name is Cat.’ It is, after all, a night of change. He can be whoever he wants.