Chapter Thirty-Three Fenlia
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Fenlia
In truth, Fen didn’t think Hamad would come. She sits beside little Aniya, holding the girl’s hand, and when Cieli tells her that Hamad is here, she wants to laugh a bit at the absurdity. ‘Show him up,’ she whispers. They’re alone in Fen’s room in Elena’s home. Separate and away from prying eyes.
She very rarely spends time here anymore. These days, she sleeps in the butcher shop next to all those who need her. But this requires privacy, and the secret passage into Elena’s home is exceedingly convenient when it comes to mitigating unexpected outcomes.
Fen holds Aniya’s hand. She senses her, understands her, knows her to her core. Her genetic code still feels like it’s been shaped by Elician, for all that its structure is perfectly Kassandra’s. She is a gift given to this world, the product of what a Giver truly should be striving to achieve.
The door opens. Hamad walks in.
‘Is she…?’ he asks. He can’t bring himself to finish the question. He can only look at the fragile body of the little thing he’s pinned all his hopes and dreams on, a fractured shell that he never understood the worth and value of – his little merchant girl he deigned to make a queen.
‘She died an hour ago,’ Fen tells him. She keeps her eyes on Aniya’s precious face. It lies pale and still. Like so many other faces in the butcher shop, in the city, in all of Alelune and Soleb, she is no different. So much fuss over one life, when so many others have died.
‘How?‘ Hamad asks. He curses. Steps forward, then stops. Shakes his head. ‘She was our one chance!’
‘Yes,’ Fen agrees softly. ‘But all things must die.’
‘There’s no one else that can…’ Hamad shuffles closer, lowers his voice. ‘Who else knows who she is?’
‘No one,’ Fen tells him. She doesn’t need to look at him.
She doesn’t need to see his face or his expressions or his posturing.
She can feel his presence in the air, the body of a man who is certain and strong, who knows what it is he’s meant to do and why.
He’s a construct of wealth and power: his stomach is full; his musculature is fit and shapely.
He’s healthy, and he’s the way he is because he has the means.
Fen hasn’t eaten today. She doesn’t need the bread.
‘Bring her back,’ Hamad says.
Fen smiles. It’s a bitter thing. ‘Bring her back?’ she repeats. ‘That’s forbidden.’
‘No one else knows.’
‘Healing her would have been one thing. But an heir to the Soleben crown cannot take the crown if they have died once before. They are gifted one life and one chance to rule.’
‘If we don’t have an heir we can’t remove Adalei from the throne.’
She stands slowly. She gently rests Aniya’s little hand over the blue and green and gold seams of her pretty dress.
Fen closes her eyes. She nods, turns and looks up at Hamad.
‘The council will never accept this,’ she says.
‘Elician’s advisers will never agree to a Giver-born child twice raised. Parliament will object.’
‘No one needs to know.’
‘And if anyone finds out?’
‘They will listen to me.’
‘All of them?’ She sounds sceptical.
‘Enough of them! They don’t want Adalei on the throne any more than we do. They will accept this. I’ll make sure of it.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘I’m certain,’ he says.
‘All of them…’ She shakes her head. ‘And what happens when my brother arrives? What will you tell him when he returns, when you have removed his chosen heir and instead set up a regency for this child? Are you certain of his loyalty? Of his forgiveness?’
Hamad blinks at her, then looks down at Aniya. And finally, she thinks he sees them both for the first time. ‘You killed them,’ he murmurs.
‘I did,’ Fen lies. She takes him in: his shock, his horror.
She memorizes all of it, committing it to memory as the only boon this mission has given her so far.
Then, slowly, she lowers her hand back down to Aniya’s.
There is no need for this. For all that she told Hamad one thing, she did something very different.
For all Lio told her that some deaths were necessary, she could not live with the thought of truly ending their lives.
Wake, she wills the child beneath her touch.
And every signal that has lain dormant, every hormone and nerve that has been in a state of anticipatory rest, every single part of Aniya’s body that has been detached, unable to react or respond because Fen told those areas to die and stay dead until she brought them back – comes alive.
Aniya’s soul hasn’t left her body. Her pulse has never truly stopped.
She has lived, pale and still and senseless, and Hamad never would have known.
No one will ever know.
She will be blamed for resurrecting a child when it is forbidden.
She will be cursed for tempting the gods in the middle of a plague.
She will be hated for bringing back this child and not any of the countless others.
