by Rae Brooks
“The war,” Taeru choked. “I have to stop it. I should go there—to the place… to tell the Magister that it won’t happen. I… no…” Taeru was arguing with himself, it seemed. “No, give me the horse. I need to go meet my brother. He can’t get to the gates.” Taeru trembled in agony of which he seemed mentally unaware.
Without bothering to respond, Calis pulled Taeru off of the ground and into his arms. Taeru blinked at the sudden movement, and only when Calis moved him back towards the bed did he begin to struggle. “No,” Calis said simply. “Taeru, you are in no state to ride a horse, let alone convince an army to turn around.”
“Calis!” Taeru begged. He struggled endlessly, fighting against Calis and causing the Telandan prince to struggle for balance. Katt, Alyx, and Lee had followed him into the room, and they appeared to be almost amused at the spectacle. “I have to, I have to stop them. They can’t get this close! Let me go!” Calis couldn’t be amused when there was so much pain and desperation haunting Taeru Lassau’s voice.
Releasing Taeru back onto the bed, Calis sat down next to him. “Taeru, stop,” he said calmly. When Taeru continued to fight, trying desperately to explain the situation as tears pricked at his soft eyes, Calis watched him tenderly. “I said stop,” Calis repeated. When Taeru continued, Calis reached forward, grabbing Taeru’s face once more. “Stop! Taeru! Look! Look at this!” Releasing his face, he grabbed Taeru’s arms and turned them so that the marred flesh was apparent.
Taeru blinked down at it. His eyebrows furrowed, and he glanced up into Calis’s eyes with a lack of understanding. “It’s from the Prisoner’s Bane. The insects and the root’s venom. It’s not going to go away for a while yet. It doesn’t really hurt…” That was a lie, but more importantly, the way Taeru objectively described what had happened to him infuriated Calis.
A piece inside Calis snapped, and he let out a strangled sound. “Listen to yourself! Look at your arms! Look what happened to you! Don’t say it doesn’t hurt, you thoughtless fool of a liar! I know it does! You ought to be slapped. If I wasn’t so terribly worried for you, I would slap you. You were tortured, you fool! And yet, you list off what happened as though it were a theatric performance to be observed impartially, an experiment that ought not be taken so seriously—you were nearly hanged!” The words cracked, and Calis growled while his head lowered.
Taeru’s blue eyes were wide, and the understanding seemed to be seeping gently into them as Calis spoke. “I can’t do this anymore, Taeru! I can’t listen to you pretend that you aren’t a person! Oh, don’t you see? Don’t you get how much people care about you? How much you deserve to be cared for? No… no, you don’t. You can’t. Oh, Taeru… my Taeru… my poor, little Taeru Lassau… you can’t see it, can you? The curse of someone who can do nothing but give.” Calis touched his lover’s forehead with his own, as he stroked his cheek softly. “Please, let me love you. Let me show you,” Calis whimpered. He brought the boy to his chest.
The shock in Taeru’s voice was palpable. “C-Calis…”
“Taeru,” Calis started. “You mean so much to me. You’re everything to me, everything,” he reiterated. “Look at your arms, your back, your face, you… and you took it all thinking solely of the things you had done wrong. You’re hurt. You’re in so much pain, and you won’t acknowledge it. Do you know what would happen, if you did ride out there—and I don’t doubt that you would do it, that you could… no matter where you met them? Someone in that army, be it your brother, your father, or some man that you used to know, would see you, and your words would be irrelevant. Because they would know that someone, some monster in Telandus, had done this to you… and they would come faster. So, please… stop this. I will uphold your promise to any Magister. I will ensure that you don’t fail because I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to you.”
“B-but… I’m afraid that Tareth might… send someone to meet them. I’m scared…” Taeru closed his eyes.
Lee sighed from somewhere near the back of the room. “I highly doubt that Tareth will cause issue…”
“Oh, I’m doing it again. I’m sorry, Calis. It just feels… it feels like my pain is insignificant comparatively.”
