by Quil Carter
“Yes,” Silas said quietly back. I turned around with the baby and noticed something odd.
He hadn’t looked at me once.
This made me feel… oddly not victorious and vindicated… I wasn’t sure what it made me feel. He seemed to be truly in agony.
… good?
I don’t really know.
I handed Silas Artemis, and since Apollo was asleep, I sat down on the bed beside him and watched Garrett on the TV, only about nine or ten, go on and on about the physics of his rocket ship. It was muted, but I remember the day well. He’d been excited to show the family all of his hard work.
No sooner than I’d sat down however, there was a cry from Apollo. Sound asleep only moments before, the second twin had awoken in discontentment.
While I was picking him up, Silas spoke. “Is he hungry?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, it’s not that.” I sat beside Silas, who had Artemis laying on his drawn up legs, and put Apollo beside him. “They cry when they’re separated. Well, sometimes if it’s a deep sleep they’ll remain sleeping, but once they wake, if the other isn’t near they’ll let you know how mad they are.”
Sure enough, as soon as Apollo was placed next to Artemis he stopped his yowling and quieted down. Silas smiled sadly at this and began tenderly brushing the babies silver hair back. “They have so much hair,” he said, his tone still subdued. There was a lot of sadness in his voice, genuine sadness… which was confusing. Very confusing. “I wonder if they get that from you? I don’t have any photos of when I was a baby. The earliest photo I have was… I believe was when I was ten.”
“Really?” I said. I looked to the television and saw that the video had changed. It was now our sixth birthday party and we were running around a yard full of farm animals and there was a bounce castle in the distance. “You… why didn’t you have earlier ones?”
“If there were ones that existed… they’d be far away in the laboratory in the outskirts of Berlin,” Silas explained. “Most likely destroyed now. I think I remember Perish saying that Berlin had been bombed quite intensively. I forget if I heard it at the time of the war…” He smiled as he looked down at the twins. “I was running around Europe for many years just trying not to get caught… it wasn’t until I was safe in Canada and with someone who… actually cared enough about me to take a photo.” His eyes rose with mine and I saw the television reflecting in them. “Which is why I always took photos and videos of my babies. I’ll be physically twenty-four until the universe ends… which makes those times beforehand so important. You’ll… understand one day, little love. When you’re immortal like me and Perish.”
His eyes became troubled. “I’m going to have the scientists focus on learning how to make you four immortal. There… is a way. Sky found a way, but it’s lost now. So we’ll have to rediscover it. Perish… can make another trip to Germany and he can look…”
I knew I should keep my mouth shut, but after what he’d done to Perish, I couldn’t stop myself from driving in the consequences of that action.
“Perish isn’t stable enough anymore for that trip…”
“He will!” Silas suddenly screamed, making both twins jolt and begin to cry. Silas looked to them and his face dissolved, he began to cry harder than they were.
I was stunned for a moment, unsure of what to do. Then I realized the first thing I needed to do was stop this racket.
I picked up Apollo, but when I reached for Artemis, Silas already had the baby over his shoulder and was shushing him.
Unfortunately though, whereas Apollo immediately quieted down, Artemis cried harder. I knew why… it was because the twins were familiar with me, had been watching me from inside of their steel mother. Silas visited occasionally, but not enough for the boy to feel comforted by him.
Before I could even sort out what to say, Silas took one look at the calmed Apollo and became distraught. “They never want me…” he cried. “All of you… you always wanted someone else, you never wanted me.”
“No, no,” I said to him, even though I knew he was right. “It’s only because he isn’t near his brother.” I shifted myself close to him, hoping that if Artemis at least saw me that he’d become calm.
I put a hand on the baby’s head and said his name. The boy looked at me, his face red and miserable, but it seemed to work. The child stopped his wailing and began to settle down.
Silas, however, wasn’t as easy. He continued crying into the newborn, an expression on his face that radiated internal anguish. I decided to just do what I had to do, and turned to comfort him.
