56.

Elai's pov

“Next time when I wake up, you will have to wake up with me.” Arlon grins when he looks up from the small fire. It disappears back into his hand as our eyes lock. I feel my heart skip a beat. It is even more intense to see him after the night we had shared.
“Can’t handle being without me?”
“It is quite boring, yes.” His words make me blush.
He’s too fucking good at this.
“Hey!” Connie gasps and pushes his hand against his chest.
“I am the most fun person to hang out with. Don’t act like you miss him when you’re with me.”
“I do, actually.” Arlon laughs as he pulls Connie closer to him. Their embrace is always so.. personal. You can see that they’ve been through the absolute worst together. It is nice. I wish I had a friendship like them, but even then we wouldn’t be able to match up to these two. They’re just.. different.
“Asshat.” Connie mumbles as he pulls back from the embrace.
I didn’t expect Arlon to pull me in as well. I want to hug him as greeting, but he decides that is not the right way to do it. His lips fall against mine and for a moment everything around us disappears. I close my eyes and allow him to kiss me, his hand pressing against my back. The kiss is different than the ones we shared yesterday. It is a new kind of feeling. A feeling of recognition and comfort. Maybe it even feels a bit like home.
“Alright, lovebirds! We’re here to convert Elai, not to have one big foursome.”
“Don’t call it converting, you idiot!”
“Or we could have a big foursome and then convert him-“
“Stop calling it a conversion!”
“Are we not converting him?”
Arlon and Connie bicker like little kids, and I can’t help but laugh. If I could, I’d watch them bicker all day long. It is entertaining.
“Taking him to the dark side, then.”
“Connie I swear if you don’t shut up-“
“Elai!” Chay stops the two from bickering any longer as the alchemist walks around the corner with his arms wide open. I feel some sort of tension building up the moment he wraps his arms around me. The embrace feels.. odd. Like something is off. I can’t put my finger on it, and it is probably because I want everyone to be happy. “How are you doing? Have you been well?” Chay pulls back from the embrace but keeps both his hands on my shoulders. He looks down at my eyes with a big smile on his face and I try to focus on looking back at him. I want to look at Arlon, though. I want to know how he’s looking at us, I want to know how he feels when Chay touches me.
“We literally partied together yesterday, Chay. I’m pretty sure not much has happened to me in the few hours we spent apart.” Well, I fucked a close friend of yours not just once, but let’s keep that part out for now. I don’t think Chay is waiting on that news.
“Oh, don’t be modest, Elai. Why don’t we tell him about all the fun we had yesterday?” What the fuck. Arlon pulls me away from Chay with his arm wrapped around my waist. I want to sink into the ground and never come back up. Did he really have to say that?
“Unless you considered that a secret and the green magic told him already, of course..” I did fucking consider it a secret.
“Ah, that..” Chay sighs out as he looks away. I wish I could say something to him that could make him feel better, but wouldn’t that be considered trying to feel sorry for something I wanted to do? “Yeah, yeah I did know about that. Thanks for the reminder though, Arlon. That is so kind of you.” Chay is good at faking a smile, but it doesn’t fool me. I can both see and hear that he’s lying, and I’m pretty sure Arlon can, too. Even Connie, but he probably refuses to hear the disappointment in Chay’s voice. He wants him to himself, after all. I feel guilty towards the warrior; I don’t want to steal Chay from him or anything. Hell, I don’t even feel anything for the alchemist. I’d even be glad if Chay and Connie figured it out.
“Okay, so you banged it out and got together. Great! Are we going to convert this little fucker or what?” It makes me laugh when he calls it a conversion this time. It made my stomach turn only minutes ago, but I feel better about it now that it snaps us all out of a building tension. Connie ruffles his hand through my hair and makes sure it looks like a complete mess before he pulls it back. I roll my eyes at him but do not take the time to fix it; I want to get it over with, too.
“But of course.” I only now notice how hot Arlon had become. I can feel the heat bite into my arm as I lean into him; he was getting angry. “But I will do the hole ritual myself if you call it a conversion one more time.” Maybe he is so against the word because he doesn’t want to offend me, or scare me away. It is, in fact, quite much like a conversion. I am changing who I pray to, who I love and who I will ask for blessings. Being a child of the moon means turning your back to the sun; a thing I thought I would never in my life do. But Arlon asked me to, to prove to him that he can trust me, and so now I am here. It is sick, really. The feeling of pressing a knife against his throat wasn’t pleasant. It made me tumble, it made me change. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to go home. Fuck. I have to shake it off of me; I think back way too much. It has happened, I have already answered. I can’t walk away now, or I will never get to come back to Turi. I will never get to see him again.. and that is all I seem to want; see him.
“To new allies.” Arlon kiss is swift, and I am unable to kiss him back this time. he raises his eyebrows, bows and walks back to where he was sitting; the perfect spot to watch whatever is about to happen, happen. I close my eyes, my breath shaky and my heart beating inside of my throat. I think of the sun as I feel Connie’s hands press down on my shoulders. I sink to my knees, mind still focused on the sun. I won’t give up on her. I promise her that before I open my eyes back up. Doing this ritual will mean nothing to me. That is what I tell myself, so I can at least hope that the sun will forgive me.