“It’s not—you care for me, don’t you? Imagine for a moment, that what had happened to you—happened to me.” The horrified expression eclipsed Taeru’s features, and he blanched, as though he’d been saddled with the worst of fates.
Taeru shook his head. “No. No!”
“That is how I feel. What happened to you matters more than any other fate in this world. It’s killing me…”
“Oh…” Taeru’s eyes dawned with recognition, and he threw his arms around Calis. When Calis bent his head to kiss Taeru, the boy looked hopeful. The kiss was chaste, though, and the disappointment in Taeru’s face made Calis laugh. “That was not a real kiss,” he whined.
Calis laughed another time, and he very gently kissed Taeru on the side of the mouth. “I will make up for this once your mouth has recovered.” The idea of Taeru whining was so novel that Calis grinned like a fool at hearing it.
A breath escaped Taeru’s lips, and he seemed to understand Calis’s reasoning. He stared blankly at the window, and he flinched at some internal memory. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I think I’m still trying to get the taste of your brother out of my mouth.”
Everything seemed to stop, color drained from Calis’s entire body, and he stared blankly at Taeru. Taeru was looking away from him, looking just the same as he had a moment ago. The world seemed to be unmoving for Calis, though. “What?” he choked.
“Not that your kissing isn’t… infinitely better… just… that was rather traumatic…” His words were just short of pained, as though they were accepting a fate about which he could do nothing. Calis’s jaw clenched. Tareth… kissing Taeru?
Calis repeated his question, and this time, the malice echoed off the walls and brought a frightening silence to the cottage. “What?”
Then, Taeru seemed to understand, and his cheeks turned a shade of red. “Ah, you didn’t know… oh—but I thought… before, when you were acting so possessive—I just thought… I’m so sorry. I thought… I… oh, please, please, don’t look like that. Calis, you look frightening.”
There was nothing to be done about that, Calis wanted to tell him. But he was sure that if he spoke he would scream. Taeru needed to explain this to him, now. “…my brother kissed you?” Possessive, indeed. Calis could feel more anger now than he had felt in the grand hall, and it swelled through his system, shaking him to the core. “What?” he repeated a third time, like a growl.
Taeru shrank away warily. “Y-yes,” Taeru whimpered. Calis’s eyes were torn at once to the fading mark on Taeru’s neck. It was a bite mark. Bite mark. Why hadn’t Calis noticed it before? Was he trying not to? His entire body shook.
Taeru moved forward and took Calis’s face in his hands lightly. “It’s okay.”
A hollow, black laugh escaped Calis at those words. “No,” he hissed. “What did he do to you?” Calis asked, and though he didn’t force Taeru’s hands away, his anger didn’t recede.
Lee was the one who answered, as Taeru seemed too horrified to manage an intelligible response. Obviously, he hadn’t expected such a violent reaction. Well, he ought to. “Tareth had cells of men and women that he raped… he was apparently…”
Calis’s entire body convulsed, and a horrified sound escaped him—strangled. He felt strangled. No… no… not this. Not. This. “No,” Calis whispered.
“No!” Taeru shouted. “He didn’t, Calis. He didn’t. He tried to. He kissed me, he… but he couldn’t. He couldn’t because of you. I used your amulet. You protected me.” Funny that Taeru should know to use those words as a weapon now. “He didn’t rape me, Calis. He hurt me, but he didn’t rape me.”
“He tried, though,” Calis said simply, “he touched you, he kissed you—he forced himself on you.” His voice quaked with fury.
“It’s okay,” Taeru whimp
ered again. “It never happened, and even if it had, I still love you, I still love you. It was… I’m still yours, and I’m always going to be yours. I mean, as long as you still want me to be.”
“No!” Calis snapped. “No—no, what? I don’t care about that. Well, I mean… I do, but... I mean, of course you still love me, of course you didn’t enjoy it. Of course I still love you and want you. You’re perfect. That’s not… it has nothing to do with me. He-he put his hands on you. He violated you. He touched you against your will…” Calis shook his head, and the words were bringing a rage that he’d never felt into his body.