I put my arm over Silas’s shoulder and drew him into me. I held him as he sobbed and rubbed his back in slow circles, also at the same time making sure he didn’t smother the infants.
“I miss you,” Silas whispered.
I shifted around uncomfortably. I didn’t know how to respond to that at all. “I’m… here now.” I busied myself putting the now sleeping twins back into their bassinets. I didn’t want to even look at him. This wasn’t going well at all.
“You’re counting the minutes, Elish. I know you,” he said back, his eyes closed and his head leaned onto my shoulder. “But I love you anyway, and one day… you’ll love me back.”
Not likely…
“I love you… just fine.” How was I even supposed to respond to all of this?
“You’re getting better at lying, love,” Silas said back. The room was thick with misery, thick enough for an aura of it to be seen around Silas. “I see how much my golden boy hates me. I deserve it, I know.” His eyes shut as his face twisted. “I know… what I did to you. I decided… it was my punishment to remember.”
My insides turned to ice, so cold I was surprised vapor wasn’t flowing from my mouth. “What do you mean?” I whispered.
Silas leaned his head back and touched above his nape. I remembered him doing this when I’d called him out for what he’d done… right before he’d taken off for those several days.
“I made Perish perform a surgery on me to make me forget,” Silas said dully. “I woke that morning and when I realized what I’d done to you… it broke me. I couldn’t live with knowing, so I took the easy way out and was the test subject for… a new procedure he has. Digital surgery he calls it… close to the surgery that was done to alter him. It was quite effective until the memory was triggered.”
I stared at him, speechless at this admission. He… really felt guilty for it? Truly? I’d never seen him feel truly guilty over anything.
But then something occurred to me. “Why didn’t you just make me forget?” I whispered. There was so much I wished to not remember… if I put all of the incidences together I’m sure it would equal half of my life.
“Sometimes I wish I had,” he admitted. “I’ve made you hate me, and it kills me… because everything I’ve done to you… it was done out of love.”
What?
My teeth clenched tight. Silas raised his head and looked at me; he could sense the anger now gathering up inside of me like my heart had just become magnetized. “Don’t say that,” I said in a harsh whisper. “I will be here for you… but do not insult my intelligence and my memory, by daring say what you tortured me with was out of love.”
Silas fell quiet. I waited, expecting him to demand that I leave his bedroom, but instead he said quietly back: “Why would I have done it then, Elish?”
“It was done for you,” I said. “It was done because you can’t stand competition. You wanted all of me, but your mistreatment of me has made me hate you. It’s now a vicious circle, Silas. You kill everyone I love because you want my love. But in killing them, you guarantee all I will feel for you–”
“He was a god damn thirty-four-year-old man, Elias!” Silas suddenly exclaimed.
Ryan? You think… this is about Ryan?
You fucking idiot.
“Don’t pretend he doesn’t exist!” I yelled, pushing him off of my shoulder. “His name was Cristo Massey and he was my bes
t friend, my father figure. He was my protector and he loved me. You fucking took him from me and I will never forgive you for it.”
“He almost got you killed!” Silas bellowed back. He jumped to his feet and so did I, and we faced each other. “He got Dylan killed and you two were close to death. Cristo would’ve done it again and once you were old enough… he would’ve tried to take you for himself.”
The mere thought infuriated me, and I was all at once filled with a white hot rage. “You delusional bastard!” I roared. I wanted to put my hands on him. I wanted to crush his god damn skull between my palms. “He was protecting me from you! And after he died I had no one to protect me from you. You’re a monster! You were born a god damn monster and you’ll always be a fucking monster! Your selfishness killed the entire fucking world and your selfishness is keeping it dead. The only people who love you are forced to through fear and brainwashing. No one loves you as Silas and no one fucking will!”
As my last words rang on the air like church bells, Silas’s face fell. He stared at me like I’d just hit him.
