Chapter One Fenlia
CHAPTER ONE
Fenlia
Fen wakes in the half-light of morning, where the sun is not quite risen but the moon has already set.
She has not slept well. Simply the idea of lying down and closing her eyes was a difficult one to stomach, and when she did, it took hours to actually find any semblance of rest. As she blinks towards the pale blue light filtering through her window, she knows there is no point in trying to gain a few extra hours. There is simply too much to be done.
Slowly, she crawls out from under her warm blankets and sets her hair in braids. She washes and dresses swiftly, slipping her feet into the soft-soled shoes by her door, before quietly stepping out into the hall.
Last night, her brother returned to them after sixteen months of captivity in Alelune.
Elician collapsed almost immediately, and they helped bring him up the stairs.
Elena Morsen, her mentor and the best physician in all of Soleb, briefly looked him over.
Exhausted, she proclaimed before ushering everyone out.
Cat volunteered to stay behind and let them know if Elician woke. He never did.
Slowly, Fen steps towards the door. She lowers her hand to the metal knob and eases it open.
She does not open it far. Cat and Elician are curled on the floor – sleeping together.
Elician’s right arm is around Cat’s waist, his left beneath Cat’s head.
Cat is holding on to Elician’s left thumb, and they are breathing, slow and steady, in unison.
Their bare skin touches each other with scandalous implications.
Everyone knows that Cat is a Reaper, able to kill anything with a touch of his hand.
But not everyone knows that Elician is a Giver, and thus incapable of dying.
She glances over her shoulder. No one is there to see.
I should wake them, she thinks, but it is a half-hearted thought at best. She doesn’t know why they are on the floor of all places, but she knows this: they both look to be sleeping far more peacefully than anything she managed in the night. She doesn’t want to disturb their tender moment of grace.
She closes the door and goes down the stairs.
Cat never seemed to enjoy close contact with the people around him.
Considering his affliction, he rarely sought contact to begin with, but even with those he could not kill, he shied away from such things.
Alelunens are renowned for their disdain of affection of any kind, though Solebens are far more tactile.
Still, the sight of him sleeping so intimately with Elician of all people strikes Fen as odd.
Maybe he’s less uptight in his sleep, she guesses as she reaches the kitchen and takes inventory of her surroundings.
When she first arrived in Crowen some months back, Elena deemed it necessary for both Fen and Cat to be trained in life management, so to speak.
Each day, food preparation and household responsibilities were placed in their hands.
They were not supposed to draw attention to themselves.
They were meant to blend in as normal people, and normal people make bread.
Fen prepares her dough, sets the table and cleans the soot from the chute, before checking on the state of the oven.
The sun continues to rise slowly, and with a flick of the wrist she starts her oven’s fire and sets her dough inside for baking.
She busies herself for the next hour, running through her habitual chores until she hears footsteps on the stairs.
She holds her breath, waiting to see who it will be.
It’s Elician.
He walks slowly, one heavy step at a time, down to the kitchen.
He leans on the railing, still holding on to it even when he reaches the bottom.
Dark circles lurk beneath his eyes. At some point during his time in Alelune, his once beautiful curly hair has been shorn short and now only scraggly tufts of growth remain.
She does not like it. He sees her immediately, lips parting but offering no words of greeting.
She takes one furtive step towards him, then waits.
Slowly, he shifts to open his arms for her, and with that invitation she throws herself to his chest. He stumbles, tripping on the stairs behind him but catching himself at the very last moment.
His back rests against the railing in an awkward twist. He holds her close, and she is stunned at the idea that her cheek can rest against his.
That her arms go around his neck with surprising ease and there is no need to stand on her toes to manage it.
She’s got taller again, and she hadn’t even noticed.
He squeezes her tight, breathes steadily along her throat.
‘I have missed you, little sister,’ he murmurs, and they are the exact words she wanted to hear yesterday when he all but collapsed against her.
He kisses her cheek. Her forehead. Her hair.
He pulls back and cradles her face between his palms, examining her as if seeing her for the very first time. ‘You grew so much.’
‘So did you,’ she says, though it is slightly less accurate.
He is far too thin. His beard is tangled and ill-kempt.
But she can tell that he has aged. He is not quite the man he was when he left Kreuzfurt.