He tried not to see it in his mind. He could see Tareth’s too-big hands touching Taeru, though, even as Taeru begged him to stop. “Calis… I don’t…”
“What don’t you get?” Calis choked. “Tareth violated you. He touched you without your… he made you… he hurt you. It’s not okay. It’s never going to be okay, and it’s not about whether or not I’m the only one that ever gets to touch you. It’s about your free will being taken away from you. You. How dare he?” His voice broke over the last syllables. “I love you, more than anything, but that’s not—that has nothing to do with why… why I’m going to tear him to pieces.”
Taeru touched Calis lightly, and his eyes shone with disbelief as they regarded the Telandan prince with childlike wonder. “Admittedly, you are possessive.”
Calis scoffed. He could tell that this was a ploy to force him to release his anger, but he would not—could not. “I may be possessive, but that has nothing to do with how horrible my brother is. I’m possessive and overprotective because I need you—because I love you more than anything. I want you to be happy, with or without me, more than anything, I want you to have everything you ever wanted, and that’s why… this—this is… this is too far.”
“With you,” Taeru said softly.
“Then, I’ll be here forever and beyond that. But that doesn’t change… that doesn’t change what he did, and… no. Nobody touches you against your will and lives—nobody—not while I draw breath.”
“Calis…”
Calis stood, and Taeru held onto his wrist like a small child. “Let go, Taeru. I am going to kill him. I am going to tear him limb from limb. I’ll show Tareth how possessive I can be,” Calis informed him acerbically.
“Calis, don’t leave me…”
The words were like a blanket, suffocating everything but the need to protect, and Calis could feel his anger pulsing as it was forced to give way to his concern. “I…”
“You needn’t bother, Calis,” Lee said. “You can’t hurt Tareth now…”
“Why?” Calis asked.
“He’s already dead.”
“What?” Calis asked again. How could Tareth already be dead? Had Calis failed to realize that he’d killed him in the grand hall? No, surely he would have savored that kill. “How?” Calis asked again.
“I… laced the tiny pricks of the necklace with a slow-killing poison. I had an antidote… but after what happened to Taeru… I couldn’t bring myself to bother.” His words were dry, as though they didn’t matter.
Yet, Calis had never held so much respect for Lee as he did in that moment. Still, he had wanted to make Tareth suffer. “Did it hurt?”
“Very much,” Lee answered pragmatically. Calis thought there was a glint of amusement, or perhaps pride, in his advisor’s face.
“Good…”
Taeru just stared at Calis, looking dazed, before Calis risked a deeper kiss.
“The Hero knew what would become of his descendants, and so he enlisted a final favor in the writing of his story.”
-A Hero’s Peace v.i
Chapter lix
Aela Lassau
Too much time had passed, and Aela knew it. Nearly three cycles had passed since she had last seen her brother. Oddly enough, she wasn’t concerned. There had been something in the way that Calis had handled her brother that assured her Taeru would be safe. She’d been forced to focus on her own safety, which was no easy task.
After Lavus had been killed by his own son, chaos had reigned over all of Telandus. People of Dark District even seemed at a loss. Somehow, the rebellion had fizzled out, unable to form under the immense shock of what Calis Tsrali had done. What Calis Tsrali had done for Taeru Lassau. The people of Telandus were confused, lost—and the power had fallen to Tareth Tsrali.
A boy that had apparently been blinded in an incident with Aela’s own brother. Her curiosity on that particular point nearly destroyed her many times. Nevertheless, even as he sent out men to find and kill his brother, Tareth had fallen ill. It was an illness that no one could explain but seemed related to his newly acquired blindness. Suns progressed, and Tareth only seemed to worsen. No healer could determine a cure, and Aela thought bitterly that they had hung the only one who would be able.
Now, Tareth was dead. That meant that Claudia, the very woman that Lavus had sentenced to death, was running the kingdom. She seemed unsure, especially with the loss of Tareth. Her husband had been murdered by her eldest son, and her youngest son had fallen ill and died. Calis was entirely absent, and she was left to manage a kingdom torn by social unrest. A kingdom that was on the brink of war.
