Chapter 24 #3
“They’re lasting longer than they used to,” Maeve says, over his shoulder.
Theren doesn’t look pleased. “Come on, let’s get him out of here.”
Maeve grabs Fenn’s hand and pulls him toward the door. Theren follows, watching Fenn’s tripping footsteps. They go down the hall, where the music is muted. At the end of it, Elegy can see two people moving against each other in a sensual rhythm, but they’re otherwise alone.
Fenn blinks at Maeve, who’s now tapping his cheek.
“Quit it,” he says to her, after a moment. He sounds unfocused.
“What did you see?”
“Our parents,” he says. “Crossing the desert.”
Theren and Maeve exchange a troubled look.
“You’re not going to be able to hide it forever,” Maeve says to Fenn.
“Just another month, and then we’ll probably be dead,” Fenn says, with forced cheer.
“Or you could go live in a monastery, pampered and cared for—-”
“No,” Fenn says darkly. “If I do that, I’ll be stamped with their seal, I’ll go where they say, I’ll do what they say—-”
“Just like you do here!” Maeve brandishes her hand at him, showing him the single black bar tattooed between her fingers.
“There’s more freedom in the Crucible than in the monastery,” Fenn says. “At least here, I get to see you.” He looks at Theren. “And you.”
A warm, soft feeling—-Elegy can’t tell if it’s Theren’s, or Fenn’s, or Maeve’s, or if it’s shared among them all.
Another dark hallway—-
Fenn stands with Theren beneath the dim glow of a febra light. Theren is teeming with nervous energy, bouncing on his toes. Fenn puts his hand on Theren’s chest and presses him into the wall, gently, as if to steady him.
And then, a moment of hesitation—-and Fenn steps even closer.
“Hey,” Theren says softly. “Hey, what—-”
“Just in case.” Fenn touches his temple to Theren’s cheekbone, and closes his eyes. “Just in case this doesn’t go well—-”
Elegy can hear the desperation in his voice, and she can feel it, too, in her own chest—-the horrible itch of need.
Theren stares at Fenn for a moment and then sets his hands on Fenn’s shoulders—-and slides them in, to the other man’s neck, his thumbs touching just beneath Fenn’s jaw to tip his head up.
He bends his head and kisses Fenn, softly. Fenn presses in, his hands on Theren’s waist—-
Elegy walks alongside a horse in the desert at night. By the moonlight she looks to her left and sees Theren and Maeve atop the horse, Theren slumped forward into Maeve, Maeve slumped back into Theren, like two cards balanced just so to keep the whole house of cards from tumbling down—-
In the hallway, she sees Fenn against the wall this time, Theren pinning him to the stone and kissing his throat—-the same occasion as before, or a new one, Elegy can’t be sure, and it doesn’t really matter—-
“Focus,” Tor says, back in the room in the Losan Stronghold library, his hands tightening around Theren’s skull. “Slow down, and focus.”
“Wake up.” Orda’s hand touches Theren’s shoulder to wake him. He lifts a lantern by its handle and sets it on a little table next to Theren’s pillow.
Theren sits up, blinking sleepily at Orda. Elegy can’t see anything about the room except the two men’s faces, a foot apart, the lantern light between them.
“What is it?” Theren says roughly. There’s a bandage on his side, dark circles under his eyes. Though he sounds confused, Elegy is getting better at reading his expressions, and he doesn’t look confused. He looks resigned. Like he already knows what Orda is going to say.
“Fenn and Maeve were caught,” Orda says. “This afternoon they snuck out and tried to smuggle a knife into the Crucible, and they were discovered. I only just heard.”
Theren sits up, swinging his legs over the side of his bed so he’s facing Orda. Orda stays crouched in front of him, his hands on either side of Theren, braced against the mattress.
“What does this mean?” Theren says.
“Rava’s guards suspected their intentions based on some of their other behaviors. But Maeve confessed, and convinced them they were working alone,” Orda says. “We’re in the clear. They’ll be executed.”
Theren covers his face with his hands.
Then Theren’s sitting on the edge of a bed, his fingers pressing into his eye sockets. Elegy sits beside him. Her back aches, like she’s been sitting there too long without moving.
Where is she right now? And when? They’re not in the Crucible, and there are two bars tattooed on Theren’s hand, so she knows this is later than the last memory—-yes, this has to be from when he was in House Vidar, only she can’t imagine that a prisoner of House Vidar sleeps in this kind of room, simple but fine, the sheets silky and the bed frame carved—-
Carved with vines.
She tries to place this Theren in the timeline. Both of his hands are tattooed, and she can see some of his ribs—-he was healthier when he was in the Crucible, so this must be months after he moved to House Vidar, if not more. Old scars mark his bare torso. There are faded bruises on his side.
