Chapter Three Elician #2
The silence that greets him is painful. His cheeks burn the longer he stays bent.
He thinks, Maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but it is the one clear thought he has had since he saw them all hurrying to greet him.
The one clear image that has burned so hot and fierce in his mind.
These people, despite all the horrors that have transpired in recent days and months, still show their love for him.
Bowing, showing his respect for them, is literally the least he could do.
Elician peeks at the crowd, wincing in anticipation for the condemnation his father insisted would greet him should he ever appear as anything less than the perfect king.
And yet…it is not disdain that meets him.
It is confirmation. Confirmation, as row upon row of citizens slowly bend forward with their hands on their hearts, in total silence, and bow back.
He has never seen this before. He did not anticipate it either.
He told Adalei his people loved him. Believed that, truly.
But his imaginings only pictured him bowing, never anticipating their response.
All his people, as far as the eye can see, are bent at the waist, their heads tilted downwards – as silent, sombre reflection pools over them all.
And for all he believed it, now he sees its truth.
Slowly, he rises. He sees more now. More heads down, more backs bent, all the way to the first bend in the spiral that leads to the rest of the city.
He imagines, hysterically, that the trend catches on even when the people cannot see him.
That every head is lowered and every body is bent at the waist, bowing to him in a deference he hardly thinks he has earned yet.
His head spins as he tries to understand the fealty.
It is far too much to comprehend. ‘Thank you, again,’ he says.
‘I will serve you better than my forefathers.’ Then he turns.
He offers Cat his hand, and Cat takes it.
They walk, gait steady and balanced all the way inside the palace.
Then, and only then, does Elician allow himself to collapse onto a bench by the door.
His head sinks into his hands and he presses the heels of his palms to his eyelids.
Phantom images form immediately, echoing the outline of his people, bent and loyal, giving him their faith without question.
‘Elician?’ Cat asks, kneeling in front of him. His gloved hands rest lightly over Elician’s knees, his breath ghosting across his skin.
‘I’m all right,’ Elician murmurs.
Clacking heels approach against stone, and the sound encourages Cat to lean back just a little as Calissia steps around the corner.
Fenlia is just behind her. Elician does not have the energy to put up a brave face in front of her too.
‘Cat…I need to talk to my mother alone for a while. I’ll see you and Fen later.
’ Cat slowly stands; Elician catches his wrist before he goes.
His bare fingers wrap around the fabric shielding Cat’s skin, missing the smooth slide and seductive magnetism of true contact. ‘Thank you. For what you did.’
‘Always,’ Cat replies. Then he bows his head to Elician, to Calissia, and without comment leads Fenlia away.
Elician peers up at his mother. ‘We need to talk,’ he says shortly.
And his mother, it seems, has the good sense not to argue.
His father’s office is perfectly neat. Elician doesn’t know what he expected. Catastrophe, perhaps. Considering the increasingly disastrous decisions Aliamon made, Elician half hoped the office would reveal that madness. It does not. Everything is in perfect order.
Calissia stands with her hands folded before her, chin up and eyes wet with tears.
His father would have been furious with him for making his mother cry.
Elician can almost imagine his voice – loud, angry, aggressive.
He can almost feel the subtle reverberations of sound waves shuddering across his skin from the echoes of a reprimand that will never come.
‘How much did you know?’ Elician asks her, removing his father’s crown and throwing it onto the too-neat desk.
‘About what?’ his mother asks.
‘About what my father planned. How much did you know?’
Calissia has always been steadfast in her desire to see him gain his crown.
Despite the law forbidding any Giver from ascension, she had been meticulous in ensuring no one save their immediate family and sworn confidantes knew what he was.
He spent a lifetime hiding this part of himself from the rest of the world, all so he could get a crown he was not legally permitted to have.
She succeeded in the end. He is here. The coronation on the horizon.
Leadership, she has frequently told him, always comes at a cost. ‘I knew everything,’ she confesses.
‘You knew he would have Lio killed, and me sent to Alelune in chains, on the off chance that it would lead to Queen Alenée attending the Kingsclave? You knew that Father wanted to die, and for Uncle Anslian to take the fall for it? You knew that his actions would send Anslian to his death after Alenée’s murder? ’
‘I knew,’ she agrees.