Cathalar was coming, and Aela knew that. She also knew that she would play some part in the events that unfolded. Her book had even told her as much. Just as her book said that Taeru continued to live. The book had even given pause to acknowledge the feelings between Taeru and Calis. More than anything, what she knew was that this was not over. She had not left the city, largely because leaving didn’t seem to be the appropriate measure.
There was a chance that Calis and the others wouldn’t return by the time the Cathalar army arrived. If that was the case, then she would finish her brother’s mission for him. Enduring that sort of torture merited a pass from his duties, doubtlessly. Though, she was certain that her brother would return to try and stop the war.
That bothered her, though, as though he wasn’t really supposed to continue his efforts. He ought to be finished, or so the book seemed to imply. It spoke of the love and faith that her brother had inspired in so many people. And, after all, the deal made with the Magisters from the first version of the book had been about faith—not violence. The hero from the first book himself had stated that war was an inevitability.
War would happen, and no one would be able to stop it. It was a part of life, that kingdoms should vie for power—but the problem had come when the kingdoms hated each other so that they were without faith or love. They wanted only the destruction of the other city, and some, even of their own city. That wasn’t the case throughout Telandus. In fact, throughout Dark District, things seemed to be precisely the opposite.
Claudia Tsrali had even stepped forward to stop the violence being inflicted on Taeru. There was no lack of faith in an action such as that. Perhaps Taeru had already accomplished his goal, but then why did the book persist? Why did Taeru continue to suffer? And Aela knew within her heart that Taeru did not feel satisfied in what he had done. He would never understand what he had done for the world, and the book had acknowledged that point as well. That was the very flaw upon which Aleia would draw.
And the only person who could save Taeru from this flaw was Calis. Or so Aela had gathered. The book never spoke things like this straight out, but she had learned to understand the language. She knew that there was something terrible on the horizon, and something that couldn’t be avoided. The war would be only the beginning. “It makes no sense,” she finally cried, flinging the book into the nearby wall. “Why isn’t it finished?”
Leif sat on the other side of the cellar, amidst a circle of burning lanterns. They had collected them during the sunlight and found the necessary materials to light them. They had also been stealing food, and Leif had been having far too much fun in that expenditure. “What do you mean?” he asked. Leif had been supportive, though his ability to read was near Taeru’s—and that was not well.
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��I mean,” Aela snapped, “that the book ought to be finished. Taeru has done what he was supposed to do. I mean, after all… just because there is a war doesn’t mean that people don’t have faith. Even I can see that there is faith here, surely the Magisters can!” Her words were exasperated, after suns of reading.
The book was only written to a certain point, still writing itself. It had told her of the near-death experience that Taeru had after it had happened, and that was where it seemed to stall. It spoke of a great love, which Aela assumed could mostly be contributed to Calis—or perhaps the love that Taeru seemed to feel for everything, or both of those. She wasn’t sure, but she knew that there was more to come, and that love may well be the key to all of it. “Well,” Leif tried, “perhaps because a war in Telandus now would be so fruitless. Perhaps we need to make sure that Cathalar doesn’t destroy it entirely.”
“Maybe,” Aela said. Though, in her observation of the tone of the book, she had picked up on no such stipulation. After all, the Magisters had been willing to wipe out two civilizations. They were more interested in the mentality than in the loss of life. However, anything was possible—perhaps the book only told her what she ought to know. “I just hope we can stop this army.”
“How could we not?” Leif asked dryly. “These are people that we know, and if we tell them that there is no reason to come forward… they will not. We can simply have them negotiate. Nobles love to negotiate,” Leif informed her.
Her eyes flickered to him, and she tried to fight the smile that eased onto her face. She had enjoyed these suns spent only with him. Though, she ought to have been more anxious than happy. “That they do,” she agreed. Yet, the two of them had not touched each other in these cycles.