Chapter 24
Elegy stands in an airy room, next to a stove—-cool now. There are cushions around it, their colorful array at odds with the tension in the air, the weight in her, like a rock in her stomach.
She sees a young woman on the ground, lying on her back with her hands folded over her stomach. She’s Lisia Amalka, and she’s dead. Her body is beginning to swell as her organs break down.
Beside her, arranged the same way, is Furik Heather. His eyes aren’t closed all the way, and Elegy itches to tug his eyelids down, to make it look like he’s only sleeping.
Kneeling between them is Fenn Kovek. He’s still. And beside Elegy is Maeve Martin. She glances at Elegy—-no, at Theren, who’s standing on Elegy’s left.
But this is not a Theren she’s familiar with.
He’s not the shorter, leaner boy who swore to be her Knight, and he’s not the hardened man who rescued her from House Vidar, either.
He’s so pale he looks sick, with dark circles under his eyes.
His body looks stretched out, far too thin for its size.
It takes her a moment to recognize that the ache she’s feeling in her limbs is his. It’s as if her body is mirroring his.
It’s strange that in the memory projection, she’s separate from him. She was expecting to experience his memories as if she was him, but apparently that’s not how Tor’s memory projection works.
“Theren,” Maeve says. “What should we do?”
A door on the side of the room opens. Nyx, Rava’s right hand, walks in, her hair knotted on top of her head, and she steps back to let four people in blue robes enter.
Their purpose seems clear: two go to stand at Lisia’s and Furik’s feet, and the others, their heads. They’re here to get the bodies.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” Fenn growls at one of them, in English.
Nyx responds in Talusar, not to him but to Theren: “Get him under control, or he’s going to die.”
Theren must be the only one who speaks Talusar.
Theren crouches at Fenn’s shoulder, despite the throbbing in his knees. He puts a hand on Fenn’s back, and Fenn lashes out, shoving Theren so hard he topples.
“Get the fuck away from me,” Fenn says. His eyes are red, and full of tears. “She just hasn’t woken up yet, she’ll be alive again any minute—-”
“They’re not going to wake up,” Theren says, dragging himself to his knees again. “Fenn, it’s been too long. They’re gone.”
“She is not gone!”
Theren grabs Fenn’s shoulders as the robed ones pick up Lisia’s body, and then Furik’s. As they lift Furik from the ground, Maeve reaches out and sets one hand on his swollen ankle in farewell.
Theren squeezes tightly to keep Fenn from lashing out. Fenn’s body shudders in his hands.
Theren whispers, “You can’t hurt them, or they’ll kill you. Understand?”
“Fuck you,” Fenn spits at Theren. “Coward.”
The shift between memories happens without interruption. She was in that room, and then she’s in another one. A bathroom, it looks like, judging by the tile floor—-green and worn, cracking in places—-and the basin of water on the ground.
Fenn Kovek is kneeling behind it, stripped to the waist, splashing his face.
She doesn’t remember much about what Fenn looked like before the Fever, but in its aftermath he’s just muscle wrapped around bone, and it’s painful to look at him.
Off to the side, Theren—-still obviously fresh from his Fever resurrection—-is brushing his teeth.
Fenn pushes himself to his feet with a grunt, but he doesn’t seem used to his body’s new weakness—-he tips to the side, and Theren is there to catch him, his toothbrush still sticking out of his mouth.
Based on the way they related in the memory before, she expects Fenn to snap at him. But instead his eyes go glazed and unfocused as he stares up at Theren.
“Fenn,” Theren says. He takes one hand off the other man’s shoulders to tap his cheek. “Fenn!”
Fenn blinks at him, and straightens.
“It happened again?” Theren says to him, his voice low.
“Yeah.” Fenn closes his eyes, briefly. “More and more often.”
“You could just tell them you’re an epocha,” Theren says to him. “Epochas are well--treated, well--fed—-”
“—-and fucking property of the Talusar state,” Fenn snaps, sounding more like himself. “I would never see you or Maeve again, and I’d be so well--guarded there’s not even a shred of hope that I could escape. No thank you, I’ll pass.”
“Where we’re going is brutal. If I were you—-”
“You’re not the one whose brain is sending them decades into the past at random, so it’s not up to you to decide,” Fenn says. “Just keep your mouth shut.”
He grabs a towel from a stack by the door, and wipes his face. Elegy hears tapping against the window—-rain.
“I think I saw your father,” Fenn says, before he walks out the door. “Looked just like you.”
The tap of the rain disappears, and in its place: a roar.
