Chapter Thirty-One Fenlia #2
No more pain signals in the brain. No more messages sent from one organ to another telling things to reproduce on and on and on and on.
No more heartbeat pounding endlessly out of control.
No more stomach acid building up with no place to go.
She wants it to end. Needs it to. This isn’t healing.
It is killing. Killing in its finest form, slaughtering all that is evil so that only that which is good will remain, and yet knowing, more than anything else, that it is Death herself who holds her hand through it all.
Elena taught them. Her and Cat both. So much more than anything she had ever taught her burgeoning corps of nurses.
Cat was better at it. More intuitive. He can stop signals in the brain, remove anxiety, terror, fear.
He stops processes from taking place…and if he does that, is that not healing?
And if it is healing, can she not do it too?
She, who has only ever been good at healing that which has already succumbed to death.
This death in particular must be believable, Fen thinks, squeezing Kassandra’s hand tight as she wills every process, every bit of excess to bend as they bend to a Reaper’s touch alone. Stop. Just stop.
And then—
Kassandra’s body goes limp. Her head lolls to one side. ‘Fen!’ Cieli calls. Fen didn’t notice her drawing near. ‘Gods, what happened? Why didn’t you call me? I was just helping the new— Is she dead?’
‘Yes,’ Fen says. ‘Yes,’ she repeats. ‘She’s dead.’
‘That doesn’t…What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’ It isn’t true. But Fen is used to lying. It comes naturally to her tongue; even if the words are never believed, she says them without hesitation. It is easier to lie than to tell the truth. It is far easier to lie than to explain.
Cieli reaches for Kassandra’s face. She touches Kassandra’s patchwork skin.
She shakes her head, mouth opening and closing.
She looks at Fen, bewildered, uncertain.
She senses something, perhaps, but Fen holds strong: ‘I killed her,’ she says, thinking, suddenly, of a lesson Zinnitzia told her she needed to learn. ‘I can kill people.’
‘Fen, what are you saying?’
‘There’s something I need to do,’ she replies. Then she stands, still holding Kassandra’s hand. ‘Help me move her to the storage room.’
‘Fen?’
‘Please,’ Fen requests. ‘There is someplace I need to go.’
Hamad has already heard the news of Kassandra’s death by the time Fen arrives at the outpost. She wonders who told him.
She wonders which person in the butcher shop reports directly to this man, and how they squirrelled the information out without anyone seeing.
It couldn’t have been Rodans; Lio has had his eye on him from the start.
But it was someone. Someone else there. And so she stands before Hamad, hands at her side, as he sips his wine and tells her, ‘Such a pity,’ and she asks him no questions save for the ones she needs no direct answer to.
‘Does Aniya know that her mother is dead?’
‘She’s a toddler. What do toddlers know of anything?’ He smiles then, as if Fen would understand. Perhaps she does.
‘I’d like to see her before I go,’ Fen asks him, and he nods magnanimously. A crown within his grasp, a murdered mother successfully put out of the way and a kidnapped child under his guardianship. He has no fear. He has no concern. He would be a terrible king.
Fen drags herself up the stairs to Aniya’s room. She opens the door and finds the little girl on a bed too big for her to be in by herself. She’s been crying. She wants her mother, Fen guesses. ‘Trust me,’ she repeats, swearing both an oath to the child and to herself. ‘Trust me.’
Slowly, Fen kneels by the bed like she knelt beside Kassandra. She reaches out to cross the distance between her and this small child who has no understanding of what’s about to happen or why. Once more, Fen’s eyes burn, but she blinks hard. She doesn’t cry. Now isn’t the time for crying.
Elician doesn’t want this, she thinks as she looks at the little girl.
Precious Aniya, named for the joy she gives her parents, who only ever lived because she was loved.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Fen says. She closes her hand around Aniya’s palm, a palm that, if allowed to grow, will be the exact size and shape of Kassandra’s, a mirror to the palm that squeezed so fiercely around Fen’s right up until the end.
Live, Fen commands. She thinks of cells working faster, harder, stronger. She thinks of organs producing more, lungs expanding, electricity firing faster. She thinks of circulatory systems and limbic systems and more, more, more, more. Die, she thinks quietly.
Aniya coughs once, wetly. She sniffles. She looks up at Fen with bloodshot eyes. A bruise is forming on her arm from a blood vessel that’s popped. ‘Hamad!’ Fen calls. ‘Hamad, come quick!’ She doesn’t take her eyes off the trembling child, who coughs again, then again.
Hamad arrives. He has the charming face of a man who thinks he must be handsome. His smile is almost pleasant before it’s replaced with something very much like horror. ‘No,’ he hisses, stumbling backwards.
‘How long has she been like this?’ Fen asks.
‘No, that’s not…’
‘How did her mother get sick?’
‘We took her away for that. We would never risk—’ He’s still backing up. His eyes are wide, terror coursing through him. ‘Can she be saved?’
‘It is impermissible for a member of the ruling family to receive aid from a Giver,’ Fen replies.
‘If she is taken to Crowen, if she is healed – she will be considered ineligible for the crown.’ Fen puts her arms around the girl and lifts her up.
Aniya coughs again. She whines. Fen can feel it: the pain is starting, the pain she caused. Live, she thinks again. Die.
‘She’s not a princess yet,’ Hamad seethes. She is though. From the moment she was born, she was Elician’s child. He must know that. It does not matter.
‘So long as no one knows, then?’ she asks.
‘Get her better!’ he snaps, and she holds the girl to her chest. He scuttles out of reach as Fen takes her brother’s daughter and flees the watchtower. She takes one of the horses this time and rides as fast as she can.
When she reaches the butcher shop, Lio is waiting for her at the door, Cieli just behind.
‘She told me what you did,’ Lio says, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
‘And I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do now,’ Fen replies. ‘But first…’ She shows him the child. ‘I need help.’ And when she looks up, it isn’t to him or Cieli or even Elena nervously hovering in the background. It is to Zinnitzia, who is watching her with lips pursed and posture defiant.
Finally, Fen understands what Zinnitzia has wanted to teach her.
And she knows at long last exactly what it means to be in balance.