But before I could let the churning rage unleash a second assault… Silas burst into tears and fell to his knees. He began to sob into his hands, his shoulders shaking from grief.
I stared at him, rage still replacing my blood with boiling water. But as he sobbed, grief-riddled, anguished sobs, that rage fizzled and died.
This… hadn’t gone the way I was expecting. I’d managed to make him worse.
I had to salvage this or I’ll have failed my goal of helping him recover. This wasn’t about my pride; this was about Skyfall.
Oh, did this burn. This fucking burned me inside.
But this wasn’t about me. And I had to prove to myself that I controlled me, not my emotions. I had to prove to myself I could look past this. And there was no other test subject better than King Silas.
It can be a game… just like I’d deduced as a child. And if I remained calm, I’d win.
I walked to Silas, knelt down and put my arms around him. I wasn’t going to apologize; my tongue was too glued to my mouth to even humour that idea. I’d physically be unable to do it. But I could hold him as he cried; he’d said previously that he liked it.
Silas continued to cry for several more minutes, until his weeping had turned into whimpers and sniffs. He didn’t move however, he remained in my embrace, the revving engine that was his heartbeat gradually but consistently resuming its normal rhythm.
“Elish?” he whispered to me after another pause of silence.
“Yes?”
“Will you forgive me one day?”
Even in my arms he corners me. Why does he have to do this to me? He can’t just appreciate the effort I was putting into even being here… the Mad King always wants more.
“I… can’t answer that,” I said to him honestly. Even the notion of losing this game couldn’t make my tongue tell such lies. There was no way I could ever forgive him because he’d never admit the true reasons for what he’d done.
Silas’s body moved and I released him. He wiped his eyes and shifted onto his knees, the reflection of the television making the tears on his face shine.
Then his head rose, and he looked at me with an expression of hopelessness and loss.
But there was something else in that expression… he was staring at me as if I was a stranger to him. There was little recognition in that gaze, no familiarity.
“I’ll have all of eternity to make you love me, my little love,” he whispered, and a hand rose to touch my cheek. “Unfortunately for you though… I am not a patient man.”
Silas then leaned into me and gently kissed my lips. “You may go, love. And thank you… I believe I know what it is I must do.”
I looked at him suspiciously, but the prospect of being allowed to leave this room had me rising to my feet. Still though, as I exited that room, the bassinet being dragged on wheels behind me, I had an uneasy feeling that entering that room had been a mistake.
The next several days I was busy, and I was thankful for it. There was a lot of work to do and with Silas still in his room, it was up to me to get it all done. I had to attend council meetings to hear about the progress with the greywaster immigrants, have other meetings with those who had appointments to see the king, and on top of that, Silas had insisted that his request to accelerate research on how to make us immortal get underway. I was thankful to have Garrett and Perish spearhead this, but I was being briefed every day on the progress of it.
I was also making the arrangements to have the sengils come and live with us. The headmaster had been surprised at my request to have them delivered, but because I was king there was no telling me no. He did however request four days to get the boys ready for their departure, and on that fourth day my brothers and I would be heading to Autumnhome to bring back our new sengils.
And that was today.
This day couldn’t have come soon enough, on top of having stacks upon stacks of proposals, budgets, requests to sort through and approve or deny, I was doing most of this in a room with a baby that shrieked every time he was happy, and two newborns that had unfortunately become used to being held and demanded it often. This was not my job, this was sengil work, but with all four of us busy running Skyfall we were forced to take turns. I’d even gotten desperate yesterday and had sent Ceph with Nero to Cardinalhall for the evening. Thankfully Silas didn’t leave his room and hadn’t noticed. I was sure my head would get bitten off if he’d known the child was spending the night at a military base in the greywastes. It would be a relief to finally have four other pairs of hands who could take on the burden of keeping three baby chimeras from dying.
