by Daryl Banner
His blue-grey eyes, which quickly fill with tears.
Ellena rushes up to him at once, arms opened. Athan breaks from his stance just as abruptly, and the two crash into one another, embracing each other tightly.
“Oh, sweet Athan, sweet, sweet Athan,” she moans over his big, muscled shoulder. “I thought I’d seen the last, that day you were taken from our house. I thought—”
And then Athan’s body starts to jerk as his tears spill over her shoulder. Ellena freezes, alarmed. He’s sobbing. Athan is sobbing tears of sadness, not joy. By instinct, her hug turns into something more consoling, the palm of a hand rubbing circles on his broad backside, a finger catching at the red hood on every other go-around.
“There, there,” she murmurs soothingly. “It’s alright, sweetie. It is all going to be alright.”
He doesn’t stop crying. He clings to her even tighter, his fingers curling against the armor at her back as if trying to grab a handful of it. His sobs become vocal, moans and gasps and yelps of anguish.
“It’s okay, Athan.” She has no idea what she’s consoling him for. “It’s okay.” The more times she says it to him, the less she feels it’s true. The longer they hug, the deeper her fears run. “Athan, sweetie. It’s going to be alright. Athan …”
And then he says the words: “I c-c-couldn’t save him.”
Ellena’s hands stop circling his back at once. Her body freezes in place. Her eyes turn to glass.
He’s wearing his jacket.
Her son isn’t here. Anwick isn’t here. Athan is wearing—
“I t-tried …” He sobs more. He sucks in air to try and speak, then ends up sobbing again, unable to make words.
Ellena’s mind is somewhere else now. It’s far away. She stares at a spot on the wall near the entrance to the narrow stair leading up to his room—to Anwick’s room. It’s a spot Forge said he’d fix years ago. It’s still there. It’s all Ellena thinks about and stares at while Athan sobs over her shoulder.
What did he say a moment ago? Couldn’t save him? Couldn’t save who?
You know who.
Ellena doesn’t even let the thought touch her conscious mind. She lets the words swim past her ears, unheard, while she stares at that spot by the narrow stair.
He’s talking about some other friend of his. Athan is crying over a friend of his from the Lifted City he couldn’t save.
Athan and Anwick are boyfriends. Of course he’s wearing his jacket. Isn’t that what lovers do? Wear each other’s clothes?
His face buries into her neck suddenly, the sobbing stopped, and then he speaks over her shoulder, still gripping her tightly. “I am so sorry, Ellena, but I thought I’d never see you or any of the Lessers ever again. I didn’t know this day would come, this day when I’d … when I’d have to tell you. I thought it was only my burden to bear for the rest of my life. It isn’t. It isn’t.”
“Please.” Ellena’s eyes filled up before he even finished his first sentence. Please don’t say anything. Please don’t. I’ll go back to Eleven Wings. I’ll go the rest of my life not knowing. Please. “Athan …”
“I’m so sorry, Ellena.”
Now it’s her fingers that curl, squeezing her son’s jacket. I’m hugging Anwick right now. I’m hugging my son. “Don’t. Please.”
“H-He’s gone.” Athan’s body shudders from another fit of sobs, which he quickly suppresses. “Anwick is gone.”
Ellena still stares at that spot on the wall. She didn’t hear him. She is frozen in place, not even breathing. Her eyes don’t move, even with the tears sitting in them, unspilled.
Even now, her denial still fights. “Gone? To … To where?”
“He’s dead. It was quick. He didn’t suffer.”
Quick. That one, simple word seems to make it all worse, giving her son’s death an adjective. Like a dagger, it cuts deep. Quick. His death was quick. So was his life—quick, short, ended before it began.
Ellena lets go of Athan at once, as if he just became covered in tiny needles, painful to touch, and her weak knees bring her to the kitchen counter where she braces herself, turned away from the others. Her tears still haven’t spilled. The world is lopsided and far away and so fucking blurry, she can’t see her feet.