She hears it as if from a distance. A sweaty, shirtless man just toppled to the floor in front of her. He spits blood on the wood. Wheezes. And stands.
There’s an audience around her, above her—-layers of them, like she’s in an amphitheater, but it’s dark in here, so she can barely see their faces. She stands in the spotlight, in the heat, and all around her is the tangy smell of sweat.
She watches as another man, just to her left, steps forward, hands raised to protect his face. She takes in the bloody fists, the muscled torso, the expressionless face of Theren Forint. There’s a cut in his eyebrow, and blood runs down the side of his head.
She’s never seen him like this. Bare from the waist up, and thicker—-well--fed and fit, like an athlete. His shoulders back and his spine straight. Confident. A master of this fight, of this place.
He has one black bar tattooed on his hand. One year in the Crucible.
His posture is relaxed as he advances on the other man, his movements fast and predatory. His opponent tries to punch him, but Theren catches it, twisting his arm brutally to the side as he hits the man in the face with his left hand.
Southpaw, she thinks, and she watches as the other man tries to pull away, but Theren shifts with him, effortlessly, following him around the edge of the arena and twisting, still twisting, wrenching the man’s arm to strain the limits of his shoulder joint.
Elegy cringes. The man screams, and Theren drives a knee into his side, so he goes down hard.
The man slaps the ground with his uninjured arm, yielding.
Theren raises his head.
She follows his gaze to Maeve, standing somewhere above in the first few rows of spectators, her eyes wide.
But Theren doesn’t acknowledge her. He just walks to the edge of the arena as everyone cheers and chants something.
Their voices are muffled. He goes through a doorway that stands open beneath the seats.
There, beneath the amphitheater, the hallway is dark and quiet. Only a few people are milling around, chatting. They look at Theren but don’t speak to him as he leans into a wall, his forehead against the stone.
His next breath shudders on the way out. She feels burning in her throat, in her chest. Deep in the pit of her stomach. Everywhere, burning.
Then Maeve’s voice:
“Hello.”
Theren straightens and pulls away from the wall. Maeve and Fenn are coming toward him, from the arena floor.
“What are you doing here?” Theren says, his voice rough. He speaks English, and it comes to him a little unsteadily, as if he’s gotten rusty.
“Nice to see you, too,” Fenn says.
“We came to talk to you about something,” Maeve says.
Theren sighs, and nods. He leads them down the hallway, past a few people who nod to him and call him by a name Elegy doesn’t recognize. Or—-perhaps she does. Intere. It’s a word that means “sifted together.” If she had to guess, she would say that in his case, it refers to Cedrae and Talusar.
He opens the door to a small, bare room with no windows.
When they walk in, lights flicker on as if triggered by motion—-febra glass.
When a person survives the Fever, their body starts emitting some kind of energy.
Febra armor channels that energy into a shield, and febra glass channels it into gentle light.
There are a few chairs in the room, scattered here and there. A basin of water stands in the corner, on a table, next to a stack of towels, a box of medical supplies. This is a place for fighters to recover in.
Theren goes to the basin and scoops water into his hands, then drinks, long and slow. Once. Twice. Three times.
“I’ve never seen you like that before,” Maeve says to him.
“Like what?” Theren splashes water on his face, then probes gently at the cut above his eyebrow.
“I don’t know.” She sounds troubled.
“She means you’re fucking brutal now and it scares her,” Fenn says. “As it happens, though, that’s why we’re here.”
Theren picks up one of the towels and presses it to his bleeding head. He still doesn’t turn to look at either of them. Elegy can’t stop staring at the muscles in his back, shifting with every movement.
“Is this an intervention?” Theren says. “You’re fine with the fact that we all have to survive by beating the shit out of people here, but it’s not okay for me to be good at it?”
“It’s not okay for you to like it, maybe,” Fenn says.
Theren only laughs. He leans against the table that supports the water basin.
Elegy thinks it’s an odd thing to say. It’s obvious to her that Theren doesn’t like it.
“What do you want from me?” he says.
“Why are you acting like this?” Maeve says. “We’re your friends, Theren.”
“One of you is afraid of me, and the other one only ever refers to me as ‘Coward,’ ” Theren points out.
Fenn sneers. “Would you prefer your tough little arena nickname?”
“If you think they’re calling me ‘Intere’ as a compliment, you have no clue what the word means.”
“Both of you, stop,” Maeve snaps. “I’m not afraid of you, Theren.”
He gives her a look. “Did you forget you can’t lie to me?”