Chapter Twenty-Eight #3
A bit abruptly, she said, “Carnalions don’t feel the same way as humans. There are points of similarity, of course, but we don’t tend to… connect as humans do.”
Perian looked uncertainly at Brannal and then Trill. “I feel very… connected to Brannal, I assure you.”
She smiled faintly. “I don’t dispute that. Children of two worlds are a different case. They often bond with a single human, and they can be sustained by only one.”
Perian frowned faintly. “You’re saying you couldn’t survive here?”
She inclined her head. “No, not unless others did not survive me. Or your little arrangement would have to be drastically altered. Carnalions need more energy more frequently than children of two worlds. Human food does not sustain us. Drawing from one human would be a good way to kill them.”
It was why carnalions often ended up in or near a house of pleasure or similar environment.
“Were you all right while you were injured?” Perian asked with concern.
She nodded. “I… managed. I could still seduce people, though it took a great deal more effort. It is much harder to do if the person is not naturally attracted, and no one was attracted to me as I was. I consumed energy second-hand, which is never as good, but I survived. Once Trill was with me, he helped keep me fed. He could feed as normal, and then I would feed off him.”
There was silence for a long moment.
Perian’s head tilted to the side. “Wait, you consumed his energy?”
Yannoma nodded once more. “That is what carnalions do. Consume energy.”
“That’s… why he didn’t heal you,” Perian said slowly, a cross between a question and a statement.
“He couldn’t,” she agreed. “I consume all energy directed at me as a food source. It has minimal restorative powers, but nothing that could compare to my injury.”
Perian’s brow furrowed. “But I healed you.”
She licked her lips, one of the only nervous gestures Trill had ever seen in her. “You did. You are, in fact, the only person who ever could have. Because my body recognized your energy as its own and so allowed you to direct it.”
They stared at one another. Perian swallowed visibly.
“The fire,” he said finally. “It happened when I was seven?”
She nodded.
Tears spilled over Perian’s cheeks.
Yannoma’s hands twitched. “I never told your father. I feared he would have convinced me to stay here and it would have spelled our doom. Instead, I… disappeared. I thought it best for everyone.” She was silent for a long moment. “I would not have come for the Prince. I came for you.”
Oh, of course. That made so much more sense. She’d come when she’d realized where Trill was and who he was with.
It was Brannal who said, “You came in the hopes of being healed.”
His voice wasn’t quite accusatory, but it was a near thing.
Her eyes flashed, and she snapped, “Of course I hoped to be healed.”
Perian laid a hand on Brannal’s arm. “I would have tried to undo the damage regardless of any other circumstances.”
“I did not wish to present myself as anything I cannot be,” she told him. “I asked your father not to mention my visits. I knew I could not be a parental figure.”
“So instead, you gave him nothing at all,” Brannal said sternly.
She nodded but didn’t look away from Perian. “Just so. I have no wish to replace your father. I could not have stayed here alone on the estate. Your father envisioned a human life for you, and I respected that.”
“He could have been killed!” Brannal exclaimed. “Keeping him in ignorance of his heritage was dangerous!”
Her face twisted. “Thanks to you and your Mage Warriors!”
“And the rest of society!” Brannal snapped back.
Yannoma scowled. “So rather than allowing him to live the life his father wished, I should have made him afraid of everything and ensured you never met?”
This, finally, took a little bit of the wind out of Brannal’s sails. His expression softened as he looked at Perian.
“I can’t ever wish that. But I do wish that no harm had come to him because of the Mage Warriors and all our prejudices. Things did not always go smoothly for us.”
“And you wish to blame me for that rather than yourself?” Yannoma asked acidly.
Perian wrapped his hands around Brannal’s, twining their fingers together.
“We figured everything out,” Perian said, sounding much calmer than Brannal or Yannoma.
“It certainly wasn’t ideal, but it’s in the past, and we can’t change it—and even if we could, what might we undo if we did?
Besides, if Kee can make some of these changes, if he at least genuinely tries—well, I’d take all of it just for that, you know? ”
Brannal looked for a moment like he was still going to argue, and then he sighed and nodded.
Perian turned back to his mother. “That’s how you knew about my father’s death?”
Yannoma nodded again. “I found out the same way you did, I imagine—the nightmares.”
Perian straightened as Brannal stiffened.
“The nightmares?” Perian repeated. “Is that why I dreamed of the fire? Why I usually have pleasant dreams? Father always used to say—”
She finished the sentence for him. “That nightmares take away bad dreams. Yes. A truth that is generally forgotten here. They can overwhelm a human. Since so many humans ward against them with their little earth talismans, it’s harder for them to find the energy they need, and they’re more likely to swarm. ”
Yannoma shrugged. “But in their… natural state, let us say, they will simply pull away a little of that dream energy. They’re attracted to the stronger, negative energy.
And when they consume the nightmares, you have good dreams as a result.
Not even we entirely understand their connection to one another, but they seem to be able to wordlessly communicate.
On rare occasions, they can convey specific messages through dreams. I doubt that it was intended, but if your father died with the nightmares, their energy could have combined to transmit the message to those he cared about. ”
“I always wondered if it was real,” Perian said softly.
“Your father loved you. He would have wanted you to know the truth.”
“And not wonder, as he did about you?” Perian asked gently.
“No doubt. He was a stubborn man.” She smiled faintly, a softer smile than Trill was used to seeing. “He mostly respected my lack of desire to stay with the two of you, but in the aftermath of my injuries, I feared he might overcome my good sense.”
“I’m sorry you couldn’t have the support you needed,” Perian told her.
