Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
There is a new band of embroidery on Ethram’s Luminary robes before winter.
He brings them back from the embroidery workshop and shakes them out by the parlour fireplace.
Unlike the previous bands—his university band and his history faction band—this one is uniquely his.
A border of oak leaves and ivy twines with simple representations of festival lanterns and plum blossoms, all worked in delicate, fine stitches of gold.
There are moons, too. All the bands represent the important festivals of Esk’s calendar, with the little pips at the end that tell that his work was chosen as one of the notable works of the year by his peers.
Ky lounges on the sofa, amused. “It’s certainly pretty work,” he says, after a space. “If you keep on this path, you’ll be very festive in no time.”
“I really should add something for my first Luminary paper, too, but it’s a difficult one. It was about the Blooding of the Heirs, but it’s a bit pretentious to put imagery of the Crown on my own cloak.”
“Mm, I can see that might be a step too close to pretentious,” says Ky. He’s smiling. “What is the Blooding?”
Ethram looks up, frowning. “How do you mean?”
Ky tips his head. “I’ve no idea what it is.”
“It’s how the Crown’s heirs are chosen. They’re taken to the altar, where the aether of the Well judges them worthy or not.” He raises a brow at the look on Ky’s face. “You’re going to ask me how an aether upwelling can judge anyone’s worth, aren’t you?”
“It occurred to me to do so, yes.”
“It doesn’t, of course. It’s just a case of who has the fortitude to withstand the visceral outpouring of aether, in much the same way that an airship captain must suit the aether heart of their ship.
The more heirs, the more stable the Well, the safer Esk is, and the more control the Crown has over predicting the storms. Unfortunately, having one’s body burned up of blood and refilled with aether is not a thing that many people can survive. ”
“You did,” says Ky.
Ethram freezes. Ky is watching him, the fire sending golden light glinting in his soft grey eyes. “It’s not quite the same,” he says slowly.
“No?”
“The Well doesn’t just burn through someone. It fills them, and the aether stays there. They’re forever different. It’s a sacrifice, in a true meaning. They lose something to it, and they never get it back.”
Ky holds out his hand, and Ethram goes to him. He wraps a hand around Ethram’s wrist, against those cursed marks. They warm in an echo of the original burn, but it’s not painful. Not at all.
“It’s still there,” says Ky, softly. “Filling you. It wasn’t a sacrifice, or intentionally done, but part of what I am is always part of you now.”
It’s not news, exactly. Ethram already knew his burns had changed him, changed the way he sensed aether and changed how he moved through the world.
It inspired his entire Luminary paper. It had taken what had happened to Ethram for him to understand what must happen to the heirs.
To care enough to look into it. To want to know a truth that Esk had so wilfully ignored for so long.
So it’s not news, but it still shakes something in his heart.
“I’m no heir,” he says.
“No,” says Ky. He looks up, and there’s a smile at the edges of his mouth. “You’re mine. You always will be.”
“I am.” He holds his gaze. “And it has nothing to do with aether.”
Ky’s smile turns sweet. “However terrible the events that led me to you were, they were worth it.” He brings Ethram’s wrist up to press a kiss there.
“Ky.” Ethram drops to his knees, rests his forehead against Ky’s thigh. He’s reassuringly solid. Real. “I almost remember your name sometimes. I thought it was Esk’s old magic keeping it from me. Perhaps it was, at first. But I can feel it there, in my thoughts. I know it. I just cannot voice it.”
“You have always known it,” says Ky. He strokes Ethram’s hair, traces down the curve of one ear.
“As I have always known you. When you called my name to the dark and gave me form, what I was ended and what I am began. Before, whatever I was then…It does not matter. I am here as I am because I choose to be. Because I choose to stay with you.”
“Even if you are meant to be somewhere else?”
“I promise you, Ethram, my name won’t make me leave you or make me love you less. Even if saying it summons my true form once more. You needn’t fear it.”
He doesn’t fear it. Does he? The name is there, sweet on his tongue, and then gone again. A memory he cannot grasp again. “Why can’t I say it?”
Ky is silent for a long time, his hand a gentle weight against Ethram’s head. “Because you don’t wish me to be anything more than your Ky,” he says, and his voice is different. Older, somehow. Weary. “You fear what I was, and might be, and already am.”
Ethram lifts his head. Ky’s hair is loose, a pale curtain that keeps them from the rest of the room. “I don’t wish to fear you,” he says. “I didn’t think I did.”
“I am part of you, my heart,” murmurs Ky. “I know you do.”
Ethram pulls himself onto the couch, wraps his arms around Ky.
They tangle there, and Ethram loves him like the rushes love the river, and still, he knows Ky speaks truth.
Some part of Ethram does not wish to see the truth of what Ky is and will be.
It’s not just fear of losing him. It’s a fear of clawed fingers wrapped around his arm, and the shifting mass of something in the dark, and the way Ky is sometimes moonlight-eyed and dark and beyond Ethram’s reach.
It haunts him, that thought. Tags along with him during the days, as Ky cleans the leaves from the gutters and checks the roof for leaks and digs drainage channels around the garden beds.
Follows him to the market, where Ky chooses yarn and Ethram buys preserves.
Sits with him in his office at the university while he answers queries and insults anyone foolish enough to disturb him.
He tries to say the word, whisper it, to Ky’s back, and it withers in his throat like a lump of bread when his mouth is too dry. It sits there, unable to move.
And when he visits the Gardens, Sabine is tired-eyed as she watches her son orchestrate the extravagances of the coming Season with a natural, effortless talent.
“He doesn’t know about the springs failing yet,” she says. “He’ll be initiated soon. And then there is nothing I can keep from him anymore.”
That’s not true, though. There is much Sabine will keep from him, because she does not know it herself.
Ethram has seen her piecemeal history records of the Gardens and their rituals.
They have forgotten too much over the years.
It is little wonder that their worship has not been enough to save their god.
And Ky is their god, not Ethram’s. Ethram may belong to Ky, but Ky does not belong to him. There are others who have a higher claim.