"No. I confiscated it."
"An illegal painting?"
"It's of a moment in my life that I never wanted captured. I just haven't found it in me to destroy it," he says, one hand pulling the cloth off the painting, the other pressed firmly against the burnt side of his chest. He's in agony. He takes a torn piece of paper from inside the wrap and tosses it onto the dusty floor by my feet.
I stoop to collect it as Rexxan speaks. "My father had the gift of foresight. He said those words often."
The paper is fragile and brittle with age. The ink has been eaten away by the jaws of time, but I can make out the words that had been written in elaborate handwriting not too dissimilar to Rexxan’s
Love, Rexxan, will kill us all.
He slides a ring off his finger and lets me look at the inside. Similar words are inscribed within the gold band. I know Rexxan respected his father, but I have to wonder what kind of parent would play such games on his son. It has left him damaged. He uncovers the painting which is as wide as I am tall, and my breath lodges in my throat.
It's...it's an incredible painting, but it chills me to my bones, and my head swims slightly. "Is this…,” my voice wobbles a little. "Is this…how it happened?"
"This isexactlyhow it happened. That’s why I hate it," he says, his hand shaking against his chest. The painting blurs through my tears. It depicts four people, all piled on top of each other as fire rains down from the sky. I dare not ask, not when I can see Rex struggling to breathe through the pain. I let him stare at it a while.
"A bolt of fire hit me," he says, breaking the silence. "It spilled over my face, over my eye, down my chest and arm." He runs his finger over the bottom body in the pile, the colours becoming a little more vibrant as his finger removes years of dust.
"That's me. We were too far from shelter to make it there alive. My older brother threw his own body over mine. We started to fight because I wanted to do the same for him. My mother saw us and ran over to do the same, to try and save her sons. I tried to push her off me, but the pain was crippling.
“All I could do was scream. My right eye had burnt away. She said she had to do this, had to die for us because she loved us. Then my father lay over us all," he whispers, tracing his finger over the huge man at the top of the pile, on top of the blonde woman in the white dress, trying to cover the three of them with his arms. Rexxan grips the shirt over his chest.
"And that,” he whispers, his finger over the bundle of cloth at the bottom of the pile. "Is Siddie, my newborn son. I lay on the ground to cover Siddie, but then my brother tried to save me, my mother tried to save us, and my father tried to save us all."
I cover my mouth, silent tears dripping off my nose. He shakes his head, struggling to speak, and for the first time since I have known him, a single tear drops down his cheek. "I passed out from the pain as soon as I covered my son, but….”
"You don't have to say it," I whisper, trying to cool his burns as he struggles with the next sentence.
"I passed out, and when I woke twelve hours later…,” he takes a shuddering breath. "When I woke twelve hours later they were all still there. The three of them, on top of me. Dead." He wrestles out the final word as if it is killing him.
Grief that does not even belong to me tightens my throat and I choke back a sob. There are no words to describe what he has been through. He carries on, the tear running over his jawline. "But I was paralysed by the burns, unable to move, and so there I lay. You can't even imagine...just the weight of them all."
I sniff into his chest, hugging him tighter as his burns scorch his skin and my own. "I'm so fucking sorry, Rexxan."
"Love,” he states, after a moment of silence. He spins the painting around and points to the four-letter word on the back. “’Love.’ It's the title of the painting. It's a painting of the worst day of my life, and it's called ‘Love’.” He gestures to the pile of dead bodies in the painting. "If this is what becomes of love, I don't want it, and I wouldn't wish it on you either."
And just like that, it all slips into place. It’sbecausehe loves me that he cannot tell me so, because he thinks this is what happens to people that he loves. I understand it now—the artist was right. ‘Love’is the perfect title, because never before has there been such a pure depiction of love than what his family did for him that day. "It was love that saved you. It waslovethat left you and your son alive."
"Left us with a dead family and a lifetime of agony," he says, blankly.
I hold onto him for dear life, tears for the teenage boy who was left with a body to heal, a kingdom to rebuild, and a son to raise trickle down my cheeks. "Thank you for sharing that with me, Rexxan."
"I just can't say that word to you. As soon as I say it, something bad will happen to you. I’ll lose you. That's just how it'll go."
"I understand," I whisper, because I do now.
"I don't know how or why the gods chose me to survive,” he mutters, a haunted look in his eye. "Hellyxx and my mother were burned far less badly than me, but I survived. It's a cruel punishment, for me to have lived while all those around me died. Six months later, when I finally regained the ability to walk again, I was expected to give a speech to the public. And do you know what the people started to call me?"
"What?" I ask, with my eyes on his like there is no one in the world but us.
"They called me the luckiest man on earth." He shakes his head as if overcome with rage. "Lucky. That's what they see. It took seven healers to pin me down every night. I'd lost my voice from screaming most days, and my advisors asked me to give a speech on howluckyI felt." He shrugs like he can’t bear to talk about it for one more second. "Anyway. That's a little explanation of why I'm deeply unlikeable. Let's get you ready to go."
"You're not unlikeable," I say, into his chest as we stand in the centre of that dusty, badly-lit room. "Rexxan, you're my favourite person in the world."
"I don't want you to go. I could lock you in my prison and stop you going, Rennalya."
"I know you could, but I'm asking you not to." This man has some serious issues with not being allowed to do as he wants. But so do I. This task was made for me. Ihaveto do it.
