Chapter 21
Executive Realness
I knew I had to talk to Elethenn, but when I asked Araxis if I should go and find him to apologize and check in when we were still tucked away in bed, he'd gotten a soft and sad look on his face and told me to save that for later.
He is proud, Araxis had murmured against my skin, lips ghosting the curve of my bicep, and this has wounded him.
And then he'd let his hand drift across the skin of my lower abdomen, and I'd shivered and rolled him onto his back and then I mostly forgot about feeling bad about anything.
But I knew it still had to be done. I'd been thinking a lot about apologies, and I certainly owed Elethenn one.
And it was too late to apologize to Tam, so what else could I do with my guilt?
How else could I hold myself accountable?
Because if I didn't say anything, if I let the silence fester, maybe Elethenn would decide that coming to Creche Thiel had been a massive mistake – and I desperately wanted him to stay.
I wanted it so badly that it was almost a physical ache.
I decided to make an attempt the next morning as the kids were scrambling to get packed for school.
"Want to walk with me?" I suggested as I picked up the trail of half-eaten fruit slices the children had left behind.
"Although I can't exactly blame you if you never want to go anywhere with me ever again. "
I tried to play it off like a joke, and it fell entirely flat.
Elethenn looked up from carefully wiping down the counter, although he didn't quite meet my gaze.
"I will walk with you," he murmured, and so we took the children to school together and then drifted back toward the creche, slow, while I tried to work up the nerve to apologize.
I wasn't good at making amends yet, although I knew I needed to figure it out.
What did you say in a situation like this?
Sorry I encouraged you to hook up with someone who had already been murdered?
Sorry I dragged you into my shit? Sorry I took what was probably a very calm life making dumplings and set it on fire?
I fretted, feeling sicker and sicker the closer we got to home, and it was only when we rounded the corner to our own street that the need to say something beat out the desire to say nothing.
"Sorry," I forced out around the sudden dryness in my throat, almost breathless. "For – you know, everything."
Next to me, Elethenn was quiet. He didn't look at me.
"I really didn't think everything was going to be so fucked up," I confessed, voice cracking.
I cleared my throat to try and make space for more words.
"It's like wherever I go, I just – fuck everything up, and everyone gets hurt.
Clearly I should come with a warning label.
" I tried to say it with some levity, but had to scrub the cuff of my sleeve beneath my eyes, just in case.
Elethenn exhaled, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jumpsuit, his shoulders curled a little. "None of this is your fault, Sashen," he said, sounding weary. And why wouldn't he be? I'd ruined everything, and then I'd also refused to leave him well enough alone.
It seemed particularly cruel that, the minute I got on good footing with Araxis, I happened to simultaneously blow up what had felt like a real friendship.
"It is," I said. "I know it is. And I really am sorry.
And I just – I don't want you to feel like you have to leave so you don't have to be around me.
I'll – I'll leave you alone. I get it." I picked up speed, moving to pull ahead as we drew near to the stairs leading to our creche, but Elethenn reached out and caught my wrist.
"Sashen," he said. "Let's – There's a stand around the corner that sells tea. You can buy me a drink."
So I did and we threaded our way through the park I often looked at from the bedroom window.
The air was always cold in Verdant Ward, so the hot cup made my fingers sting.
I tried not to get too intense and weepy as we looked at the familiar ugly statues and fountains – sure, the fountains weren't full of garbage, but they were surrounded by rich people walking around and having the universe's most boring conversations about investments and renovations and the economy, so all in all, I'd take the night market in Radiant Ward – and eventually Elethenn pulled me to a bench and sat down beside me.
"Sashen," he said, staring into the dregs of his tea, "this was not your fault. This is – This has all been Xitera being exactly as it is."
"But –" I started.
He shot me a pointed look, and I snapped my mouth shut. "Xitera demands awful things from us all, and always exacts its price. I have – Sometimes I wonder –" He paused, and I knew better than to interrupt. I was learning, at least some things.
