Chapter 35 Phaethon
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
PHAETHON
“Your place is where your heart is.”
I’m lying on my chest on the narrow bed, my ruined back covered in ointment, poultices, and bandages, the pain so sharp it cuts through my composure… and the little human is talking about things she doesn’t understand.
Or maybe I am the one who doesn’t.
I had a body and was alone inside my head so long ago I can barely remember what it felt like. Centuries ago. Millennia ago. I lived for a purpose I can also barely recall. I would never admit to it, but I don’t really know what is driving me. What I want to go back for.
If I admit it, to myself as well as to others, it will be like admitting defeat. Like there will be nothing to keep going on for. All this time, I have clung onto the few facts I do remember religiously, like sacred relics.
My people.
Our home world.
The goal of returning there.
Is it any wonder my goals aligned with the king’s?
We have the same idea, the same mission: freedom.
A freedom above that of broken bonds. A freedom that has to do with living in a world made to your measure, a world for creatures like us who are made of flesh and metal, flying and clashing, and eating…
what do we eat? How do we live? What were we made for?
What is anyone made for? Why did we leave our world, what were we seeking?
“Phaethon,” she says, and I frown.
“Go,” I tell her.
“You need me to numb the pain,” she reminds me.
“I don’t need you. Leave.”
But she doesn’t.
I never had anyone or anything to numb the pain before.
Any damage to this body has always sent me away into the dark, but this constant pain is different.
Now I understand the process better. It’s not the pain that sends me away, but the shock, the suddenness, the way it pierces me, a sensation so real it shreds me.
She stays.
Time rolls by. I drift off and jerk awake. Unimaginable that I should let my guard down with only this girl to have my back. Why do I trust her?
Maybe I am crazy.
A commotion outside the room rouses me. I focus on the guards pushing the doors open, admitting the king inside with the telchin in tow.
The telchin. I hadn’t spoken to the old fleabag in a while.
“Astar,” he says, calling me by my old name, calling to one of the parts that make me who I am.
I was Astar once, but since Phaethon joined us I don’t answer to that name. I don’t even know why. Astar was a powerful Eosphor, the one who led my people, but Phaethon, the human king whose body and mind I possessed in the previous world stamped my existence inescapably.
Is that why I find myself acting in unpredictable ways?
Like now, when the king lifts a beringed hand and says, “Guards, remove her from the room. She has stayed alone with him long enough.”
The guards move as one to do his bidding and something snaps in me.
With a major effort, the pain worse than I thought it would be, I push myself up on my elbows and snag her arm. “You don’t touch her,” I snarl. “Nobody lays a finger on her.”
The king steps back and two of his guards lift their spears, pointing at me. “We need privacy,” he says.
“She stays. She goes nowhere. I don’t trust you with her.”
She stares at me, her gray eyes round in her small, white face.
The king’s brow creases. “I wouldn’t harm her.”
“You already have, and…” I release her arm. “I don’t trust anyone with her.”
Why did I do that? Why do I feel the need to keep her safe?
Is that Jai’s infatuation bleeding into me?
This irritating human body is reacting so oddly to her.
Her touch calms me, like I told her, the pain fades.
A heat fills me when she is near, and my heart must be faulty because it bangs inside my chest when she smiles at me.
It had almost escaped the confines of my chest earlier when she had placed herself between me and the healers, as if to hide me. Protect me.
Which is ridiculous. Why would she?
Because she wants to save Jai. Not me. I know that, too.
It makes no difference. The urge to be with her, fling her behind me and bare my teeth at anyone who might harm her is taking my breath away.
How… pathetic. Eosphors are creatures of war. Created for war, we are… Wait, created? Where did that memory come from? Created by whom? What are we, why—?
“Phaethon.” The king shoves his guards aside and stands once more before me. “We are allies, you and I.”
“If you want my alliance,” I say, trying to pull my frayed thoughts together, “you swear to me you won’t harm her.”
His mouth twists in an almost grin. “You’re showing your hand, Phaethon. You aren’t used to playing games like humans and fae are.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” He hesitates. “Our interests align. You don’t need to threaten me or negotiate with me to have my collaboration.”
That’s not what he’d meant to say.
I showed my hand. I betrayed… feelings. Like Jai does.
No matter. His words bring me back to a question I’ve been asking myself: he needs me, the king needs me, but do I need him? What for? To keep Jai sane?
What if I talked to Jai, like she said? What if I tried harder?
“Phaethon,” the king asks, “are you there?”
I push myself up to sit, blocking out her cry for me to stop, the world spinning and fresh blood running down my back. The pain is drawing Jai to the fore, just like it pushes me down when he hurts himself. I growl like an animal.
This is Jai’s doing. This is what happens when you inhabit human bodies, human minds. This… attachment to her is affecting my critical mind.
All the more reason to insist she goes away and be steadfast. Hold on to my goals. She swings my mind like a pendulum when she’s near. Small wonder Jai is so affected by her. Is it some sort of magic? Am I under her spell?
Finnfolk have some basic old magic, more to do with shifting, singing and true name calling. This isn’t making any sense.
Oh, wait… the bond. And also, the small scales on her neck glinting like gold…
Right. As the memory hits me, I wince. Not a mermaid, then.
“Phaethon,” the king says again, and he must like its sound with the way he likes to keep repeating it, “are you—?”
“Present and accounted for,” I growl. “If you can’t tell me apart from Jai, then your stupidity will be your downfall.”
His face colors. “You will address me with respect.”
“Someone just told me that respect has to be earned.” I bare my teeth at him. “I have no fear of you, kingling. You forget who you’re speaking with. And you still haven’t promised not to hurt her.”
“I cannot hurt her,” he snaps. “She carries my mark. If I harm her, I harm myself.”
