Chapter Text
The moment Coen and Brencis disappeared, the Tatar man - Crake himself, apparently - rushed forward towards Pieter and his family. “Let’s get you untied,” he said gruffly. He was bleeding from half a dozen minor wounds. His hands were steady even slicked with blood.
Pieter wanted to thank him. His jaw worked. The words wouldn’t come. None would. He couldn’t even meet Crake’s eyes. He forced himself to nod and prayed that this bout of muteness would pass quickly. He could feel Yanna’s eyes on him, always so quick to notice his weakness. Pieter moved to her side as soon as the ropes fell away from his arms.
“Where did Coen go?” Yanna asked, clear and loud enough for Crake to hear, because Pieter couldn’t. How he and Esme, with all their frailties, had children with the strength of Coen and Yanna, he could but thank God in His kindness and mercy.
“Fucked if I know,” Crake said bluntly, now working on Mirto’s bonds. “But either Brencis is coming back or he isn’t. If he is, you need to run. If he isn’t, Catalin’s men control the castle. They’ll see you somewhere safe for the night. Back to Laslea, maybe, in a few days.”
“And Coen?” Yanna asked, once more voicing Pieter’s fears. Her own too. Pieter had told them - not just about the night Laslea burned, but the night he’d been dragged off to that parley - and the hope was cruel. Coen, alive, human. He’d got the better of a fight with Brencis only to vanish again right before their eyes.
“I believe in him,” Crake said. “But we both believe in better safe than sorry. Come on, move. That way. Take your brother.” He hesitated. “If you see a knife on the ground, better pick it up. Some of Knyaz Catalin’s men…”
Yanna’s eyes met Pieter’s. Pieter nodded. Some of Knyaz Catalin’s men were men like Pieter.
Crake was already speaking again as Yanna hurried forward to take Mirto’s arm and Pieter worked on Esme’s bonds. “You need to get out of Svartrau soon no matter what happens. Use my name if you have to, but don’t mention Coen unless you absolutely trust who you’re speaking to. I’ll send the other people of Laslea after you when I find them.”
The ropes around Esme came free. Pieter’s wife slumped into his arms. Light. Boneless. With familiar motions, he hauled her arm around his shoulders and hooked his own arm under her own shoulder, intertwined.
“What about Lunka?” Mirto asked.
Crake hesitated. “You know where they took her?”
None of them did. God, none of them did. “A guard took her. One of the captains,” Yanna said, “Just last night.”
“We’ll look for her then,” Crake said. “But you have to get out of here. Now.”
Pieter worked his jaw again, tried to get some spit back in his mouth. This time he managed it. “Thank you,” he said.
“Go!”
It was slow. It always was, with Esme. It had been twenty-nine nights now since Laslea burned. Twenty-eight days they’d been in the dungeons, bled near every day, fed little more than scraps. They were all weak. They were all slow.
They hadn’t even made it to the bottom of the stairs when there was a horrible shivering in the world around them and a piercing pain stabbed right through Pieter’s head.
“I do not like that feeling,” Crake muttered. His sword was out an instant afterwards. Pieter’s own hands itched for a weapon.
But instead of cruel laughter or sharp claws, there was a voice - tired, but strong. “Father? Marat? Yanna? Are you there?”
“Here!” Crake called back.
And then, there, impossibly, was Pieter’s eldest son. This time, Pieter dared to look properly.
He was wearing armour finer than anything Pieter had ever owned, deep crimson and gilding at the edges, finely worked leather, left arm mostly bare for some reason and the right covered in narrow, overlapping scales, the chain beneath all tightly linked and even, an unfamiliar emblem over the heart. It fit Coen as if it were made for him. Despite that, he was wounded. There were claw marks on his face, bleeding sluggishly, and he was moving little quicker than Esme. Bruises or broken bones. Or both.
But he was alive. And - and -
- Human. Not just wishful thinking. Not a trick of Pieter’s mind.