Chay is the first to speak, the old Turian language now echoing through the building. I want to keep my eyes on Arlon’s, who is looking right back at me. He is my focus, even though I can see Connie move in the corner of my eye. He walks in silence as he listens to Chay’s words. I didn’t know that even Chay was one to get involved into rituals. He didn’t seem to be someone who cared for the moon that much. I feel my heart skip a beat when Connie’s waist blocks my eyes from looking at Arlon. I look up with nerves rolling down my spine. Connie presses his fingers against my chin and gestures for me to open my mouth. I do, with minor doubts. This ritual can mean nothing to me, but does it mean nothing to the sun? Is she forgiving enough?
“Swallow.” Connie whispers with a comforting tone.
I swallow and only now realize he had put something on my tongue. It is sour as it rolls down my throat and I try not to look disgusted. My stomach turns at the mere taste of it, and I think Connie notices. He grins, even huffs a little. Yeah. He definitely knows.
Chay stops speaking the moment he sees that I am done taking in whatever had been given to me and a deadly silence falls on all of us. I hope I am not the only one who feels the urge to laugh. I haven’t been this serious with them before. I only know them like this when I wasn’t involved, when I was merely watching. Now that I am in the spot with them, I feel exposed. I realize that I can’t take silences, that I feel the immediate urge to burst out laughing. But my mind can luckily focus on the betrayal towards my own god, a small smile turning back into a thin line.
My eyes shift back to Arlon when I hear him hiss. He has his teeth gritted and his eyebrows furrowed; Connie has cut open his arm. I want to say something about it, want to ask the warrior what the hell he thinks he’s doing, but then a smile appears on the king’s face. He watches his own blood drip down into the bowl Connie is holding, and it clicks the moment he turns around to walk back to me. Oh no. Fuck no. There is no way I will-
“Drink.” Connie’s voice is still comforting, but this time it does not help.
There is no way I am going to drink the actual blood of Arlon.
Is this what Lylenians do for the sun as well? Does every other god ask the same from their people? The god of the sea? The god of war? Are they all.. like this?
I allow myself to move my head up and I suddenly find myself pressing my lip against the edge of the bowl. I part them as Connie gently pushes it over, the blood coming closer the more the bowl bends forward.
It doesn’t taste any different. I don’t know why I was expecting that; he isn’t truly the moon after all. Maybe the myth about the moon’s soul has gotten to my head a bit too much. Maybe I wanted to believe Arlon was a god. I close my eyes to try and think away the blood that is pouring into my mouth and sliding down my throat.
I am glad to feel the bowl disappearing from my lips. It wasn’t much, but it fucking happened; I drank Arlon’s blood. I part my lips and feel the wetness of his blood stick against them. I try not to use my tongue to lick it away; I want to stay tough and appear ready and trustworthy. That is the goal of this ritual. That is all. I did not just swallow the blood of the moon, I did not just turn my back on the sun. Maybe if I repeat those words, I’ll start believing them.
Arlon is amused; he has a grin on his face as his chin leans against his knuckles. He crosses his legs when I look back at him and raises his eyebrows only slightly. I had done well. I have entertained him, I suppose. This is what he wanted to see. I have given him what he wanted.
“It is quite amusing to see someone with Lylenian clothes on doing the moon ritual.” Arlon rubs it in. I’m not sure if he does it to piss me off, or just because he truly thinks it’s amusing. I have figured out a lot about him already, but his way of talking and behaving is beyond understanding. He can switch so quick, as if he doesn’t really know who he’s supposed to be.
“Do you have water here?” I want to clean my face, and wash my mouth. The taste is still there. The iron, the salt, the fucking blood. If I wasn’t toughened up these last few months, I would’ve thrown up. I’m sure of it.
“Was it not to your liking?” Arlon stops Chay from getting the water for me, so that he can do it himself. He doesn’t bat another eye at me as he walks to the side of the building. I wait for my water in silence, only when he turns back to walk over to me do I open my mouth. “I just drank your blood.” I wish I knew if he was serious or not. I won’t believe it if he said there are people out there that actually enjoyed drinking his blood. The wound is quite big when I look at it, but I suppose he doesn’t really care. He’ll get a healer to fix it up for him.
“Didn’t you like the way I taste?” He must be fucking joking.
“Arlon it was your fucking-“
I can’t finish my sentence; he has already begun laughing at me. I feel relief crawl down my spine. For a second there I thought he was being serious, for a second I thought I’d have to try and explain him that drinking his blood isn’t quite a hobby to have.
“You were taking me seriously!”
“I wasn’t-“
“You definitely were.” Connie backs the king up with a grin on his face.
I hate these men and their guts. I do laugh, though. I’m not sure if it’s the nerves or the fact that they just have what it takes to put a smile on my face. I’m torn between two versions of myself, really. I feel like this is a great way of betraying my father, but I also want to go back home and make him proud. I know I’ve said this enough times to make someone go insane, but it is the constant thought that roams through my mind. I have just promised the moon to be her child, I have promised Arlon my fucking life. So why do I still feel like I need to go home? What is forcing me to think like that?
“You feel any better now?” Connie snaps me out of my thoughts as he wraps an arm around my shoulders. I want to say so many things.
I only smile. “My father will kill me.”
We laugh about it.
I meant it.