Chapter 61: Damn It
Caelian was asleep.
Of course he was.
Elian stood in the bedroom doorway and looked at him. Sleeping peacefully. No idea what had just happened in the small sitting room. No idea that something seven feet tall had said peekaboo at his husband and two other practitioners and then disappeared into the dark.
Elian had seen a lot of things tonight.
He was done being patient.
He locked the bedroom door.
"Caelian."
Nothing.
"Caelian."
Caelian opened his eyes. Looked at Elian. Read his face.
Started to sit up.
Elian grabbed both his wrists.
Caelian went still. "What are you—"
"Don’t." Elian was already reaching for the sash from the curtain he’d pulled loose on the way in. "I need you to not go anywhere."
"Elian—"
"Please don’t fight me on this."
A pause.
Caelian looked at him. Really looked. At whatever was on Elian’s face right now that he had no control over.
He stopped fighting.
Elian tied his wrists to the headboard. Not painfully. Just enough.
Then he sat on Caelian’s stomach.
Caelian stared up at him. "This is—"
"I know," Elian said. "I don’t care. Nobody is coming in. I locked the door." He looked down at him. "I need you to tell me everything. Every single thing about your life. Your childhood. Your father. Your mother. What happened. Why someone decided you needed to die before you’d done anything wrong." He paused. "All of it. Now."
"Elian—"
"I don’t care if you don’t remember. I don’t care if you wanted to keep it secret and die with it." His voice cracked slightly. He didn’t fix it. "You cannot die anymore. You married me. I am married to you. And I am not going to become a widow." He looked at him. "And damn it — I like you. Okay? I don’t want you to get killed. I don’t want to watch you suffer. Just tell me what happened."
Silence.
Caelian stared up at him.
"You like me," he said.
Elian looked away.
"You just said you like me," Caelian said.
"I said what I said."
"Elian."
"Don’t."
"Do you actually like me that much?"
Elian looked back down at him.
"Yes," he said. "Damn it. Yes. Now can you please—"
"Yes," Caelian said.
Elian stopped. "Yes what?"
"Yes I’ll tell you." He held Elian’s gaze. "Not because you tied me to the bed. Because you just said that."
Elian’s face was doing something. He had no idea what. His face had been doing things all night without his permission.
"Okay," Elian said. "Then tell me."
Caelian took a breath.
"My father," he started, "was not a good man. He did what he thought was necessary. But the way he did it—"
And then the snake moved.
Not slowly. Not the gradual tightening Elian had seen before. It activated — that was the only word for it — like something had flipped a switch. The snake at Caelian’s neck went from loose to crushing in seconds.
Caelian made a sound.
His eyes went back.
"No," Elian said. "No, no, no—"
He was already moving. Off Caelian, hands on his chest, pulling his mala from his own neck and pressing it against Caelian’s throat where the snake coiled. Chanting. Fast. Everything he had compressed into the words, pushing against the working, demanding it release—
Caelian convulsed once.
Then went still.
The snake loosened.
Elian kept chanting until he was sure.
Then he sat back and pressed his hands against his own knees and breathed.
Caelian was unconscious. Breathing. The snake at his neck had returned to its usual position — loose, patient, waiting.
It activated the moment he was about to talk, Elian thought.
The moment he was about to tell me.
Someone doesn’t want him to say it.
He looked at the tied wrists. Undid the sash. Set Caelian’s hands gently beside him.
Stood up.
He looked at the sleeping face. At the snake. At the bracelet on the wrist with its three remaining whole beads.
Someone built a trigger into the curse, he thought. If he tries to tell anyone about the father — if he tries to talk about what happened — the snake activates. It’s been keeping him silent all this time.
That’s why he won’t talk. Not just stubbornness. Not just protecting his father’s legacy.
He literally cannot talk about it without it trying to kill him.
He stood very still.
And then another thought arrived. Quietly. Like it had been waiting.
His mother.
He looked at Caelian.
Everyone says she died in childbirth. That’s the story. That’s what’s in every record.
But the father wiped out a dark practitioners network. And the curse was placed on Caelian when he was ten. And someone built a silencing trigger into it.
These things are connected. They have to be connected.
And the one person I haven’t thought about — the one piece I’ve been ignoring—
He pressed his hand over his mouth.
Where is your mother, he thought. How did I forget about her. Is she the missing piece?
He looked at the locked door.
At Caelian sleeping.
At the snake pulsing slowly at his neck.
I need to find out what happened to her, he thought. Not the official story. The real one.
That’s where this started.
He sat in the chair by the window until the sky went grey.
Caelian slept. Deeply. The unconsciousness from the snake activation was different from normal sleep — heavier, more total. He wouldn’t wake for hours.
Elian sat and thought.
The mother.
Every record said she died in childbirth. Caelian’s birth. Clean and simple and documented.
But.
The father had wiped out a dark practitioners network the same year Caelian turned ten. And someone from that network — or connected to it — had placed a death curse on the child.
A curse with a silencing trigger built in.
You don’t build a silencing trigger into a death curse, Elian thought, unless you’re worried the target knows something specific. Something they might say.
What does Caelian know that someone needs him to keep quiet about.
He thought about Rowan going silent. You want our father’s deeds to come out?
Both brothers. Both protecting something.
What if it’s not just the father’s deeds, Elian thought slowly. What if it’s the mother.
He thought about what it would mean.
If the mother hadn’t died in childbirth. If she was connected to the network. If the father hadn’t dismantled the network out of duty but out of something personal — something that involved her—
The person who targeted a ten year old child, Elian thought. They knew. They knew about the mother. And they built the curse to make sure Caelian could never say it out loud.
He looked at Caelian sleeping.
What did your mother do, he thought. Or what did your father do to her.
He stood up.
He needed the genealogy records. All of them. Going back further than he’d looked before.
He needed to find out who the mother actually was.
Not the official story.
The real one.
He went to find Sable.
The mother, he thought, standing in the bedroom with the grey light coming through the curtains.
He’d been so focused on the father. On the network. On the practitioner tradition that connected everything.
But the mother was the missing piece.
She was from the west, he thought. Different traditions. Different faith. She brought something with her when she came here — her beliefs, her practices, her god.
And whoever targeted Caelian knew about the palace. Knew what was in it. Knew enough to place the curse when Caelian was ten.
What if the mother is the connection, he thought. Not because she was evil. But because of who she was. Where she came from. What she represented.
He looked at Caelian sleeping.
What if someone hated your father for what he did to your mother’s people, he thought. What if the network he destroyed wasn’t just practitioners — what if it was connected to the western territories. To her tradition.
He pressed his hand over his mouth.
And what if the person who’s been doing this for twenty years is from that tradition, he thought. Is from her world. And decided that the son of the man who destroyed their network should pay for it.
It was a theory.
He didn’t have evidence.
But it felt like the center of something.
He went to find Sable.
He had a new direction.
Finally.
He went to the east garden before finding Sable.
Stood outside the old wall section.
Looked at the ground.
The body is here, he thought. Somewhere in this ground. The egg confirmed it. The sending said this place.
He crouched down.
Pressed his hand flat against the earth.
Felt it — faint, deep, old. The specific resonance of something that had been placed with intent and left to do its work.
I’m going to find you, he thought. And I’m going to burn what’s left and end this.
He stood up.
Went to find Sable.
They had a new direction now.
The mother. The shrine. The western connection.
Everything is connecting, he thought. Finally.