No claws. No fangs. No cold light in Coen’s eyes. None of the uncanny movements of vrakhiri, slinking wolves on the hunt trying to fit into human-like skin. The only difference was that one of Coen’s eyes was a light hazel now, almost yellow, rather than the blue he’d been born with.
“I’m all right,” Coen said quietly.
“And Brencis is dead?” Crake asked.
“He’s dead,” Coen confirmed. “Dad, do you know where Lunka is?”
Pieter could only shake his head. Dead. Brencis was dead. Just a moon ago the former knyaz tore through the mines, and now Pieter’s son had slain him.
Coen swore. “He said he’d done something - I need to find her -”
“Go,” Crake, Marat, told Coen. “Probably better that you deal with anything Brencis left behind. I’ll make your excuses if the sun sets.”
He knew.
Of course he knew. There were manumits in the cells. Some of them had whispered of Coen of Laslea, who had drained Boyar Ambrus of every last drop of his vrakhir blood, torn apart Boyar Bakir and his entire entourage, emerged alive from Boyaress Xanthe’s keep, and done many things that Pieter would credit to any vrakhir, but never to quiet, dutiful Coen. If the men in the dungeons had heard those tales, their leader had heard them too. More, likely. Pieter had no idea how or when Coen had come to once again appear human - God above, it had only been five days since the parley - but it was clear to him that Crake knew about the other face Coen had worn in the last month. Once again Pieter found his words drying up in his throat, this time from fear, even as Coen took a shot of something that smelled sharply medicinal from a vial at his belt, straightened, and turned on his heel to venture further into Brencis’ castle.
To his surprise, Crake reached out and grasped his shoulder briefly. “I won’t tell the knyaz,” he said, very quietly. “Can’t stop the rumours, but he won’t have any from me. Coen’s done right by me and mine. Saved my life. Now let’s get you safe, shall we? Coen will look after Lunka.”
With that reassurance, whatever it was worth, Pieter had little choice but to allow himself to be led away to where there would soon be cheers for the fall of the vrakhiri.
—
It was not the first night in this goddamned place that Pieter had nightmares of Cassel. Sometimes there were visions of Laslea burning laid overtop it. This was, however, the first night in the last thirty he had the freedom to stand up and walk until the smell of burning flesh and the sound of screams retreated back into his nightmares where they belonged.
The freed prisoners were sleeping in the cathedral’s almshouse tonight, one of the few places with the space for them that wasn’t right back in the halls of Greifberg that had kept them captive the last month. Crake had seen to the former captives with the sort of cool efficiency Pieter had always been glad of in commanders. On top of the almshouse, he’d also seen to it they’d received food from the castle and let them all know that transport to Laslea would be found for them in the next day or two, along with what little could be spared to rebuild their village. He’d meant it about getting them out of Svartrau.
Quietly as he could, Pieter extracted himself from his pallet. Esme shifted in her sleep, murmuring unhappily. Yanna and Mirto were both dead to the world, thankfully, deep in the first true rest they’d had in a month. They’d both had their share of nightmares and more.
No sign of Coen. No sign of Lunka.
He headed into the courtyard, and from there outside to the road outside the cathedral. There were lights lit all over Svartrau tonight, the streets abuzz, singing echoing out over the streets. Pieter wiped the sweat from his scalp and tried to focus on the sounds of celebration instead.
Then, from a shadowy part of the street, a worried voice and a familiar name caught his ear.
“Are you sure, Coen?” an unfamiliar man asked.
“I trust you,” Coen’s voice floated back. Pieter approached as quietly as he could. “Even if I had anyone else to trust with this, you would still be my first choice. I have to go see our mutual friend before she comes to see me.”
“Ah,” the first man said.
“I’ll be lucky if she only claws my face to shreds,” Coen said, grim.