“The harm won’t be in equal measure,” I snap back.
Does he take me for an imbecile? “Even if you hadn’t admitted as much to Jai, I know how betrothal marks work.
You put that mark on her, so any harm on you affects her, but not so much the other way around.
That is why you haven’t taken her mark on yourself.
” I cock my head at him. “Or is it simply because you never meant it as a betrothal mark but only as a mark of control, as lords sometimes do with their circle of knights to protect themselves from treason? As lords do with women they like to hurt?”
“I never knew…” Her eyes are wide. “That’s how it works? The one-sided marking?”
Anger warms her face, tints her cheeks with pink, puts a fire in her gaze. She is upset with him for the mark, for lying to her. For duping her.
And I am angry too on her behalf for what feels like a violation, and I can’t even figure out why. She means nothing to me. Nothing.
Fuck, as Jai would say. It’s a good, meaty word.
But he ignores her, all his attention on me. “Why are we talking about this and why are you taking her side? You never expressed any interest in my interactions with anyone before.”
“I have no interest.”
The king arches a pale brow.
“State your purpose,” I say. “I need to rest and heal. Not much time is left until the third trial.”
“I have to know if you can open the gates, Phaethon. Time is running short.”
“Short?” I frown at him. “What have you done?”
He turns his face to hide a wince, like a scolded child caught red-handed. “I promised the council… and the Gods.” He nods at the telchin who’s watching us impassively. “That by the three-hundredth year of the Reversal I’d find a way back.”
I’m aghast. “What does your stupid promise have to do with me?”
The king’s face purples. “I have been patient. You’ve been here for a hundred years! What have you figured out? How can you open the gates? Why can’t you do it yet?”
“You know why. I haven’t found a way to expand my power without killing this body or driving Jai insane. Finding the right balance—”
“Jai can’t be killed so easily. Haven’t you figured out yet who he is and what happened?”
I pause. Study his face. “All your threats… were a game? What do you know and why did you wait until now to tell me?”
“I wasn’t sure. Her appearance…” The king shoots her a narrowed glance that sends steel into my spine. “Her presence has revealed a lot.”
Kneeling on the bed, I level a glare at him. “Such as?”
“When the old dragon falls through the sky, the—”
“We both know what that means. I am the old dragon. Astar. The firstborn Eosphor.”
“They called you that, sure. At some point.”
“I control dragons.”
“But you aren’t one.”
“What does that have to do with Jai?”
“Think who the old dragon was. Think what happened to you in the otherworld.”
“What does that have to do with…?” I close my mouth. Shake my head. “Really? What does Marsyas have to do with it?”
She produces a soft noise of distress. I can only spare her a glance, and finding her pale but hale, I return my focus to what the king is hinting at.
“Jai is not Marsyas,” I say.
I would remember. I would feel it. I would know.
Jai would know.
When the king doesn’t reply, I laugh. It’s a jagged sound. I am not amused. This is frankly ridiculous. Impossible.
I would remember something like that!
“You spend your time howling inside his head,” the king finally says, after I have fallen quiet, the disquiet in my mind not going away.
“Crossing didn’t treat either of you kindly.
And he spends his time fighting you. That’s not a symbiosis.
It’s a war. If you need to take over permanently, do it.
If his body dies in the process, do it. It’s time. ”
“No!” she hisses, reaching for me. Her small hand grabs my arm with surprising force—or maybe not so surprising, knowing now what she is. Has Jai realized? “Don’t do it.”
“You know I need his body, this soul,” I say quietly, frowning at the king. “That I need him. I can’t function in a mind gone sick or a body gone to waste.”
“You were a spirit once,” he says.
“I haven’t been without a body for a very long time. I don’t think I can go back to that free-roaming nature. And I didn’t cross the gates as a spirit. I would have gone insane.”
“Who is to say you haven’t?”
I wave a dismissive hand at him. Despite the occasional doubt, I know I am sane. He is just prodding me. “Those metal wings, those metal bodies of my people… I believe we made them. For us. To cross through worlds.”
“And now we need to cross again. You swore to help.”
“Careful, kingling.”
Marsyas. King Marsyas of old. Is the king speaking the truth? Is this the body I am inhabiting? Does Jai know?
“Remember who you are,” he says now. “Stop clinging to this reality. As for her, do you think she’d stay beside you if she could see what you really are?
” He turns to her. “Remember that he caused your family’s demise.
Your parents. Your little brother. Your people.
You don’t believe me? Ask him for details, now, while Jai is bound. Ask Phaethon.”
“Shut your mouth,” I snarl, not even sure why I don’t want him telling her that. Why I don’t want him shattering this fragile reality, this glass bubble I have strangely found myself in.
“He is my general,” the king goes on, relentless, smirking at her. “My right-hand man. What do you think he’s been doing for a hundred years? Squashing the human rebellion. Killing your people.”
“No,” she whispers. “He was forced into this.”
Her belief in Jai’s goodness is staggering.
“She is naive.” The king turns his attention back to me. “Recover your memories, Phaethon. Recover your power. We need you. We have to go back. Our people there are waiting for our return. I promised them we’d go back.”
“You changed,” I say, thinking of what she told me. “In crossing. They won’t even recognize you. Won’t accept you as one of their own.”
“Same goes for you,” he says frostily, sweeping his mantle to turn his back on me. “Ever think about that?”
Well, I did my best not to think about it in a hundred years, and then she arrived and shoved that fact into my face. Now this. The king hinting at things that can’t be true and insinuating that our situations are similar.
That I have no more right to want to cross over than he does.
Comparing us. Me and the kingling. As if there is any comparison.
As if my resolve is for nothing. My struggle. My fight. My war.
Unacceptable.