"I wonder," Elethenn continued, "if Araxis fully understands the danger he puts the creche in by stepping into the Great Hall and taking a seat in the Assembly.
If the concern is safety, he might be better served declaring under a house like Creche Athal.
But he has said, and I understand, it is a question of legacy and of…
forward motion. It is that forward motion that brings danger, Sashen. It is not you."
I stared at him, not understanding. "But everything that's happened here –"
"The problems you believe you've caused are, what?
Paying the fines of the crecheless who were imprisoned?
Such detainment is a well-known Concord tactic.
It was morally correct to intervene. That you were assaulted?
I –" His mouth worked, as if he were chewing his cheek.
"I find I must agree with Nizanin's assessment; it is certainly a Concord house behind that.
And –" He stopped, cleared his throat a little, fixed his stare toward the middle of the park where a brin trio were laughing.
His jaw flexed, tense. "And what happened to Tamcer?
That is how the Unbound conducts itself.
They are violent and reprehensible, and anyone who chooses to enter their orbit risks collateral damage.
None of it is your fault. You have been forced into the orbit of Xitera, and Xitera brings all of this with it. "
I tried to listen to what he was saying, I really did, and there was part of me that believed I understood what Elethenn was getting at.
But how could I really? Despite the information I'd been gathering for Perseus, I didn't understand anything yet about the abayan empire or Xitera or the machinations always at play in the Assembly or the Great Hall, where creches that didn't have a seat were also jostling for power.
But more than any of that, one word echoed through my mind, reverberating: forced.
"I wasn't forced to be here," I said, watching him. I knew he'd heard what Nizanin had said. I couldn't stand for him to believe that was the truth now.
His stare drifted back to me for a moment, flat.
"Araxis has explained. You do not need to.
I gather he has atoned." That same stare dropped pointedly to my neck, and I felt myself flush, suddenly warm in the cold air of the park.
"Although I must admit to some confusion.
I thought you said that you did not wish for a caldathess, that it held negative associations for you. And yet I cannot imagine that Araxis –"
He didn't have to say forced the matter. "That was a lie," I said. "I don't feel that way at all. Some people might, but not me. I – I actually asked him for it, a few times, and he said no. He said he hadn't earned it yet."
"He said no," repeated Elethenn, blinking rapidly. "After forcing your declaration."
Araxis had told me that, according to his culture and the scope of what he'd done, that he would be considered an unfit sinnenthi. To know that, and then to understand that Araxis had refused me in some culturally significant way – I couldn't let that be the impression Elethenn walked away with.
"No, you don't understand." He had to. I didn't want him thinking of Araxis as an awful person.
I didn't want to be the reason Elethenn decided to leave, because there was something about his grim weariness that struck me as resigned, like the end of a chapter, and I couldn't stomach that.
"I had another offer. Somewhere I could have gone that would have gotten me away from Seraphim and away from my debt claim.
I still do. I could say the word, and I'd be gone. I don't have to be here."
Something complicated flickered across Elethenn's mismatched features as he studied me, so I continued.
"This is what I want. This is the labour of my choosing.
I'm choosing to be here. I've chosen Araxis and I've chosen Creche Thiel.
Araxis is good to me, and he's good for me, and I am exactly where I want to be.
And if any of that ever changes, then I'll go. You don't need to worry about me."
He exhaled, and there in the light of day, on the bench in Verdant Ward, I had the chance to really look at Elethenn of Creche Thiel.
I studied his white eye, the scar carving across his face, the downward curve of his mouth, the sadness that lived behind his stare.
In another life, one that had been kinder to him, Elethenn would have been incredibly handsome.
He still was: you just had to look more carefully, as if all of the suffering he'd endured had made him harder to see, veiled by the shadows of his past. "You really believe that it would be that simple," he said then, head tilted. "That you could just… leave?"