For some men that might have referred to a lover. Here and now, on this night, his son speaking, Pieter knew - it was not a lover. It was a vrakhir. Coen was speaking of a more dangerous sort of clawing than that an annoyed paramour might inflict.
They exchanged a few more words, Coen and this man he spoke to as a friend, arranging a time and place to meet the next night. Pieter tried to drift closer. In the light of the cathedral’s windows he caught his son’s silhouette and a man next to him. A little shorter, a little broader through the chest and softer around the middle, firelight gleaming off a rich tunic and coppery hair - and vrakhiri eyes. Yet the man was clearly no warrior. He looked more a wealthy merchant. Even Boyaress Xanthe, despite being a woman of some age, had seemed more a threat than this man. Business concluded, Coen’s companion vanished into the same dark mist that all vrakhir seemed to transport themselves by.
Coen turned then, but as soon as he moved Pieter knew what he’d see. Vrakhiri carried themselves differently to humans, heads held ready to catch a scent or a faint sound, hands held clear of anything that might catch their claws until and unless they wanted to. And Coen was… Coen was…
“Dad,” Coen sighed. “What are you doing all the way out here? I thought you were in the almshouse with the others. Are mum and the kids okay?”
It sounded so normal. Like any other night when Coen might have woken to find Pieter outside wandering.
Yet that concerned expression, so painfully familiar, was built around alien eyes. For a second Pieter was back in the burning village, the first time he’d seen this sight. A monster’s eyes in his son’s face.
He saw Coen’s jaw tightening. Another familiar expression. Pieter wondered if there were sharp teeth just out of view. The cuts Brencis had left on him scant hours ago had vanished like they were never there at all.
When they had taken him from the cells to the parley, Pieter had been torn between not being able to look at Brencis, and staring at him. This is what my son might look like when he grows old. Whenever it was that Coen might grow old. A thousand years from now, when Pieter’s bones were dust. When Yanna and Mirto and their children and their children’s children were dust.
“They’re fine,” Pieter forced out. “Asleep. Properly asleep.” Some of the tension drained out of Coen, but Pieter had his own question. “And Lunka? Have you found Lunka?”
He nearly recoiled from the sudden bloody menace that filled the air. It was there and gone in an instant. A display of temper reined in. It wasn’t aimed at him.
Coen whispered, “Yes.”
“But you can’t bring her back,” Pieter realised. “Is she -”
Dead? Turned, like her brother? Which was worse?
How could they ever tell Yanna and Mirto, let alone Esme?
“I will fix this,” Coen said, and Pieter knew which it was, if still not which was worse.
“Can I see her?”
The words ground out through numb lips. This couldn’t be real. First Alin, then Coen, now Lunka too. Even if Coen stood before him now, even though he had Coen back in this cruel way - Lunka was only a little girl.
Coen said, “No. It’s not safe.”
“But you sent a vrakhir -”
“Yes,” Coen interrupted. “I sent a vrakhir. His name is Vicho. He’s a friend, dad. Not an ally of Brencis. He’s a merchant and a scholar, not a soldier. A Christian. He can’t bear to feed on anyone directly. He won’t hurt Lunka, and she can’t hurt him.” He hesitated, and then added, “If anything happens to me, he’ll help you.”
A merchant, but a vrakhir. A Christian, but a vrakhir. Such things were beyond Pieter’s comprehension. “You’ve been making dangerous friends.”
“I couldn’t just leave you in those dungeons,” Coen said.
Pieter was not in a position to criticise how Coen had done things. He had begged, after all. So instead he said, “Thank you, son.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Coen replied. “Look, dad, I still - I have some things I need to do before dawn. But I’ll be back in the morning, I promise.”
“Yanna and Mirto missed you,” Pieter said. Pieter had missed him. Mourned him.
Coen turned away, his shoulders drawing inward. He was taller than Pieter, but in that moment, despite the fine armour and monstrous eyes, he was once again Pieter’s little boy. Responsible, careful, always thinking of his siblings before himself. “All the more reason they shouldn’t see me like this,” he said.
