Janos Rivel #2
Janos nodded and Urias left him. He heard the Wraith’s steps half muffled by damp sand, half slapping on solid wood.
In a few seconds, he returned with a large, green towel.
He helped Janos struggle upright and then wrapped him up.
Janos sighed at the feeling of soft cloth on his shoulders and leaned his back into Urias’s chest.
Slowly, his realities balanced. The sand smoothed to sheets, and the tide lowered. No open sky. The ceiling closed over his head. For the first time since he’d awoken, Janos took a full breath. His shoulders shook with silent sobs.
Many minutes passed between them with Janos’s weeping the only sound. Only when the prince was empty could he wipe his face and take another breath.
“So, the Lake,” Urias said eventually.
“Kak-sov.” Janos hadn’t meant it as a correction; he just didn’t care to translate.
“Kak-sov.” Urias tried the new word. A beat of silence, and then: “Who knows?”
“It’s an open secret,” Janos said, sniffling. “Anyone who’s escaped knows. But they’re few. Usually don’t survive outside of the borders with no connections. But I’ve heard there are networks of people who help them. They’d know.”
Urias nodded. “You said you do it because you can’t kill your father. What do you mean?”
Janos sighed, wiping a hand down his face and propping his chin on his knee.
“It’s more complicated than that. I’m not Lukas’s son biologically.
My mother was in love with my Uncle Krv, and I’m his last son, so Lukas refused to name me as heir.
But when I turned fifteen, he said if I gave him a lifetime as his son for as long as I’d lived as a bastard, I would earn his crown.
So I’ve given him my absolute obedience for the past decade and a half. He should name me before my birthday.”
“And when is that?”
Janos’s lip quirked. “Last month. Old man forgot.” Lukas would never hand Janos the crown he’d sliced from his true father’s skull. “But if I kill him…”
“You’d lose your throne,” Urias said.
Janos nodded. If Lukas died without naming Janos heir, he’d never take his place as king.
“A series of handshakes and it’d pass to the next greedy bastard.
I want it to be me but…” But the people would never forgive a decade and a half of tyranny, even if he laid the blame on his slain father.
And what exactly did he hope to achieve as king?
He knew he had to tear his people from Micrea’s strangling grip, but the ruling families had their hands in Kak-sovi and Micrean coffers.
They profited from the country’s occupation, and Kak-sov only had industry because of them.
Janos worried Micrea had absorbed his home so deeply there was nothing to dissect out. There was no Kak-sov, just the Lake.
“Do you even want to be king of Micrea?” Urias asked suddenly, leaning into Janos’s side. His tone was even, and Janos chafed against his patience. He could practically see the draining hourglass above Urias’s head. Soon, his pity would end and he’d realize Janos was a terror.
He sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Micrea is fine, but…” But Janos always wanted his home. Or maybe he just wanted his mother. It should have been her who ruled them, Pomena, who’d loved Kak-sov so much that her love had passed on to Janos like her eyes and hair.
“Then why agree to Isobel’s terms?” Urias asked, shifting to face Janos more squarely on the bed.
Janos’s jaw clenched tight. Because Isobel had come to him to protect her child.
Because in that moment, Janos finally saw Pomena in more than just Isobel’s face.
Pomena would have signed anything away to protect Janos.
In her last days, hacking blood, she didn’t let him see her.
Instead, he’d wept outside her tent as she’d got sicker and sicker.
She’d even commanded her clothes be burned after her death so Janos wouldn’t contract her illness when clutching them.
She’d loved him so much, she’d stolen herself from him.
Janos had said yes to Isobel’s terms because he knew her sacrifice, and he owed everything to one just like it.
“I thought it was the right thing to do,” he said, mouth dry.
Urias must have heard the sand in his throat, because he reached over to the bedside to grab the glass of water and held it to Janos’s lips—again, that kindness that stung.
Janos snatched the glass and set it back on the table.
“You can stop pitying me. You know I don’t deserve it. ”
Urias was silent for a few seconds. Then he whispered, “No one deserves it.”
When Janos turned to face the Wraith, he found Urias’s eyes rimmed with red.
“Not you, not I, not anyone I love. None of us deserve it. So when it happens, it’s all the more important.” Urias pushed the glass into Janos’s hand again. “Drink.”
Janos did as he was told.
“When I was your age,” Urias said, “I threw a woman I loved into a raging fire and listened to her scream as she burned.”
Janos choked on his water at the confession, but Urias continued.
“After that, we hunted down her people and slaughtered them. Thousands, maybe millions. And after that, for one hundred and forty years, day in and day out, I hurt people. Mass graves, and rocks tied to tiny bodies to drag them to the bottom of the sea. And still, when I am sad, when I am hurt, when I hate myself, there is someone to make me drink, to stay by me while I cry. It doesn’t matter what you deserve. It only matters what you have.”
Janos had never thought of Urias as anything but a charmer—once a spirit, then a man, and eventually someone that made his chest feel thick and full. Never as the Wraith he was. But that was what he was: a crawling creature with talons dipped in blood. The blood of many, many people.
Still, Janos had seen him brushing shoulders with the Wraith with white hair and throwing his arm over the blonde one.
Janos had seen him trade jokes with the others, too.
Urias was a monster with a family. Undeserving of love, maybe, yet overflowing with it.
And now he was attempting to pour that love into Janos.
“This is wasted on me,” Janos said. “Like pouring clean water into a filthy bowl.” He shook all over, understanding suddenly why Urias had stayed, why he’d wrapped him in this towel while leaning in close to let Janos slump against him—not because Janos deserved it, but because he’d wanted to.
Urias shrugged. “It’s still water.” He leaned forward to catch a tear rolling down Janos’s cheek. “Perhaps the bowl just needs a rinse.”
Against all his sadness, Janos’s lips cracked into a smile. “Are you saying I stink?”
Urias shrugged. “Two days of sweat and screaming rarely does anyone good.” Janos might have stunk like hell, but he wouldn’t have known by the way Urias clung to his side, fingers on his cheek, chest to his back.
Janos’s smile weakened, but he couldn’t wipe it away. Urias’s kindness was still thorny, still made his stomach sour, but Janos sat in the thicket of his affection, had let the poison roil his belly. All of it, nearly unbearable.
Preferable, still, to drowning.
“Thank you, Urias.”