“I also used to dream.” Hadeom lifted his eyes that were beautiful once but now were terrible—the colour of the moonlight on dark water. Not deep, but hollow. “Now I listen.”
“To what?”
“To the monsters.”
The weight on his shoulders felt impossible. Worn down like a stone, smoothed by tides. Or like a sun cooling one terrible degree at a time.
“Have I not paid my penance?” Hadeom asked. “Have I not suffered enough?”
Cern studied him, seeing through him. Knowing someone for so long was not without its faults. His face shifted, pensive, knowing. “You found him.”
Hadeom could only nod, and for a long drawn-out moment, the confession lingered between them. “You kept him from me.”
Cern sat very still. “His mother asked me, all those years ago, to keep him from harm.”
Hadeom’s head shot up, his gaze meeting Cern’s, and... and then he understood. “That included me.”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t...,” Hadeom said, but the truth was, he already had.
The vast room tightened around them until it felt no larger than a lonely cabin in winter, like Hadeom wished it was.
“You think if you stop,” Cern said carefully, “the bounty of monsters on Earth will go unattended.”
Hadeom looked away. “He was never a monster.”
“No. Humans cannot determine the difference,” Cern said. “They fear what they do not know, and with the rise of men comes the power to burn down anything that challenges them. They called anythingother‘monsters’ and threw around the word ‘evil’ because they learned long ago to wield religion like a weapon to keep down what may take their power from them.”
“I know.” Hadeom tasted his own regret, bitter and awful. “I helped them.”
“You saved a great many.”
“But not him.” He sighed. “I would have taken him if I’d found him sooner.”
“And now?” Cern asked, his voice the rattle of a storm, like barely restrained violence. “What did you do?”
“I walked away. I saw the water, the galaxy in that cove, and I knew he was there. But I walked away.” He met Cern’s gaze. “I’m done. I have a tiredness in my bones that I can’t describe. I feel brittle. I need...”
“You need to rest.”
“Yes. For a thousand years, it feels like.”
Cern was quiet again. He sipped his drink, and a slow smile spread across his face. “Do you remember,” he said with a laugh.“Do you remember that time you once challenged the northern wind to a duel?”
“You made it flip my cloak.”
He laughed, and somewhere nearby, leaves rustled in reply.
“You were lighter then, known by a different name,” Cern said. “Your burden has weighted you down.”
“My burden has broken me,” he replied, voice flat. “I am done, Cern. How can I protect humans from the monsters when the only monsters left are...”
“Human?”
Hadeom gave a nod and sighed. “Lusca was the last real monster.”
“And she is gone?”
