Chapter Four Elician
CHAPTER FOUR
Elician
Elician’s room is too big.
He walks to his bed, the bed he’s known all his life, and collapses to the mattress. He presses his face to his pillows. He breathes in the stale scent of disuse. And when he looks up, all he sees is the wide expanse of the room reaching ever outward and doors closed all around.
He throws open his windows. He leans against the sill, breathing in the fresh air and relishing the sound of his palace. His city. Voices calling this way and that. Feet walking in halls, heels clacking—
Lio’s room is connected through an adjoining door.
He knocks twice, but is inside before there is an answer.
Lio is at his dresser, staring down at clothes he hasn’t worn since before they left for war years and years ago.
‘I wanted to ask you something,’ Lio says before Elician can come up with an excuse for barging in.
The gravity of the tone catches Elician off guard.
He stumbles to a stop. ‘Would…you be opposed to Adalei and me sharing a room?’
‘Here?’ Elician asks dumbly. Lio’s room has never been anything spectacular by palace standards.
It’s charming and decorative, but it is not nearly the same size as Adalei’s, nor does it have its own designated office or private chambers for daily ablutions.
It has never bothered either of them; Lio has always been welcome to make use of Elician’s chambers.
But he didn’t expect Adalei to want to degrade herself to a far smaller room, one that certainly didn’t have nearly enough space for her own wardrobe. Not when she—
She is his heir now.
And he is king.
His childhood room is the room she belongs in. She would not be sacrificing a thing if she claimed it. In fact, it makes an almost perfect kind of sense. Should she ever desire privacy, she need only close the door and Lio could return to the room he has always known.
His friend waits for a response. It is a reasonable request. An obvious one. ‘Of course,’ Elician croaks. ‘I would never keep you apart.’
Lio’s relief is evident. Tension bleeds from him like the relaxing of a bow. He nods and smiles and laughs even, looking at the space around him. ‘It’s strange being back.’
‘Yes.’
‘It doesn’t quite feel real.’
‘No. I—Lio, Anslian told me something, before he…before we parted. A message for you.’ The tension returns in an instant, but there is no way to say this without strain.
‘He gave you his blessing for Adalei’s hand.
He said…you were everything he could have hoped for her.
He wanted you to take care of her…he believed in you.
Truly. And I won’t stand between either of you. ’
‘He said that?’
‘Yes. Ask her whenever you—’
‘She asked me the night I came home,’ Lio interrupts.
Elician blanches, not knowing what to say.
‘Couldn’t exactly let everyone know we all got betrothed the same day.
Yours was more politically relevant, and we didn’t exactly have permission…
not like you two needed any.’ It is probably said as a joke but it still feels like a barb.
Congratulations doesn’t quite form on Elician’s lips.
It should. He’s known this moment would happen for nearly a decade.
He’s helped engineer it, done whatever he could to see Lio and Adalei find their place at each other’s sides.
‘Can you wait?’ Elician asks. Wait, until after the war.
Until the danger has passed. Until there is no longer a risk for an arrow or sword or vile, cruel boy to take his blade and slash at Lio’s throat while Elician sits screaming for mercy.
It is forbidden for Givers to resurrect members of the royal family.
‘I can’t bring you back if you marry her,’ he says. ‘You’ll be a part of my family and—’
‘I know,’ Lio replies. ‘She knows. And we’ll wait…but not for ever. One day, you’re going to have to let me go.’
Elician flinches. Lio doesn’t try to close the gap between them. He doesn’t try to make it right. There is no making it right. It is the truth.
‘I’ll be out of my—those rooms by the end of the night. You can use them as you like,’ Elician says instead.
‘El, it wasn’t meant as a slight.’
‘I know. But it still hurts.’ He’s not ready to let him go.
Not for good. Not yet. But, he does need to leave.
He cannot stay here and face that thought with Lio standing just before him.
He turns. Walks back into his old room, then through the door into the hall.
And for the first time in his life: Lio doesn’t chase after him, even though he could.
Hours later, Cat finds him in the King’s office, shoving books and paperwork and anything remotely irrelevant into stacks to be set elsewhere.
