Chapter 18 #2
"Alatuses aren't native to Lunaris." I continue working the balm into his scars. "Neither are bonds. But although alatuses don't require bonds to accept riders, the Council deems they must be.”
"The Council deems it," he mutters.
I ignore him. "An elixir is used to bind rider and alatus together. An alchemized bond."
"That's not how bonds are supposed to work."
"It's how ours work."
He shoots me a look. "That's different."
"I thought we agreed you'd withhold judgment."
He faces forward again. "The Creators forged bonds that allow those creatures to choose their riders. Choice is built into the magic."
"How can something forged be natural?"
"Forged doesn't mean forced." His voice softens slightly. "The rider can refuse. Walk away. The bond only holds if both parties consent."
"That's not how it works here."
He doesn't argue. But I feel his frustration bleeding through the bond.
"Natural bonds don't exist here," I say finally. "At least not anymore."
"Would you know if they did?"
The question gives me pause. "You think the memory trade severs bonds."
"I thought you didn't want my wrathful judgment?" He jolts and shoots me a bewildered look when I poke him in the ribs. "Is this how you treat all of your patients?"
"My patients are animals," I say sweetly. "They don't talk back."
His eyes warm as he studies my face, but he shakes it away as he says, “I think the memory trade could sever bonds, yes.”
I swallow. “For years, the Sages tasked me with making the bonding elixirs.”
“And you did it?” he asks, his voice deceptively soft.
“You act like I had a choice.”
"Everyone—" He stops mid-sentence, brows furrowing. He turns towards me again and searches my face. He doesn’t ask, but I answer anyway.
“I was five when I arrived here. Five when I partook in the memory trade. Many of us arrived before our gifts manifested. As far as I know, it was the only year it happened. So, no, I didn’t have a choice.
Not then, and not when my gifts finally did manifest and the Sages discovered I could work with the Shroud mushrooms.”
He swallows. “Gods, Menace.”
He lifts a hand but I pull my own hand back before he can reach it. If I let him touch me right now, I'll shatter. I'm barely holding myself together as it is. If my refusal stings, he doesn't show it.
“When did you stop making it?” he asks, setting his hand back on the bed.
"A couple of years ago,” I whisper. “I stopped making the memory elixirs too."
His eyes search my face. "And now they're punishing you."
I nod. "I knew there would be consequences. I didn't expect them to be this severe. But that's the nature of choices, isn't it? We never know what they'll cost until after we've made them."
Silence stretches between us as I finish. He doesn't move, even after I set the balm aside and wipe my hands clean. The weight of everything unsaid presses down on us both. I'm about to stand when he speaks again.
"Mortiana and Lugal keep me in stasis while I'm in Noktemore."
My breath catches. "Is that why you weren't sure if the pain is always this bad? Because you're not fully conscious between Reckonings?"
He turns to face me. "I was 28 when I made my last bargain with Mortiana. That's when Lugal convinced her to grant me stasis."
I study his face, the way the lamplight catches the sharp planes of his jaw, the shadows beneath his eyes. "How long ago was that?"
Something flickers through the bond. Grief, old and worn smooth by time. "I was born the year Tenebris was cursed. I went into stasis 28 years later."
Three hundred years. Give or take.
"You've been in stasis that entire time?"
He nods. "Unless there's a Reckoning, or other tasks I need to complete."
"Is it like sleeping?"
He's quiet for a moment. "It feels like... restless nothingness. Aware but not awake. Existing but not living."
I have to look away. The weight of it presses down on me: his wings, his raffin, three centuries suspended in nothing. Too much. Too much for one person to bear.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "For everything you've lost."
"It was a long time ago."
"That doesn't make it less awful."
He watches me for a long moment. "Do you regret it?"
"The bargain?"
"Choosing not to make those elixirs."
My first instinct is to say yes. I regret it every day, but that's not quite true. I think about the Shroud and what I suspect may be happening. The mushrooms.
The dying laborers. The pleasure gardens where the Council watches residents weep for memories they were never supposed to have. The guilt has been crushing lately. But regret?
I think back to the night it started. The half-dead alatus dragged into my clinic, an arrow wound turning septic because no one at the arena had the antidote.
I remember the creature's pain, not for itself, but for its rider, who lay recovering somewhere in the Hall of Reflection.
I remember how that rider replaced the alatus the following week. As if nothing had been lost.
I think of the laborers screaming for families they weren't supposed to remember. The pleasure gardens where grief becomes entertainment.
"No," I say finally. "I don't regret it."
"What about the bargain you made with the goddess? Do you think you'll regret that?"
"Which part?" I stand and begin gathering my supplies. "Our bond? Or agreeing to help lift a curse I barely understand?"
"Both."
I consider it as I work. Healing Jordi was never a choice. I might have worded the bargain differently, might have been more careful. But make it? I'd make it again in a heartbeat.
I meet his eyes. "Ask me again after we lift the curse."
His eyebrow rises. "You sound certain we will."
"I am." I start toward the door.
"Weren't you the one who pointed out how many times we've failed?"
I glance back, a smile tugging at my lips. "Weren't you the one who said you didn't have me before?"
Something shifts in his expression. Surprise, maybe. Or something softer. I don't wait for a response. I slip out of the room and close the door behind me, leaving him with the mess and the silence and whatever thoughts are churning behind those golden eyes.
Sleep doesn't come.
Every time I close my eyes, I see the scars on Malachi's back.
The ragged arcs where wings used to be. I think about Larimar burning, and Pia taken, and the hunters in the alley with the Everlasting branded into their skin.
I think about what Malachi said, about bonds being severed, about nothing in Lunaris being what it seems.
That thought is what drives me out of bed. I retrieve the books I took from the vault and spread them across my desk. Among them, a slim volume bound in black leather, unmarked. I don't remember taking it.
I don’t even remember seeing it on the shelf. I open it anyway. The first line stops my heart. I slam the book shut. My heart hammers against my ribs. My hands shake around the leather cover.
There have been only a handful of moments in my life when I've stood at the edge of something that would change me completely. Irrevocably. This is one of them. I lift the book with trembling hands and study the cover.
The Veritas symbol is etched into the leather, so faint I nearly missed it before. That symbol used to mean truth. Valor. Justice.
It used to mean everything. I let myself mourn the girl who believed that. Just for a moment. Then I open the book again.
In the end, nothing will matter, except everything.