“You won’t be able to hide it, Coen,” Pieter said.
“It doesn’t have to be the first they see me, either,” Coen replied. “I’ll be back at dawn.”
He straightened up again, and just like that, the uncertain boy was a fighter again. Not a human warrior, but vrakhiri, ready to strike with bare claws, scanning the world with sharper senses than a human possessed. A soft noise, a breath of a black wind, and Coen vanished. Pieter turned and looked up quick enough to see his son’s shape on the cathedral’s scaffolding, and then he was gone.
—
Dawn came slowly. Pieter returned to the almshouse. His family - all of them who yet lived - were still fast asleep. Even Esme. Thank God. Sleep came for him too eventually, in a shallow haze.
He snapped awake when the cathedral bells rang out, far closer than he’d expected. For a moment he couldn’t remember where he was. Not home. Not the dungeons.
Someone nearby was speaking. A familiar voice. A familiar cadence. Pieter stood and found the tiny room empty of all but himself and Esme.
“- then I snuck around the side of the building, very carefully, and found the gate to the pigpen.”
Mirto’s laughter. He hadn’t heard it for weeks. “Did you let it out?” Pieter’s third son asked eagerly. “Did they run after it?”
“Yes,” Coen said. There was laughter in his voice too. Like he’d never left, a trick Pieter had never learned. “In the middle of the night, right into one of Brencis’ patrols. But hold on for now, Mirto, dad’s awake.”
Noticed, Pieter stepped through the doorway of their little cell, only a little larger than the dungeon they’d shared the last month. There was Yanna, sitting neatly on the hallway floor, hands in her lap. There was Mirto, tucked up against a body next to him, eyes wide and bright. It was Coen he was leaning against. Coen, human once more. Human eyes, though mismatched. Human hands. He’d taken off his strange, fine armour in favour of the sort of humble clothes he’d always worn in Laslea - blue tunic, grey hose, though both made by hands other than Esme’s or Yanna’s. Good boots, Pieter noticed. Any fighting man with sense knew that you needed your breastplate for a few hours a few times a month at most, but you needed boots all the time. Coen had always been clever. Pieter had always hoped there were lessons he need never learn.
“Up late, all of us,” Pieter said.
He would have to tell them about Lunka this morning. The fact that Coen was back without her already said a great deal about her fate. It was only Coen’s reappearance that was allowing Pieter’s surviving children this moment of peace.
At least it wouldn’t be a surprise. They’d done their weeping when Lunka was dragged from the cell first. Alone.
“We don’t have chores,” Mirto said.
“You will soon,” Coen said. “The sister will need help drawing water and chopping wood, and then we’ll have to start loading carts. Go on. I’ll finish the story later.”
“But -”
“No buts,” Coen said, mock stern. “The sooner you finish, the sooner you can hear the rest, all right?”
That was Yanna’s opportunity to spring into action. “Come on, Mirto,” she said. “We haven’t had breakfast yet.”
Before all this, Mirto would have fought. Now he just listened, and followed Yanna downstairs where Pieter could hear the sounds of people gathering for a meal. Coen pushed himself upright. “How’s mum?” he asked.
“Asleep,” Pieter said. “No nightmares.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
Silence. Questions boiled in Pieter’s mind. How does this all work, then? What are your arrangements with the manumits? What do you know about Catalin? What does Catalin know about you? Did you meet that vrakhir last night as you said? Where is Lunka? Is she still safe? Is there any hope for her? For you?Are you planning to come back to Laslea with us? What have you been doing these past thirty days?
Are you safe, Coen? Are you well?
Once again his tongue utterly failed to cooperate with his mind. Coen had never had much patience for that, less and less as he grew. He had to say something. Anything. After a few agonising seconds he managed, “Let’s get your mum downstairs too, then.”
“She needs to eat,” Coen agreed.
And that was that.