Aleks’s voice comes next. “H-How …?” His one word is strained as if an evil demon has his arms and legs pulled upon a stretch rack. It’s nearly a different person speaking, the way Aleksand’s voice lifts a whole octave with that one word.
Ellena slaps hands over her ears and shuts her eyes so fast, the tears plunge down her cheeks. She doesn’t want to know how. She doesn’t want to know anything else at all. Inside her, she trembles, growing sicker and sicker by the second. She hasn’t eaten anything since middle night meal last night, and yet could lose the contents of her stomach right now. It may be nothing, but it’ll come out.
The silence and the drumming of her pulse in her ears and the far, far, far away muffled words of Athan Broadmore are the only things she knows.
It was quick.
Anwick is gone.
It was quick.
He didn’t suffer.
It was quick. Quick. Quick. Quick. Quick. Quick.
A shout snaps her back into the world. She releases her ears and spins about to find Aleks stooped against the side of the couch, half fallen, half standing, his helmet on the floor, a hand over his chest as if he’s just been impaled by an invisible spear, another near his lips. “LIONIS, TOO??” he screams over his fingers. “Both of them?? What the fuck are you saying?? Who are you?? BOTH OF THEM??”
Ellena’s eyes drop to that pot on the counter, which for no reason in the world she grabs and clutches to her chest.
Lionis, too …?
To that news, she has no more feeling left in her to express. She can’t even move her eyes anymore, which linger on that now-empty counter. As empty as her home. As empty as her heart.
Ellena Lesser is not really here. No. She’s still at Eleven Wings fighting with a rude man at the front desk about whether or not she can visit her own home. She’s at the bedside of an injured Guardian with a number of other nurses who cling to her arm. She sits in a cafeteria with a few of the nurses sharing a meal in the dead of night.
I’m not here.
“I’m sorry,” says Athan to the room. Aleks has fallen onto the arm of the couch, a hand on his cheek, no more words left in him to shout. Ellena hugs the pot like it is one of the two children she just learned she lost. It was the pot Lionis used the most, too. Maybe it was also his favorite. Gabel, his helmet removed and tucked under an arm, stares across the room at Ellena with pain in his eyes, though she can’t say what’s going on in his mind. She’s not even looking at him completely, too lost in her own mind to know much else.
The house has gone very quiet suddenly. The young man in the backyard has even stopped whatever it was he’s doing to stare at them through the glass doors. Even the air itself doesn’t move.
“I’m so sorry.” It’s Athan’s voice again, crisp and soft and sad. “It was many months ago. Just before the Madness ended and the Lifted City went silent. I watched it happen.”
“The M-M-Mad King?” Aleks speaks through his blubbering, his eyes wet and his mouth curled and dimpled crudely from his shock. “He did this to my brothers? That fucking crazy fucker?”
“I’m sorry. You need time to grieve. I’ve had my time and I’m still …” Athan shakes his head. “I’m sorry. We have all lost people in this senseless war. I’ve been long looking for—”
“We don’t need time,” Aleks cuts him off. He bares his teeth and drops his hands to his side, his hard eyes moving to his mother’s across the room. “This war just became ours. I’m going to—”
“Aleksand,” Ellena pleads through her emotional paralysis.
He shakes his head. “No. I’m going to deal with this now. I don’t need time to mourn. I want that King’s head. He did this?” He looks at Athan hard, asking yet again. “He killed m
y brothers?”
“He and Axel and Metal Hand.”
“Axel?” blurts her son, growling the word like some savage dog. “Who the fuck is this Axel?”
“She’s a Psychist of the worst kind,” Athan answers. “A Psychist who robs you of your own mind. I felt her in mine. She made me hold a knife to my own throat. She made me watch. And she—”
“ENOUGH!”
The one single word burst from Ellena’s mouth like a bird from a cage. All eyes turn to her, alarmed. Aleksand’s questioning ceases. Athan’s words swallow up. And Ellena stands there with that pot in her grip, her sweaty hands trembling, her stomach writhing like a snake, her knees threatening to give at any moment.