She hears the door open in the next room. Her entire body tenses in anticipation. He gets up, stiffly, and picks up his shirt, slung over the window seat. The fabric hangs around him like a tent. She follows him through the door.
The next room is bright, the huge windows on the far wall letting in the entire panorama of Valla below. Every other wall is covered with books. It smells like a library, with that same sweet mustiness, the scent of old paper.
Kesia Forint stands just a few feet from the doorway, as if she wasn’t sure that she was allowed in.
She’s wearing casual clothes: trousers made of repurposed leather, a white woven shirt, old boots.
Her hair is short, chin--length. She stares at him, and Elegy feels, through Theren, the interplay of her emotions—-shame and relief and guilt and God, she suddenly doesn’t care what else—-for a few seconds before he shuts her out.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he says to her.
“You’ve lost weight,” she says.
Why are we here? Elegy thinks. Why were you here?
Theren looks toward the window, at the sunlight reflecting off the snowcapped peaks that surround Valla.
Then Elegy is in a grand, bright hall.
Through the windows on either side of the room, Elegy sees the mountains with white peaks, the forests dusted with snow. Below, foot traffic in the streets of Valla has already packed it down and muddied it and turned it to slush.
Theren stands waiting in the middle of the room, looking worn and shabby compared to the polished blue tile. Orda is off to the side, his hands behind his back, also waiting. They exchange a look. Then the door behind Theren opens.
Elegy shudders to see Satka walking in first, looking exactly the same as she remembers, down to the chewed nail beds and the unwashed hair. Trailing behind her are Maeve and Fenn, bruised, hands bound, ushered along by Ranos.
Satka stops beside Theren and draws her sword. He tenses, but doesn’t move as the blade touches his throat.
“Kneel,” Satka says.
There are footsteps behind them, hard and steady.
“Now, now, Satka,” Rava’s low voice says. “There’s no need for blades.”
“I’m not going to kneel for you,” Theren says—-not to Satka, but to Rava, who walks past him. She’s wearing the vest part of her febra armor, which is so polished Elegy can almost hear it humming. Her hair is tucked behind her ears.
Satka sheathes her sword. Theren and Rava stare at each other.
And then, Elegy is sorting through the layers of Rava Vidar.
She’s not as chaotic as Elegy might have expected. There’s stability in her, but she’s rough, no polish, no ease. Elegy is surprised to discover a twinge of awkwardness, uncertainty. A flare of heat, deep within her, that she can’t identify, and then, under all of it—-
Fear. Not fear of Theren, Elegy thinks, or it wouldn’t be buried so deep. But fear, nonetheless.
“You will kneel,” Rava says to Theren, evenly.
“One day, you’ll do it because you’re so used to it that it doesn’t cost you anything anymore.
But today, you’ll do it because I have your friends in custody awaiting execution, and you wouldn’t want to give me a reason to make their last hours more painful than they have to be. ”
She tips her head to the side, expectant. Theren glances at Maeve and Fenn. Maeve’s cheeks are streaked with tears.
Jaw clenched, Theren sinks to his knees.
“Better,” Rava says. “I’m surprised you’re not begging for me to spare them.”
“I don’t ask for things I know I won’t get,” Theren says.
“Ah.” Rava touches a fingertip to her mouth, considering him. “And you do know, don’t you? That is what I hear about you, Forint. That the Fever shows you a person’s heart. That you’re never surprised. That no one is a mystery to you. A tremendous gift indeed.”
Theren doesn’t answer, but Elegy watches his labored swallow.
“For now, I appreciate it because it saves us time,” Rava says. “I won’t offer mercy to people who conspired to kill me. Your friends will die today. However, we do extend certain courtesies to those about to be executed. We allow them to choose how. And we allow them to choose who.”
Theren sucks in a breath as it dawns on him, what this means, what she’s not saying. Elegy brings a hand up to her mouth.
“No,” he says. “I’m not going to kill them.”
“Are you refusing?” Rava says. “It’s your right to do so, of course. But I think your friends chose you because they would rather not die by an enemy’s hand.”
It almost sounds like kindness, Elegy thinks. She can tell it isn’t cruelty, exactly. Rava looks curious—-feels curious, like there’s an itch she’s desperate to scratch. Elegy thinks of Satka telling her that bad things happen to those who Rava Vidar finds interesting.
She clearly finds Theren interesting.
Theren slumps, bracing himself against the floor with one hand. “No. No, I’m not refusing.”
Elegy marvels at it, then. How every time she thinks she’s found the bottom of Theren’s will to go on, he reveals there’s another layer.