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Thaos lies dead in Sun-in-Shadow, his soul wiped clean and returned to the Wheel, and Caron goes to Caed Nua.
He throws himself into new (old) work, not because it is a distraction, but because it is a balm to his own soul. He stands in the chapel he built and speaks the same words he has spoken for so much of his life, preaching of The Twinned God and the comfort of cycles, of death and rebirth, of the end of suffering and clean slates. It is not the typical way of Berath's priesthood, but he does not believe rationality must exclude compassion.
He holds the hands of mourners between his own and tells them, gently, warmly, that death is not an end to be feared, but simply what must be. There goest life. There thou goest also. These moments are, frequently, the only time these people gathering in his walls, under his protection, will allow him to touch them.
He doesn't mind. He understands that people look on him and see something horrifying in the great dark growths of his face, the strange texture of his hands, and the hidden nature of his eyes. It has been this way since he left the temple to attend his first flock.
It has been this way longer than that, he knows but does not remember, because his mother gave him to the temple. She couldn't care for a child that she could not stand to hold to her breast, and he has never blamed her. She loved him in her way, he knows, to have brought him to people who could care for him, instead of smothering him in the cradle.
He understands that people see him and something in their stomachs twist, and they feel they are looking on a wrongness in the world. He has always found himself beautiful.
The ridges and valleys of his head growing up to a elegant spire. The way that red-black skin parts over his nose to frame a pale mouth and chin. The whorls of hair around his head, barely tangible, nearly more mist than hair. He cannot look on any of that without seeing Berath's blessings written on flesh. He has tried to find the failed elf that others see, and he never has.
But he holds mourners' hands, and they accept his comfort. The same people will shy away from him later. The herbalist will put his purchases on the counter, to avoid an accidental brush of hands, and Caron will put his coins there too, because he truly cannot blame these people. When he walks through the gardens, people will step off the paths to avoid him, and he knows another lord would think it was respect. Children stare, but they don't always fear, until their parents pull them closer and hush their questions for fear of offending the Roadwarden.
Caron considers himself a priest before a lord. In the chapel and graveyard alike, he tells them of the cycle, of their souls moving ever onward, of the way Berath takes them in hand and guides them on the road.
He spoke of doors, before everything the Dyrwood has given him, but now he cannot help but come back to the road, the stars dizzying over his head, and the Usher's gnarled hand between his eyes. Blindness, and a sensation maybe, he thinks, like death will feel, and then being back in his body in the Council of Stars. The stars now too still under his knees. His hands dyed a strange purple under adra's cool light.
Rebirth is another chance, he thinks. That may be the greatest gift possible: Another chance to fix old mistakes. He does not say so in the chapel, or ever. Those thoughts are for himself. When he lays sleepless in his bed in the safety of Caed Nua, he thinks that he is grateful for so much, but especially, selfishly, that he has been able to ease the weight on his soul.
It is not the only thing he thinks of when he cannot sleep.
Caron remembers the warmth of Aloth's hands between his as they stood on Aedelwan Bridge, Defiance Bay burning behind them. He held Aloth's hands then the way he holds those of mourners now, and Aloth had offered himself in service.
Following the wrong master for so long, and finding Caron.
It lights something in Caron's chest, something bright and incredibly heavy, to remember the warmth of Aloth's hands. To picture the way the fires had lit his face, half in shadow, and so serious and scared of what Caron might say.
Aloth had not flinched or sneered when they met, when he first saw Caron's face. Caron does not know or care if Aloth felt the deep twist of revulsion; he had been kind, whether or not that had been another lie. On the bridge, he had not flinched to have Caron reach out and clasp his hands, holding them like something precious. Caron hopes he is correct to think Aloth took some comfort from that moment.
That it might have made the words come easier to his tongue. That his confession had been easier than it would have otherwise.
It is not an uncomfortable feeling for Caron, this new weight on his soul; it is nothing like the stinking bonds tying him between Thaos and Iovara. Instead, it's a comfort on the days when he touches no one, when he lies alone in the dark pressing his palms together to feel something against them. He closes his eyes and imagines Aloth's hands, imagines he would recognize them by feel among an ocean of mourners.
On the loneliest nights, when his whole body itches for lack of touch, he wonders what it would feel like for Aloth's fingers to run over the rough curve of his cheek, to find and linger in the place where one skin overlaps the other.
He has felt other hands there before. They are rare, but there are men who are not repulsed by him, who even find him as beautiful as he finds himself. Many are among his fellow Berathites, but even outside his god's followers, he has occasionally found an evening's company. He knows what it feels like, but he cannot help but believe that Aloth's hands would be different, that Aloth's fingers would be as recognizable there as they are between his hands.
Caron does not expect Aloth would want him, but thoughts in the sanctity of his own mind, in his own bed, cannot hurt anyone. He blames Aloth no more than he blames the people living in Caed Nua, no more than he blames his own mother.
And even if Aloth could want him, Aloth is far away, and Caron has no way to find him. It was better that way, they agreed, when Caron's task ended and Aloth's began. Safer. Aloth has his duty now, so much larger than the growing cluster of souls within Caed Nua's walls, and Caron believes in the cause as deeply as he believes in The Twinned God, in the Wheel, in the beauty of his god's touch marked plain on his skin.
Caron cannot touch Aloth, but he can remember the heat of Aloth's hands, the shape of his face, and the solemn way Aloth placed his life in Caron's hands.
Another thought that never leaves the solitary safety of his room: He may be more grateful for the weight binding him to Aloth than anything else.
He does not think his soul could love any man more.