“Mom. We can’t just sit here and cry. I can’t. I’ll defy all of my orders and march … Mom, are you listening? … I’ll break right into that fucking city and rip off the heads of every last—”
And then what comes next from Ellena’s mouth is a cry filled with red rage and agony. She lifts the pot up high, then smashes it as hard as humanly possible against the countertop. It dents the counter but not the pot. Her scream still hasn’t stopped. She lifts the pot once again, and again smashes it down onto the counter. This time, both the edge of the counter and the pot break.
The scream ends as quickly as it began. Ellena stares at all of the pieces at her feet, each and every one gets her attention as she eyes them, crazed, breathing heavily and trembling. Then her rage is gone in an instant.
Just like her boys.
Quick, he said.
Quick …
It’s no less than two hours later that Ellena is curled up on the big, tattered mattress in her and Forge’s old room. Even the mattress smells different. Someone else rests on it now, she realizes, wondering who. Someone else rests here, and …
Really, she’d fill her mind with just about anything other than the constant repeat of Lionis’s and Anwick’s last words to her. She isn’t even sure she’s remembering them correctly. ‘See you later,’ her son Anwick said to her before leaving the house so long ago. He had just lost Athan and his father to Guardian, and he was going to do something about it. That was the last she saw of him before it became just her and Lionis. Then I left Lionis at my sister’s, and even he couldn’t stand her long enough to stay.
Did he come to find me? she wonders, feeling a hundredth stab of guilt as the possibilities flood her imagination. How did he end up in the Lifted City? How did Anwick? Why?
Why, why, why, why, why. It’s all that Ellena can seem to ask herself. Why? Why did they die? Was it because the Mad King came back to her house to collect Anwick as part of his Nine, as promised, and didn’t find him here? Was it because when he was found, he did not do himself any favors, acted defiantly, and paid with his life?
And then there’s Lionis. Her Sanctum-respecting son. He even would recite the words sometimes when King Greymyn came on the broadcast, his magnificent grey beard taking up half the screen. The Kingship is kind, the Kingship is good.
Did he still believe them when his life was taken from him?
Did he die thinking the Kingship is still kind and good?
Suddenly, she hears a noise at the front door. Footsteps, and then a pair of strange voices—a young woman’s and a young man’s. “Whose mother and brother?” comes the woman’s, soft and sweet.
“I told you already, didn’t I? Athan’s boyfriend’s mother. And Lionis’s. Their mother and one of their brothers.”
“Oh. That’s so sad. And you had to tell them yourself?”
“No, no. Athan told them. I was next door with the Penlings to talk with Arcana about some idea she had, or some sort of thing she heard. Arrow’s too busy, and of course Athan won’t talk to her at all, for obvious reasons.”
The pair of feet are in the kitchen. A shard of glass scrapes over the floor, and the feet stop. “Oops. Something broke.”
“Must’ve fallen off the counter,” sighs the young woman.
“Careless. Arrow is careless in the kitchen. Really, ever since the folk of the ninth put him in charge, he’s gotten so—”
“Pratty, why do you two hate each other?”
There is a moment of stillness. “I … never said I hated him.”
“You two are always insulting one another. Or …” The young woman sighs softly. “I’m sorry. It’s really not my place. Is there a broom we could use? I don’t want you to cut your fingers.”
“It’s only glass from a pot, nothing more. I don’t hate Arrow.”
There is another moment of silence. Then: “Why won’t Athan talk to Arcana?”
Ellena listens to the noise of the young man picking up glass off the floor and dropping them, piece by piece, into the trash can that sits in a cabinet under the sink. Each piece dropped is a tiny goodbye to countless memories of Lionis and her cooking. Each piece dropped is another meal Lionis taught her from some recipe book he’d read at the library, as well as all of the meals she foolishly burned in that pot trying to replicate his recipes.
“Ivy, you ought to open your ears more.”
“What?”