It probably wasn’t the right time for questions anyway, Pieter thought, as he went through the familiar motions of waking Esme and getting her moving for the morning. Too many people about. Some of the people of Laslea called out greetings to Coen. Gavril and Lazar, Sanna, Crina. A smile and a greeting from Coen and they were off again in each case. That gift that Pieter had never possessed.
The almshouse was not a pleasant place. The floorboards were uneven and splintered, the walls warped, surfaces everywhere marked by damp.
“It’s been neglected since before the vrakhir,” Coen said quietly. “The sisters did their best, but the deacon… Father Florin… I found the caretaker’s body in the well. It’s not a happy place.”
“You visited?” Pieter asked over Esme’s lolling head.
“It’s a bit of a long story.”
True enough, though. When they reached the kitchens, the nun on duty smiled at Coen with recognition and gave him a bowl of oatmeal rather larger than the ones she was handing out to most of the other villagers. And for the first time in a month they sat down as a family to eat a meal. All of them save Lunka.
Her absence was a dull pain rather than a sharp one. A cracked bone rather than a stab wound. Strange. Alin had hurt worse. Coen had hurt worse. He was growing used to it, he feared. Losing children.
Worse, he could see it in the other kids. How their glances crept to the place Lunka would have, should have, occupied. How they left gaps in their conversations where she should have asked questions. The only mercy was that Esme didn’t seem to realise.
Pieter was free. He had most of his family returned to him. And it was half a relief when a man came to their table to tell Coen that Crake was looking for him. Coen promised to be back in the evening, at the latest, and once again departed.
Crake knew. What did Catalin know? Was this the last time he was going to see his eldest? Would they suspect Coen of being a traitor? Or - or the vrakhir looking over Lunka, what about him?
To his surprise, Yanna took his hand. “Don’t worry, dad,” she said. “Coen can look after himself.”
She was growing to be such a good woman, brave and strong as any man could ask from a daughter. Pieter didn’t have words for her either.
—
Despite his promises, this time Coen did not return before dark. Once dusk fell, Pieter didn’t expect Coen to return until daylight, either. The pattern seemed clear enough - whatever Brencis had intended, he hadn’t turned Coen all the way. He was human during the daytime, vrakhir by night.
And that was fine. It had to be fine. Coen wasn’t lost. Not like Lunka was lost.
God Almighty, that was still a cracked bone of a thought.
In the end, he had only managed to tell Yanna and Mirto in short, clipped words, that their brother had found Lunka, and she would not be coming back. Mirto had started to cry again. Yanna’s reaction was somehow worse: a simple nod. She’d known. She’d expected. We’re not going to tell mum, are we?
No, Pieter had said. It would break her for good. Yanna had accepted that with the same calm.
In the meantime, he had a cart to load. That was Crake’s work again. That there was a cart and that there were things to load into it. The work was slow, undertaken as it was by a bunch of mostly-starved recently freed prisoners. Crake himself showed his face as the people of Laslea prepared to return home, watching them all with dark eyes, inscrutable even by Tatar standards. Unlike Coen, he still bore healing scratches.
After a while Pieter tired of it. “You must have better things to do than watch an old man stack crates,” he said.
“Just satisfying my curiosity,” Crake said. “Coen told me a little about you.”
Pieter grunted. He doubted it was flattering. Young men rarely had anything kind to say about their elders.
“He’s a good man,” Crake said. There was a slight stress on the word man. “Kinder than a lot of men in his position would be. Hard to go far without meeting someone he’s helped - on the road, from the prisoner camps.”
“He’s always been like that.” He’d been so proud. He hadn’t deserved a son like Coen. Nor like Alin, nor like Mirto. He should have known his sins would catch up with him at last.
“It’s comforting to know he hasn’t changed in that way, then,” Crake said.
Pieter shoved a crate into place with a little more force than it warranted. “Got an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“Most things, yes,” Crake said flatly. “I just don’t want to see him hurt.”
