In the darkness that follows, Eden sees a lot of things he wishes he could forget.
His father, beating him senseless. His mother, standing by and watching. His two sisters, Beverly and Harper, huddled in a corner, brown eyes wide and mournful. What had he done to make his dad so mad, anyway? Why is it this that he can't seem to recall?
His mum's next. She's screaming for help, but this time it's Eden that watches, shivering. His dad's shouting something unintelligible, fists coming down again and again. His foot lashes out sometimes, catching Eden's mum in the chest, the stomach, and then the head. His mum throws up her hands, shrieking, right before that foot catches her in the mouth, blood and spittle flying into Eden's face.
His hand trembles as he reaches for the knife on their small dining table. Its handle clatters, and he fears that his family will hear it- but over the screams and the cries, no one does. He takes the knife into his grip, chest heaving, palms sweating, creeping up at his father's back.
Everything afterwards comes in flashes. The knife plunges into flesh. Blood stains his hands. His sisters scream. His father lets out a gurgle. Fire blazes high, and then higher, bright in the cold of a Wilshorian winter. Eden walks away, unscathed, his tears freezing on his bloody face.
And then he awakens to an afternoon sky.
"What in the gods happened to you, Eden Tudor?"
What he'd thought to be a vivid afternoon sky is not a sky at all. Instead, that sky is his best friend's eyes, brilliantly cobalt, surging and glowing with power. Val's dark hair is a haphazard mess. His uniform is unbuttoned, epaulets all askew, one dark eyebrow twitching.
"Val." Eden tries sitting up. He flops back down again instead. The surface beneath his back is soft. A bed?
"You're in the infirmary." Val's voice is low and deep, like they're having a private conversation and he doesn't want anyone to overhear. "Your patrol squad is awake. I've been trying to figure out why you were all lying prostrate in the street this morning-"
Someone groans. Eden's aching gaze meets the source of it. It's Buenaventura, nursing a nosebleed, stuffing a cloth up his nostrils.
Val clears his throat, expressionless. "-but no one seems to remember a thing," he finishes. "It's all very... troubling." He looks away for a moment, before his attention finds Eden again. This time, the set of his jaw is almost grave. "Whenever I look at you- at any of you- you're all frayed."
"Frayed?" asks Eden, rasping out the word.
"The strings of your energy," Val explains. "It's normal for people with the Sight, like me. We have to distance ourselves from the weave to see it better." Val frowns, then, eyes downcast. "It's a damaging process, and a near impossible one. None of you should be frayed. It would've taken such skill, Eden. What do you remember?"
Eden breathes in deep, trying to ease his way past his memories. He was... leading a patrol. Yes, that's it. A Tondan boy broke into the Hospicio de Reina Letizia, taking with him a number of vials full of antibiotics. Eden ordered a pursuit, naturally, and he and his squad chased the boy through streets and alleys, close on his heels for some time, before cornering him on a wide avenue near the harbour. Buenaventura tackled him. There was a confrontation, and then-
An explosion of pain rockets through his head. A series of still frames superimpose themselves over his eyes: a girl cloaked in black, hair the colour of dry blood, delicate hands holding tight to nothing but air, and a man emerging from a shadow that Eden knows all too well.
The next thing he knows, Val's handing him a handkerchief. Eden takes it, puzzled, just as blood leaks into his slightly gaping mouth.
"I've been pressing Buenaventura for hours. I didn't want to press you too, Eden, but I don't have any other options. There were no witnesses."
Eden garners the strength to sit up. He presses one palm flat to the mattress and pushes himself upwards, using his pillow as support for his twinging back. The handkerchief goes to his nose. Around him, light streams in through the windows of the Citadel's infirmary, the Sentinels from his patrol group assigned to beds that are lined in rows of ten to a wall. Some are up and walking, but dazed, clinging to window sills where they can. Others are sitting up in bed as Eden is, speaking in hushed tones to each other. Two more are resting silently, spots of blood on their pillows.
Eden turns away. The sight of it all is turning something heavy in his stomach.
"There must have been someone that saw it. There was a boy that we had been chasing. He'd stolen medicine. There was a girl, too. She was..." Another wave of pain hits him, and he grits his teeth against it. His mind doesn't want him to remember. "... bleeding." He stares at his hands. "I think."
Val leans in from where he's sitting, in a chair pulled up to the side of Eden's bed.
"A girl? What did she look like?"
Eden shakes his head. "I don't know. She's blurry. I think her hair might've been red. She had such delicate hands."
"Eden, will you follow me?"
"Er- sure. What's wrong?"
Val gives him a meaningful sort of look and goes to wait by the door. Eden gets dressed as fast as his hands allow him to, putting on his blue-and-silver Sentinel coat, thankful for the presence of his slacks on his legs. He slips into his shoes, which have been placed carefully by the bed, and follows Val from the room.
