Chapter Seventeen Cat #3
‘How?’ Elician asks him. ‘After everything that’s happened…how could you love me?’
‘Because of everything that has happened,’ Cat replies.
‘I took you prisoner…practically assaulted you in Kreuzfurt.’ That…is a bit of an exaggeration.
‘I let you take me prisoner,’ Cat says. ‘I could have left whenever I wanted.’ Elician shakes his head, wounded and disbelieving.
Cat licks his lips. He leans closer, desperate to be understood now when it matters most. ‘You gave me those gloves so I wouldn’t hurt the horse, and…
you gave me apples whenever I was hungry.
You had no alternative desire, no hidden motive.
You talked to me, told me everything I could expect, and were honest about what would happen.
You asked me if I was comfortable, and if I was okay.
You…were the first person in over a decade who was neither a Reaper nor someone who wanted to use me for their own purpose who was just kind.
Who found joy in just staying up at night looking for nightcats in the shadows.
I knew I was supposed to kill you or your family but I… I didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘Any man could have been kind to you then,’ Elician refutes. ‘That’s not love, that’s…being smitten. It could have been anyone.’
‘But it wasn’t anyone. It was you. It was you who held me in Kreuzfurt, and you who wished for a future for me I had never imagined for myself.
It was you who, without even knowing who I was, dreamed of a future where you and the Moon Prince would one day be able to speak to one another.
You wrote poetry about beauty and potential.
You cared so much for your family, your country – my Reapers.
You spoke to me of your dreams, your desires.
You saw my pain and you strived to make it better.
You yearned for peace for all. How could I not have loved you?
’ Then, with a little bit of frustration, he asks, ‘How could you not know?’ Elician winces. ‘I agreed to marry you.’
‘Yes, I thought…for our mission, our dream. For…peace.’
‘Fen said love is wanting to never be alone,’ Cat murmurs.
‘That love is when you just want to be with that person, for ever, no matter what. And if you see a world where you might be alone in it, you say and do anything to keep the person you love with you at all times.’ They are speaking in Lunae.
He switches to Soleben just to be clear.
‘Vak. Vak is the word Fen used.’ The colour drains from Elician’s face as he sits up.
His hands snap to Cat’s arms, holding on tight.
Cat has been honest from the start, from the moment he asked Elician to marry him. He had said, I will not go to Alelune alone. He had said in Lunae, Not for ever. Not to rule. But if you swear you’d go with me…that I would not be there alone…I would do it if I wasn’t alone.
Love me, he had meant. Love me, be with me, cherish me. He used the words Fen had taught him but in a language that had no translation for what that word implied, and Elician stares at him now like it had never occurred to him to think Cat’s meaning to be true.
‘I sleep with you every night,’ Cat continues, flushing violently as horror threatens to wash away any courage he might have had. ‘Our dream does not need that, you do.’
‘You meant it,’ Elician breathes out. ‘All of it – you meant it.’
‘Why would I ever lie to you?’ he asks, knowing full well that Elician lies to him frequently and whenever he thinks he will get away with it.
‘You…and you were…you kept that stupid sketch of that cat I made and…Gods, you were always there and I – I was afraid to think you felt that way.’ The words come out as a jumbled mess.
Elician’s Lunae is garbled, his accent tumbling awkwardly over the intrinsic melody of the language.
They falter back and forth in each other’s tongues, trying to find a meaning between two cultures and, this time, refusing to let it lie until they both truly do understand.
‘You said you didn’t want anything more, that it was just politics,’ Cat murmurs. ‘You…I thought…I thought that you knew but were telling me that you didn’t…’
‘I didn’t want to force you – everyone has always forced you—’
‘I’m the one who made you marry me to end a war.’
‘You – no, that’s not what I agreed to.’
‘I put you in a terrible position. You had to argue with Adalei and your government because I told you I wouldn’t go to Alelune alone and—’
‘I didn’t want you to go alone either – that—’ Elician’s hands leave
Cat’s arms. They cup his face. ‘Tell me again,’ he asks.
‘Tell you what?’
‘Tell me you love me, tell me again.’
‘Oh. I love you.’
Elician smiles. His eyes crinkle at the corners and he leans in, slowly and steadily.
Cat meets him halfway. They kiss, and it is warm and awkward and broken as they hug each other and press their lips to each other’s cheeks and necks and hair, laughing, joyous and fond.
Elician pulls Cat ever closer, cradling him in his lap, holding him like he never wants to let him go.
It feels perfect.
It feels like peace itself has been condensed to a single sensation.
As if all the world has turned blurry and unnecessary and all that matters is Elician, here, beside him.
Elician, who kisses him again and again and swears, ‘Yes, yes, I love you too.’ He uses the Soleben word, vak.
He uses the Lunae word, meai. He repeats it in both languages again and again, ensuring that this time there is no confusion or misunderstanding.
‘I don’t want to be alone. Never again. I don’t want you to be alone.
I will be here, with you, no matter what. ’
Cat curls with his head against Elician’s chest, with Elician’s arms around him, his lips pressed to his brow.
He clings to Elician’s clothes and imagines a world where there is no war or conflict, nobody left to save, where he could stay in the warm embrace of his husband and know there is nothing more pressing he needs to do, nowhere else he needs to be.
Depression and despair have clung to Elician since the moment he walked from Alelune all those months ago.
It clings to his skin even tighter now that they have returned.
Even in this tender moment of bliss, Elician whispers, ‘I’m going to disappoint you one day,’ with all the gravitas of a penitent seeking absolution from their crimes, a confession laid bare on the edge of tears, on the shores of tender sorrow.
‘So will I,’ Cat tells him. ‘I love you anyway.’
Their nascent fire is dying without more fuel, without their attention and support.
Orange light flickers across Elician’s cherished face.
He blinks back tears as he kisses Cat again.
‘We’re going to be okay,’ Cat swears. He believes it.
He must. One day, neither of them will be king of either country.
One day, there will be no obligations. And all they need to do to get there is to survive.