Pieter straightened up indignantly. “And you think I would?”
Crake stared back at him. “Many men would disown a son for less.”
“I’m not them,” Pieter said, “and Coen is my son.”
Cold nausea and shaking fury coursed through him at the memory of that monster calling Coen his son. He wasn’t, Pieter thought viciously. Fuck vrakhiri and whatever their sick traditions were. They couldn’t have Coen. They couldn’t claim him like that.
Even if he knew that Coen must have changed in some way. Just as Pieter had changed after Cassel. Violence did that to a man.
But he didn’t say any of that. He didn’t let it on his face. Not to this stranger. And so Crake just took another long, impenetrable stare at Pieter, and said, “Good to hear. Consider my curiosity satisfied.” He turned to leave.
“Wait,” Pieter said. “The new knyaz.”
“Took a wound from Brencis,” Crake said. “When he recovers, he’ll have more to handle than chasing up rumours about someone who helped him regain his father’s castle.”
Provided that man was a long way from Svartrau, Pieter heard.
“We’ll be gone tomorrow,” Pieter said.
“Probably for the best,” Crake said. “My condolences on the death of your daughter, but even so, I’m glad Coen got most of you back.”
Another throb of pain in that new wound in his mind. “Thank you,” he said, and turned back to his work. Not so much thanks for the condolences, he knew how meaningless those were, but for looking after Coen. There were more dangers in the world than just vrakhiri, and lords were another one he’d hoped his son would never have to deal with.
Once again Pieter failed to sleep. This time he stayed in the cathedral’s courtyard. One of the guards Crake had posted on the mostly-loaded carts bound for Laslea in the morning smiled at him. Pieter didn’t need their pity. He needed his sons back. His daughter. His wife.
Sometimes he cursed himself for loving Esme, for marrying Esme. They both knew she was delicate, after. After everything. But she understood him and his nightmares, and he understood her and hers, and for a while they’d both thought that would be enough. Together they would be able to handle it. Build something better.
Perhaps they had both needed someone stronger than the other.
But here he was, desperately in love with her still. The mother of their ill-fated children, damned for the sins of their father. The woman he married would have known what to do, what to say, to bring their eldest back, to set Yanna’s heart at ease and help her smile again, to dry Mirto’s tears. He hoped she still knew. He hoped one day she’d come back enough to let him know too.
For now, Pieter was on his own.
—
Pieter woke before dawn so he could eat before they started out back to Laslea. The sister who ran the almshouse was awake already, as were some of the townswomen of Svartrau, newly motivated by Christian charity to come help bake bread and stir porridge for the people freed from the vrakhiri dungeons.
He ate, and felt his age in how long it took him to recover his strength. At least he was recovering. He would have the strength to fix their house and help with the other repairs.
Soon he was joined by others. Gavril, of course. A month in the dungeons hadn’t changed his habits. Nor Iorgu’s. Yanna showed her face, ate quickly, then returned upstairs to help her mother and Mirto so Pieter could focus on their cart.
When he went outside, Coen was waiting there by the carts. In the pale light of dawn, he was once again human, once again almost indistinguishable from the young man who’d followed Pieter to the silver mines. He was smiling. Like it was any other fine morning at the end of spring, enjoying a rare trip out of Laslea Glen. His sleeves were rolled up ready for work. But his eyes - still so strange to see the changed colour of the left one - were distant.
Pieter understood.
There was work to do, though, so he got to it. The last bit of food. Loads secured. Pieter overheard Lazar asking how Coen survived what happened in Laslea, and Coen told him without missing a beat that he’d fallen down a mineshaft during the attack and climbed his way back out the next day. Not so far off the truth, that, but obviously missing a few key events. Pieter didn’t know the details. Mirto quickly found his brother’s side again, begging for more stories.