Cat has arrived with a plate of food and a pot of tea, and the sight of him standing in the door, still dressed in the purple-and-gold outfit that Adalei chose for him, sets Elician’s teeth on edge.
‘You’re not my servant,’ he bites out. ‘Don’t bring me food. ’
‘You don’t have to eat it,’ Cat replies.
‘But you might like it. You missed dinner.’ He probably missed quite a number of things.
He can’t bring himself to care. He keeps sorting and organizing, stubbornly insistent on not being drawn into deeper conversation.
Usually Cat respects that. But Cat walks deeper into the room, sets the plate down next to Elician despite his grumbling and makes no obvious attempt to leave.
‘How can I help?’ Cat asks him again. Always asking, always offering assistance.
Elician sets down the latest set of correspondence his father had with some ambassador in Glaika over the import of steel for weapons.
He presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, rubbing hard.
The exhaustion does not dissipate in the least. Nor does the anger that has been simmering within him all day, waiting patiently for the chance to explode.
‘I don’t want to talk.’
‘All right.’
‘Anything that has to do with Alelune: your brother, mother, the war – anything like that, put in that pile there.’
‘There could be secrets here, no? Are you sure you want me reading these?’
‘If this is going to work then there will be no secrets between us,’ Elician snaps, apologizing almost immediately afterwards for the fierceness of his tone. Cat doesn’t seem to have taken offence, though.
He picks up the book nearest them, saying only: ‘You’re right, there should be no secrets.
’ And the slightest change in his delivery takes all the sting from the barb and engenders a feeling far closer to shame in Elician’s chest. ‘There’s someone I’m looking for,’ Cat says, thumbing through the pages.
‘One of my Reapers was sent from Alerae to murder your father. I never saw her again. No one, it seems, has seen her again.’
Elician’s jaw clenches. Another person whose life his father ruined. ‘I haven’t seen anything about a Reaper,’ he says. ‘But you can search those if you want.’ Cat nods and settles into place amongst the paperwork.
That night, Elician doesn’t even remember closing his eyes when he falls asleep. He simply wakes, head resting on his arms on his desk, Cat dozing not far away. Paperwork all around.
The next day it happens again. And again.
And again. Elician doesn’t sleep in the King’s room, isolated and silent and kept far away from the life and sound of the people, and Cat never once suggests he try.
The window to the King’s office always stays open, and Elician breathes in each fresh breath of air and tries to pretend that he is all right.
They don’t find Cat’s Reaper, but somehow, slowly, they start making sense of the kingdom that Aliamon has left behind.
They make a good team, Elician realizes at the end of the first week.
With Cat’s help, Elician wrangles his father’s office into something he can tolerate using on a daily basis.
Productivity flows from there. He sends riders out to summon the lords and ladies of his country back to court for both the coronation and for a formal gathering of parliament.
He names Fen as a junior council member within his inner circle, voiding her tenancy at Kreuzfurt and ordering her into training in politics, in shadowing Adalei and in swordsmanship lessons.
Lio is officially instated as the head of his King’s Guard and is sent to the palace barracks to both train himself back into form and to understand the structure of his new team.
Marina and Zinnitzia are reassigned from Kreuzfurt to assist Adalei in organizing the transition at court.
And Cat…Cat is officially made known as Stello Alest, which immediately gains the attention and ear of the Alelunen ambassador, Laure de Gianno.
She asks for a meeting immediately, and he schedules it for the following day.
It’s only a slight delay, but it gives them time.
They spend a full evening going over what they want to say to her and how, and when she appears at court, Elician feels surprisingly comfortable with having her escorted to their office.
Theirs, officially. Two desks side by side where they can share work and conversation.
A couch has even found its way into one corner, providing a more comfortable space to read should leaning forward for long hours prove too unbearable.
It is, more often than not, where they both end up falling asleep each night, a habit Elician has no desire to question or replace.
He asked Cat only once, when he had woken up and realized he had once more ended up draped along Cat’s side, if Cat took offence to the contact. ‘I know it is not in your culture to allow such intimacy with another.’
‘We do allow it,’ Cat had refuted simply. ‘For family, loved ones. It is allowed. I don’t mind. You’re mine, aren’t you? And I am yours.’