His fingers tremble as they hold her face.
She asks, ‘What’s wrong?’ and slowly lifts her hands to wrap around his wrists.
He draws her in to kiss her brow once more, then gently pulls away. She keeps her fingers around his wrists, not willing to be parted. ‘I’m tired,’ he murmurs.
She guides him to the kitchen table and sits him in a simple wooden chair, hardly befitting a king.
He does not seem to notice or care. He sinks into it.
Fen kneels at his side, just like she used to when she was a much smaller girl and wanted to hear all his adventures.
‘Lio said you were held separately from him for most of your time in Alelune.’ He nods listlessly. ‘What happened to you?’
‘Nothing,’ he replies.
‘Nothing?’
‘Their…scientist, Eline de Carsay, wanted to know how Givers worked. How we could heal and how our powers restored someone from death. But there was nothing she could do to me that lasted more than a few moments at a time. It is the truth: nothing happened to me. I’m fine, and I always will be.’
‘Just because something doesn’t last doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,’ she murmurs.
He changes the subject. ‘Father wrote you a letter before he died.’ He speaks strangely now, stilted and slow, like there is a flow to the conversation that he missed at some point and he can only manage a few thoughts at a time. ‘He wrote to all of us…I have not read mine. I need to give Lio his.’
‘Before we were sent here, Father said Uncle Anslian was going to assassinate him.’
‘That was the plan,’ Elician agrees.
‘But Lio says Anslian did not kill him…’
‘He didn’t. Hopefully that’s in the letter.’
‘Why didn’t you read yours?’
‘I’m tired,’ Elician says again.
‘Lio says you haven’t been sleeping.’
‘Lio says a lot of things.’
‘I think he’s scared for you.’
Somehow, Elician’s shoulders manage to slump even more. ‘He always is,’ he says, reaching into his shirt and removing a packet of envelopes. He flicks through them until he finds the one with her name on it and then passes it over. She does not open it.
‘Why did Father lie to me,’ Fen asks, ‘about Uncle Anslian?’
‘He was trying his best to die, and you and Cat kept getting in his way. Maybe you made him mad. I don’t know. But he lied to make sure the lie was believed, and so that you’d finally stop interfering,’ Elician spits out.
‘You’re angry with him. About what he did?’
‘He used me as bait to lure Queen Alenée into a trap that ended with three dead members of both royal families. Four, if we count Lio. I’m furious with him.’
‘Are we counting Lio?’
‘Yes. What if I hadn’t been in time?’ he asks. ‘What if I hadn’t been able to save him? Father and Anslian would have still died, and that would have left Adalei to do…what? Pretend? Hope she finds someone else to love after six years of courting?’
‘You can always find someone to love too,’ Fen murmurs. ‘You’re more than capable of having children. Of continuing the line on your own. Adalei doesn’t need to be the one to do it.’
‘I have never loved anyone,’ Elician refutes. ‘She will always be my heir.’
‘You could, you know. Love someone.’
‘Maybe I could,’ he concedes. She searches his face, looking for a sign or a hint of something more.
He does not glance up towards the stairs, nor does he seem to be thinking of anything or anyone in particular.
He speaks slowly and hopelessly, as if the very notion is beyond his ability to comprehend.
‘It does not matter in any case. I will never have children, and so it is Adalei who will be my heir.’
‘Don’t you want children?’ she asks.
‘I don’t want to watch them die. I’m already going to watch all of you die – why would I invite more pain into my life? I’ve already had more than enough of that, thanks.’
Fen bites her lip. She twists the fabric of her dress in her hands, then stands just to do something else with herself. She gets him food, water, changes the topic. ‘I did what you said, you know.’
‘What I said?’
‘In your letter, before you left. You asked me to look into Kreuzfurt…into Cat. To see if you could trust him.’
‘Right…yes. I remember.’
‘I think you can. Trust him, that is,’ she clarifies.
‘He’s…he’s become my best friend.’ She flushes a bit at the admission, knowing it is not an entirely appropriate thing to say.
Elician asked her to give him a report on Cat, to know if they could safely free him from imprisonment once the war ended.
Saying she has compromised her emotions to the point of friendship feels like a failing.