“Unlike so many of your fellows, you’re a good man.”
She continued to stare at him for a long moment, and then she gestured at the portrait of Perian and his father that hung above the fire.
“You’ve never looked at the other side of the painting.”
Perian blinked at her in confusion, and it was Brannal, taller than all of them, who reached up and lifted it down. When he turned it over, Perian’s breath caught.
It was a portrait of all three of them: Perian, his father, and Yannoma.
“I let him have his way,” Yannoma said softly, “even though I told him we could never be the family he wished. He said he wanted only the memory, something he could pass down to you once he explained everything.”
Perian reached out a hand that trembled, running it over the face of the man who stood in the middle of the portrait, arms wrapped around both the woman next to him and the little boy who couldn’t have been more than four or five.
“I don’t remember posing for this,” Perian whispered.
“Not with me, no. The artist composed it separately.”
Yannoma had been so determined to keep her independence… and yet. She could have sneaked out last night, but she hadn’t.
“Thank you for sharing this with me,” Perian said, voice sounding choked. “It means a lot. Even if you don’t want to see me again after this. Father would be so glad to know that you’re well.”
She let out a huff of breath. “He loved with his whole heart, that man. I could see it, but carnalions don’t… feel like that.”
Thankfully, Perian laughed. “Yeah, I definitely took after my father in that regard.”
He smiled warmly at Brannal, and Brannal smiled back, expression softer than Trill had ever seen.
Maybe it was naive, but… how could anything change if there weren’t people who dreamed that it would?
Yannoma’s mind had clearly gone another way. “I fear there are things we will never see the same way.”
“But does that have to be an insurmountable barrier?” Brannal asked. “If you were left alone unless you committed a crime, would you live in harmony with humans?”
“What would you constitute a crime?” she countered. “I must absorb human life energy to survive.”
“But you need not absorb so much from one person that you kill them,” Brannal challenged.
“It is not required, no. But can you honestly tell me that you would not be scared that I could?”
“It would certainly not be easy,” Brannal agreed, meeting her gaze steadily.
“There are those who will always be afraid no matter what. But then, there are those who are afraid of me, since I could light someone on fire as easily as look at them. The fact that I have never done so does not enter much into the equation.”
“And if you had spent your entire life hunted because you might do such a thing?”
“I might feel exactly as you do now,” he acknowledged. “But I hope I would react more like Perian or Trill or the Prince and dream of a better future.”
“That dream could get you killed.”
In the blink of an eye, all of the elements were swirling around Brannal, fire, water, earth, and air all separate and yet moving together as a whole at the same time. Trill and Yannoma both jerked back in surprise, but Perian was smiling softly.
“I will do everything within my power to protect those I care about,” Brannal said firmly.
Trill wasn’t certain how Yannoma was going to react, and then she smirked, which seemed a little weird to Trill, only then he realized she was looking at Perian.
“That does it for you, does it?”
Trill let out a laugh as he caught the growing arousal that Yannoma had noticed first. Oh, yes, it was quite clear that was doing it for Perian in a big way.
“It sure does,” Perian said cheerfully, grinning widely.
With a smile of his own, Brannal made the elements disappear as suddenly as they’d arrived.
“Thank you, dear heart.”
Perian grinned.
Yannoma’s lip curled up in faint disgust. “You two are ridiculous.”
“Happily so,” Perian told her, enthusiasm not reduced by her scorn. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”
“I will not be what you want,” she warned him.
“You’re roots,” he told her simply. “You’re family, but it’s up to the two of us what that means. I don’t expect you to replace my father.”
“I brought you to him for a reason.”
“He was a wonderful father. I’m very grateful.”
She sighed. “I want you and your friends to be right. But I don’t believe you will be.”
Perian smiled softly at her. “That’s all right. We’ll believe enough for you, too.”
She shook her head, but she looked more bemused than censorious at this point. “I won’t stay here.”
“If you’d like to visit occasionally, I’d like that very much,” Perian said earnestly. “Or if we could write occasionally, that would be nice.”
She sighed. “I make no promises.”
“Understood.”
Trill was pretty sure that if she intended no contact, she’d have said so from the start.
Brannal’s stomach rumbled, and this made Perian laugh and spring to his feet.
“I think that means it’s breakfast time!”
In the dining room, they found Molun, Arvus, Cormal, and the Prince already seated.
“I thought I was going to have to send out a search party after you!” Molun exclaimed, looking anxiously at Trill. “Is everything all right?”
Trill headed over to the chair that they’d saved for him and leaned in to kiss Molun on the temple. He did the same with Arvus, who gave him a soft smile.
“Everything is fine. I told you I needed to talk to Yannoma. I’ve done that now.”
Molun looked at him for an assessing moment, and then he said, “Does this mean we can monopolize you now?”
Trill smiled at him. “Absolutely. I always want to spend time with you.”
They had an enjoyable enough meal, Molun making sure to ask how they’d slept with an open invitation to everyone to tell all the ways in which they hadn’t slept. Brannal and Cormal rolled their eyes, the Prince flushed, and no one offered as many details as Molun wanted.
Perian volunteered that he had absolutely no complaints to make about the times he hadn’t been sleeping, thank you very much.
Molun gazed at Perian with a sort of rapt expression. “It’s really just the two of you on this estate and you can have sex whenever you want? All the time? Anytime?”
“Pretty much,” Perian agreed.
Eyes huge, Molun turned to Arvus and Trill and asked hopefully, “We can get a sex estate, right?”
Laughter erupted around the table. Trill had never been happier.