‘And at no point, while he was plotting this madness, did you think to tell him that it was madness?’
‘It worked, did it not?’ she asks.
It worked. The words loop upon themselves in vicious repetition. His head aches at the clamouring refrain. ‘Yes,’ he grants her. ‘Yes, I was adequately tortured, Lio was brutalized, three monarchs are dead, and any path to peace we have is in shambles. Yes, it worked.’
‘It was a risky plan,’ she begins, patronizing, as if she has the right.
‘It was an insane plan. It was beyond extreme. You know this. Tell me you know this.’
‘I know this.’ She nods. Nods again. She steps towards him, but he steps back – holding one hand outright to ward her off.
She always avoided him before, too nervous about what would happen if he somehow lost control of himself and healed her when he never should have been able to.
Now, she seems to want to close the distance she built.
He doesn’t want it. She reaches for him again, and again, he avoids it. This time, she falls still.
‘You must have been furious when Alest refused to murder his way across this country. When with each opportunity our supposed enemy was given, he chose another path. That Uncle Anslian did the same.’ The image is almost a comical one.
His father desperately trying to get himself killed over and over again, thwarted only by the sweet kindness of a foreign prince and the genuine love of a brother.
‘You would have been freed far sooner had Alest assassinated—’ She presses her lips closed.
‘So, it is his fault? For not playing blind executioner?’
‘It was unexpected, is all. He…he’s a good boy.’
‘He is,’ Elician agrees. ‘And Anslian never deserved the dishonour you forced upon his name by setting him on the path to the Kingsclave.’
‘You’re king now.’ Nominally. Tentatively. The official coronation has not yet transpired, but Zinnitzia had placed his father’s crown on his head and called him king.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t be,’ he snaps back. ‘Maybe I didn’t want to gain a crown through the death and manipulations of my blood relatives. Maybe, by the very virtue of who I am – it is something that should not take place.’
She looks towards the door, nervous, perhaps, that the guard stationed just outside might overhear.
Might gossip. And that is what drives her to shame.
Not him standing before her. She has already come to terms with his wrath, expected it, it seems, and clearly finds it unnecessary to bother with.
But for anyone else to hear? His hands shake as he curls them into fists. The tremors radiate up his arms.
‘You could do so much good on that throne, you know that you could,’ she entreats.
He shakes his head. That is not the point. Not now. Not with her. ‘Why did you allow him to plan this?’ he asks. ‘What could possibly have made it all worth it?’
‘Alelune is destabilized, you are king. It is what your father has always wanted.’
‘He’s dead. Anslian is dead. Queen Alenée—’
‘You cannot mean to tell me you care for her fate.’
‘She was murdered in a place where she should have been safe. Soleb has been dishonoured thoroughly by this.’
‘And yet the effect is clear. Alelune is destabilized, while we – our people will flourish. Under the banner of a good king.’
‘And there was no other way to manage this? No other plan or thought or consideration?’
‘None worth contemplating. Not for him.’
All his life, Elician watched his father seethe and rage at the mere existence of Alelune and Queen Alenée.
He threw parties at her every defeat. Celebrated the death of her child and heir.
Laughed at the thought of her suffering.
Her failed marriages. Her tenuous grip on her country.
He loathed her as if she had wronged him personally, and Elician never considered that perhaps she had.
‘Why did he want her dead so badly that he was willing to sacrifice our entire family to see it done?’ he asks shortly.
Calissia winces. She wrings her fingers, hesitating and avoiding his gaze. ‘Your father wished for a legacy,’ she says. ‘Something that would last for eternity. He…he offered Alenée his hand before we were married.’
Elician’s nails bite into his palms. His heart clenches painfully tight in his chest. ‘He did all this because she refused him?’
‘He found her refusal…rude. Their marriage could have united the countries. Ended the war. Done what you are trying to do in this moment.’ She cast him a shrewd look.
‘I saw what Stello Alest is wearing, what you let him do in speaking for you first. You intend to take him as your consort? Make his kingdom yours?’
‘Is that how he suggested it to her? Alelune as a vassal state to Soleb, under his crown? Him as her superior in all things?’