Garrett and Nero were both bouncing around in their seats and grinning from ear to ear. They both couldn’t shut up about their new sengils and were bragging to each other and attempting to reel me into their yammering. Not to mention we were picking up our sengils in a stretch limousine and they’d already found, and broken into, a bottle of Champagne.
“Tyler isn’t just adorable,” Garrett said with a glint of love in his eye. “He’s intelligent as well. He also loves fashion and is so clean. Such a gentle nature too, just perfect for me. Yours is going to need a few backhands to keep him in line.”
“Backhands? More like a good fucking,” Nero said grinning. “I’m going to be ripping that ass apart tonight. So ya’ll might as well get earplugs.”
I stared blankly out the window as Skyfall sped past, wondering if it would be worth it to just open the car door and take my chances with inertia.
“I still think it’s not fair that Ellis doesn’t get one,” Garrett said. He tipped his Champagne glass back and forth in discontentment. “Why do the sengils who turn out to be straight have to go to the kitchens or maintenance? Ellis could’ve had one.”
“Because Daddy would kill any guy who goes near her?” Nero snorted. “You know how protective he is of her. We get to have sex at fifteen… Ellis will get to when she’s fifty.”
Ugh. This subject needed to change. “Nero… how is the work on the third level going?” I asked while handing him an empty glass. If I forced him to multitask it usually overloaded his brain, thus losing his train of thought. “I’ve been hearing construction when I have the windows open during the day.”
Nero swore as he spilled some of the Champagne onto the floor below. See? “It’s going pretty good. I’m a military boy but I’ve been helping out since I get to use power tools.” He leaned over and waved a bandaged finger right in my face. I batted him away and he pulled it back. “Hey, I had an idea though. I know you’re just King Stand-in but you’re good at getting Silas to listen to you…”
Was he breathing in too many toxic fumes?
“I was thinking… since there’s four bedrooms on each floor and three floors… and since we have sengils now, babies, and more babies coming, and we’re fifteen and all…”
“Just ask, Nero,” I said as the limo turned down the long winding road towar
ds the Victorian-style mansion, I could see the peaked roofs over the rolling green hills. I missed living on the ground sometimes; I missed trees, the smell of fresh grass…
“You’ll like this… I was thinking instead of shoving the sengils down there… Garrett and I could have the third floor with Keela and Tyler. You could have the second for you and Finny, all to yourselves.”
I did like this idea… a floor to myself was… oddly considerate of Nero.
Which made me give him a suspicious look. “Why do I get a floor to myself?”
Nero shrugged and took a swig right from the green glass bottle. He smacked his lips together was he was done. “Because you’re the only one that wants one? I don’t mind living with Gare Gare. He gives good head.”
“For fuck sakes, shut up!” I snapped. Nero and Garrett roared with laughter; however, they weren’t roaring with laughter when I grabbed both of their arms and used my altered touch to electrocute them, I cracked a smile though.
The black car slowed down and the three of us turned to look at the window that faced the mansion’s stone stairs. On top of those stairs was Headmaster Harris and the four sengils standing side by side beside him. All four of them had terrified looks on their faces, Finn especially.
“Best behaviour,” I said to them sternly. “We have a short window of time before they realize this family is violent, unstable, and insane. Let’s enjoy it.”
“Agreed,” my two brothers said back, and we all stepped out of the car. I was first, then Garrett, then Nero.
Harris walked down the steps to greet us, a pleased look on his face. “It’s been a long journey, certainly a long journey. But I believe you’ll find no better sengils.”
I inclined my head and looked up the stairs where the four were standing. “I’ve heard nothing but good things, Headmaster. You’ll have a job here for as long as you like, and a good retirement when you take it.”
“Thank you, Prince Elish,” Harris said. He looked like a proud father in that moment, and like any proud father, I saw a flicker of sadness in him. He was sad to see the four boys go. “Can I request to visit them? I’ve had them since they were little… I will miss them.”