Pieter held his tongue until the sun was high in the sky and they were well beyond the walls of Svartrau and on the road back north to Laslea. Then, while they took their rest and Mirto was off chasing butterflies, he found a minute to approach his son and say, “We need to talk. Alone.”
Coen lowered his eyes and his smile dimmed. “Of course, father.”
He should not feel so apprehensive. It was the middle of the day. Coen was his son. There should be no reason for him to fear.
They walked off the road and towards a stand of trees. Once they were past the treeline, out of sight of prying eyes and beyond the range of curious ears, Pieter asked, “What are your plans for tonight?”
“My plans?” Coen asked, raising his eyebrows.
“You know what I mean.”
“Am I going to transform in front of all of you and start drinking blood?” Coen asked bitterly. “I hadn’t intended to, no.”
I want to protect you too. As usual, Pieter couldn’t manage the words. “You know there’s danger,” he said.
“Oh, quite,” Coen said. He started pacing, stumbling slightly on tree roots. Had he eaten? Pieter hadn’t seen. “I’m one of the more dangerous things left in Vale Sangora, after all.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant, though, isn’t it?” Coen stopped pacing as abruptly as he’d started. His eyes bored into Pieter. The changed one almost shone in the shade, not a colour he could pretend was hazel, but gold. The blue one was just as hard to meet, the same reproach his son had always shown him when Pieter had said something clumsily. “Am I a danger to mum? To Yanna and Mirto?”
It wasn’t what he’d meant at all. “What am I supposed to think, Coen?” Pieter asked. “You’ve been avoiding us after dark.”
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re right. It’s worst after the moon rises. I shouldn’t - I can’t - “ a harsh bark of laughter. “I truly am a monster, right after moonrise.”
He couldn’t stand it. “Not another word.” He couldn’t stand hearing his son talk about himself that way. “Just - how do you plan to tell Yanna and Mirto?”
Silence. Heavy. Oppressive. There weren’t even any fucking birds to break it up.
“Lunka’s messages said you told them Brencis turned me,” Coen said. “Do I need to tell them anything, if they already know what I am?”
Those fucking fairies. Of all the fucking things, sanzhana. Carrying messages from Coen. Carrying messages from Lunka back to him, too. And that was something that Pieter’s son didn’t understand. Stuck in the dungeons, knowing that they were dying bit by bit, cut by cut, the little ones swearing that Coen would come for them. What was he to tell them? How was he to get them to make their peace with God before the end? At the time, how else could he have explained to them that Coen couldn’t simply come and get them?
“You came back looking human,” Pieter said. “Acting human. They’re just happy to have you back after all. Easy to think I got it wrong.”
“They’re both smarter than that and you know it.”
“Neither of them are willing to question their good fortune, that’s what. They don’t want to see anything different about you, so they don’t, and they won’t ask.” They both loved Coen more than anyone else. Better than Pieter, better than Esme. They trusted him more. “You need to tell them.”
More silence. Where were the birds? The things that usually skittered in the undergrowth? It was like they’d stumbled into a completely dead area of forest.
“When we get back to Laslea,” Coen said at last. “They should have… space. To adjust. Privacy. I’ll… find something else to do tonight.”
His throat felt tight. “Where will you sleep?”
The question made Coen turn his eyes away. “I - I don’t sleep anymore.” A simple admission, so full of shame.
Pieter’s first thought was no nightmares. His second was no peace.
The nights would be very long for his son.
But there was nothing to do about it. Much Pieter wanted to know. Nothing he could ask. Nothing Coen would even want to tell him, he suspected. So it would have to become part of Pieter’s own nightmares. It was Coen still, Pieter told himself. He might spend half the night doing whatever it was a vrakhir might do, but he would not be killing anyone wantonly, just because he liked the taste of their blood. Coen was not a monster.
“Make sure you’re back by dawn, you hear?” Pieter said. “No sleep, no excuses.”
And for the first time in three days, Coen smiled at him as if he had said something right. Pieter wished he understood why.