And she will accept it. She will let them call her evil, let them blame her for the loss of all those who have truly died.
She saved this girl’s life by allowing her to live a life Hamad cannot twist for his own means.
So long as the world believes Aniya has died, she will never be eligible to take the throne, and she can live her life with her mothers – safe from the politics of court.
To preserve that future, now and for ever more, Fen will lie.
And keep lying. She will boldly admit she raised Aniya from the dead to any who will listen.
All so one girl she barely knows will truly get her chance to live.
Aniya gasps, her childish voice lightly gracing the air that flows in through her mouth. Her limbs twitch, her lips part as her eyes scrunch and lashes flutter. Fen says, ‘Aniya is ineligible for the throne, Hamad.’
‘Nobody knows,’ he says slowly. ‘This could still—’
The door to Fen’s room opens. Hamad turns. Lio is there, sword in hand. ‘I know,’ Lio says. ‘I’ve always known.’
‘I wrote Lio a letter,’ Fen says, turning back to Aniya and smiling at the little girl as she wearily looks around her.
Fen gently soothes her. Be calm, be at peace.
Aniya relaxes immediately, slipping into a pleasant slumber with good dreams. ‘Kassandra told me that when Elician helped her, Lio was there. I asked him about it.’ Anger threatens to rise within her.
‘Lio came here, in the middle of a plague when hundreds of thousands depended on us being focused on our jobs, and I told him everything.’
‘No.’ Hamad shook his head. ‘No, you disagreed with Adalei’s proposals too. You said—’
‘I gave an oath to my king to trust his commands, all of them, even if I didn’t agree.
My brother entrusted Soleb to our cousin, to your crown princess, Adalei.
In his absence, she has my allegiance. And I can hate her orders, I can loathe them, I can detest them and debate them and try to find another way, I can swear to talk to my king once he returns, but I will never disobey them.
And I would never dishonour my brother or my country by treasonously attempting to remove her from the position he put her in, nor dismantle their government while our king is away. ’
‘You said yourself he commanded the gates shut!’
‘He did! But his order for Adalei to be in charge supersedes any other order when he isn’t present. I trust my king. I trust him to know what’s best for us and our people, and so I will trust Adalei until the day she turns against her people, which she has not done.’
‘Thousands are dead!’
‘But we don’t have a famine – the farms rallied.’
Lio had sat her down. Showed her the numbers, spent hours explaining it even if she didn’t like it.
He had done that, for her, while she and Cieli held on to a little girl that never should have been born.
They will never know what could have happened if they made other choices.
But they know what did happen here, and Fen can see: it could have been worse.
‘Hundreds of thousands more aren’t doomed because of it.
The Exalted are trained, and our country has a new corps of physicians and nurses learning to ensure this never happens again.
All of us are working together to save lives – and now we know what to do.
’ A thought crosses Fen’s mind. She laughs.
‘Adalei saw it: life and death in balance. Accepting one is inevitable in the face of the other. She understood. She made the choice. You and your advisers would have stabbed her in the back.’
Hamad shakes his head. He looks back at Lio, still standing vigil at the door.
At Fen, who guards Aniya with equal ferocity.
‘I told Adalei about our meeting in Himmelsheim,’ Fen says to him.
‘She’s had an armed guard of trusted soldiers of Marina’s and Lio’s choosing around her since the moment you reached out to me. ’
‘No one would have got close enough to harm her,’ Lio says. ‘Unlike you, my men are loyal.’
Hamad’s jaw clenches. He glares at Lio, at a childhood playmate turned bodyguard turned royal-in-waiting, a future prince consort who will one day wear Soleb’s crown. ‘You are unworthy,’ he spits out. Lio grins.
‘I know. But I’ve laid down my life for this country time and time again, and I still do it now.
When have you ever had to sacrifice anything, my lord?
’ Lio lifts his blade, wickedly sharp and deadly in his hand.
‘Fight me,’ Lio goads. ‘If you lose, maybe we’ll bring you back and you can see if anyone still wants you on the throne when you’re the one who’s been revived. ’
‘I was preparing to head a regency for King Elician’s daughter.’
‘That girl is not his child,’ Lio says. ‘Her parents are named Kassandra and Aisha, and she is going home.’
Fen collects Aniya in her arms. She tucks the girl’s limbs in so she can carry her with ease, and with Lio’s sword at Hamad’s throat, she walks to the door.