“If you gave it a moment’s thought, you’d know exactly why he doesn’t talk to Arcana.” There’s another pause. The glass dropping stops. “Arcana is Axel’s twin. They look exactly alike. Axel, who—”
“Oh. Oh, I’m so foolish. Of course.” The young lady takes a long, deep inhale and exhale. “I just don’t think it’s kind of him to … to blame one for the other’s actions. Arcana isn’t evil like her sister.”
“No one is evil, not truly. They’re just on one side of the fence or the other. Evil’s just a matter of which direction you’re looking.”
“I disagree. I think there is truly evil in this world, and I think poor Athan witnessed it firsthand. So did Arrow when he lost his friend in the sixth, the one with the … the eyes. And …” She sighs. “I may have never known the Mad King personally, but a man who can sit in the sky and … and cast bolts of fire carelessly onto all of the people beneath him, taking away innocent lives by the dozen … he must be evil. There is no other explanation. He must be evil.”
The two draw silent after that. Then there is a small shuffling of clothes, a small peck of lips, and then: “You’re right.”
“Pratty, we … we shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t. Not with … with all that’s going on, and the visitors and Athan and—” Glass is kicked and scuttles across the floor before settling elsewhere. “Missed a piece.”
“I didn’t mean to … make an unwanted advance. I’m bad at this sort of thing. I’m sorry. I thought you wanted—”
“No, you misread. I didn’t want a kiss. Not from you or from … from anyone, really. I’ve … I’ve lost my whole family, like Athan. My parents, my sisters, my everything, just like him. That’s why I look to him for comfort. He understands. You and I, we’re not—”
“Ivy … I’ve lost people, too. I’ve—”
“You lost your home. Not your family. There is a difference. I’m the only one left in this world of my blood. I’m sorry, Pratty. I have to go. Athan is a mess now. I understand him, and he …” She sighs. “He understands me more than anyone here.”
There is a sigh from the young man as a pair of footsteps takes the woman back out the front door. After a moment of silence and a few huffs of frustration, Ellena listens to more shards of glass drop into the trash bin, and then his own footsteps carry him out of the door. The house is silent once again, and Ellena closes her eyes, wishing the whole world away.
It’s another handful of hours later when another voice is at the door. “Ellena.”
She lifts her head off the musty mattress. Gabel is still in his full suit of armor, his handsome face eclipsed slightly. The sun has long since fallen and the whole house is dark, save the bit of light that spills in from the streetlamps and moonlight outside.
He gives a nod toward the bed. “May I come in?”
Sh
e turns away from him and puts her head back down. Even Gabel she cannot deal with right now.
He doesn’t leave. Ever gently, he sits on the edge of the mattress farthest from her. His weight only disturbs the bed a touch, but oddly Ellena finds it less bothersome than she expected. Perhaps, despite all that’s gone on between them, some part of her deep down wants the attention right now. She might daresay she even appreciates it.
“I’ve been with Aleks,” he tells her, his voice soft, almost gone. “I learned a bit about your sons, if you wished to know.”
Ellena doesn’t respond. She only listens, breathing gently.
“They were members of a rebel group called Rain, apparently. Their purpose was to inspire a change in Sanctum’s ways. I suppose that’s the most diplomatic way to put it. They aimed to have Atlas run by someone more deserving, someone who might unify the city. Someone like the late Ruena, may the Sisters guide her spirit now.”
Rain …
I’ve always liked the rain.
“Anwick was first a part of their group. Lionis joined later, perhaps at the time he left your sister’s.” Gabel is piecing the story together, from what Ellena can tell. “Your son Aleks seemed to know a thing or two about Rain. Something to do with Halves’ research.”
Halves. He was always the worried, smart one. Like the best parts of Lionis and the worst parts of me. I always worried he’d burn a hole straight through that belly of his someday.
“We don’t have to talk about any of that, of course.” Gabel runs a hand along the mattress, from the sound of it. “We could … You and I could just … pray.”
For a second, Ellena could whip around and slap Gabel for even suggesting that. Pray for what? Pray for mercy from Three Sister, which they clearly felt Lionis and Anwick were undeserving of? Pray for safe passage back to Eleven Wings, where she and her son will have to break the news to Halvesand about his two brothers?