The hallway beyond isn't lacking in light. Carpeted in deep blue, a window lines the wall every few feet. Oil lamps hang from brackets, unlit in the morning sun. Eden rubs his eyes, gingerly, to clear the sleep from them.
Val folds his gloved hands behind his back, looking just slightly in Eden's direction. "My maestro told me a story, once, about a group of people with a variation of the Sight. They could touch the weave, like it was tangible, which meant that they could do great things." He pauses for a moment. "Or terrible things, which most of them did do."
Eden's shoulder brushes against Val's. "What terrible things?"
"The weave connects to every living thing. All of the people in this city, for example. Nobody is immune to it. Even the land and the water are part of it. Imagine what someone with the power to touch the weave- manipulate the weave- could do to it."
"Chaos," Eden murmurs.
Val's eyes shine. "Exactly. They massacred thousands. They could break the earth apart. Slowly but surely, they dismantled the world until only they ruled alone."
A recruit passes them in the hall, stopping to salute them. Val gives the boy a passing nod. Eden manages a smile.
"So what then?" Eden asks once they're clear of the recruit.
"As powerful as they were," Val continues, "they were still mortal. Eventually, they were picked off until none remained."
"Until now," finishes Eden. "The girl that attacked me..."
"Yes. I'd imagine she's one of them. No one and nothing else would've had the power to fray you. And," he adds, "I've no doubt she was the one who forced Cortez to do her bidding."
"Why would she want the throne?
"My maestro told me that those- people- all craved power. It was like a disease. She doesn't have a legitimate claim to the throne, but she wants it anyway. She probably thinks she's the only one that can do it."
"Do what?"
"Rule."
Eden gulps. The memory of that girl's delicate hands makes even his bones shiver. "What are you going to tell the king?"
Val shakes his head. "Nothing."
They turn a corner, heading down a flight of stairs. The transition from natural to lamplight is jarring. Eden winches when he descends; his legs ache like he's run for miles.
"What? Valentine. Someone just tried to kill him to take the crown, and you won't even speak of it?"
"His Majesty needs a new bride, not new troubles. I can handle this."
"Val, you can't keep hiding things from him. Whenever he finds out, he gets this much closer to demoting you." Eden gestures out an arbitrary measurement between his thumb and forefinger. "People are beginning to think that he lets you keep your position out of pity."
"He lets me keep my position out of guilt."
Eden frowns. "You still believe he killed her."
"Whatever I believe doesn't change anything." Val pauses at the bottom of the steps, raking his dark hair out of his eyes. His voice moves down to that conspiratorial tone again, and he steps forward, boxing Eden in, one gloved hand pressed against the wall behind Eden's head. "My aunt was always suspicious of him, even after mother's death. She knew something, and it terrified her."
"Careful." Eden tugs at his collar, freeing it from his neck. "Someone might hear you."
"No one will hear me."
"He loves you," Eden tells him, "in his own way."
Val's hand slips away from the wall, shuffling backward one step, then two, then three. "It's a lie."
"A lie? I've seen it. How can his smiles be a lie? How can his generosity be a lie? How can any of it be untrue?" The words come out too quickly to hold them in. "He treats you like blood. Like a real nephew." Eden's voice breaks. "Like family."
"Eden-"
"It's just-" Eden slumps. "We're all unfortunate. I get it. This world is cruel, but denying what little it gives you? That's even crueler."
"I don't want to hurt you." Val looks sideways, dark eyelashes partly obscuring his glowing gaze. "You know I don't."
"The people that I love always hurt me. My father. My mother. My sisters." Eden trembles. "You. That's how I know I love you. All of you. Things have to be important for you to ache for them, right?"
"We need to stay on topic, Eden-"
"You were going to ask me to remember, weren't you? You were going to ask me to remember that girl. To remember last night."
Val stares. "I know that I'm asking so much of you."
"No. Nothing is too much for you to ask of me. Not after what you did six years ago." Eden reaches out, putting his hands on Val's shoulders. Val's reaction to his touch is immediate; he tenses up, breathing sharply, even though Eden's hands rest over his clothing. "I would brave a thousand nosebleeds for you."
"Hands," Val chokes out.
Eden withdraws, slithering back into his position against the wall. "I'm sorry."
"No. It's alright." Val's quiet for a time, lips locked together, before he says, "We can do this on our own. We always have."
"We always will," Eden reminds him.
Val inclines his head. "Try and remember, then."
"You can count on me."
"As I always do." Val's voice is hollow. Empty.
They veer away from each other soon enough, pulled apart by all the weight in the world.
Eden wonders if Val's shoulders still feel the pressure of his hands. If they scorched his skin, burning him, just like those same hands once did to the broken remnants of Eden's past.