Chapter 42: The Past II
---
Calhoun burst out laughing.
Cassian blinked at him. "What's funny?"
"You are." Calhoun wiped at the corner of his eye. "All that talk about chances, like you know exactly what I've been through. And then you sigh and call it a burden."
The corner of Cassian's mouth lifted. The demi-human across from him wasn't half bad.
"Fair enough. Let me ask you something, then." He tilted his head. "Demi-humans are marked by their animal features, like tails, claws, long ears, beast-like noses. But you have almost none of that, apart from the canines. I've never heard of that."
Calhoun smirked. "Most of us do have them. Ears, tails, claws, the whole set. I was born different." His smile thinned. "My father was human."
Cassian wasn't surprised. He had suspected as much. A human parent would explain the missing features, and it would explain something else too.
"I can only imagine the grief that caused," he said, and his tone had changed.
"My father moved into the clan's village for my mother," Calhoun said. "They never accepted him. He stayed anyway, and he bore every insult and every cruelty, because he loved her."
Cassian leaned forward without noticing. "And then?"
"Then I was born. My parents' pride and joy, and my clan's greatest disgrace." Calhoun stared at the stone floor. "Everyone hated me, even the kids my age, just for being different. Then the whole clan turned on us. The only thing stopping them from killing my father and me was the chief, my grandfather. When he died, all hell broke loose." He paused. "My mother gave her life so my father and I could escape."
The cave was silent. The violet card flickered on the walls.
" A classic hero's tragedy," Cassian thought. " The boy escapes death, grows strong, and one day returns to take back his home."
"Will you ever go back?"
"No."
The answer came too fast, and Cassian noticed. He frowned and went still, a card he'd already turned over once again showing a different face. Something in the story didn't sit right. A piece was missing, and he could feel its absence like a gap in a deck.
"Calhoun," he said slowly. "Your grandfather was the chief when you were born?"
"Yes. Why?"
"When he died, who was supposed to take over, according to your clan's customs?"
Calhoun hesitated. These questions made no sense to him. He had made peace with all of this years ago, and he couldn't see what else there was to dig up.
"My grandfather only had one child, my mother," he said. "In a case like that, the title passes to her mate. I thought about that too, back then. But my father was never made chief. I assumed it went to someone else."
"Let me go through this again," Cassian said. His eyes had gone sharp, and the tired boy who had sighed a moment ago seemed to disappear. "Your clan hated your father but couldn't touch him, because the chief protected you. Then the chief died. By your customs the title should have gone to your father, which would have made him the most powerful man in the clan, and untouchable. Instead, the title never reached him. And within days, the whole clan turned on your family."
"Yes, but..."
"That's a strange order of events, don't you think?" Cassian went on, almost to himself. "If they hated him, why wait? Because the chief's protection stopped them. If the chief's death was natural, why did the title vanish before anyone could hand it over? And why did the clan move against you all at once, as though they'd been told when to start?"
Calhoun's mouth opened and closed. His fingers curled around the spear lying across his lap.
"Think about who gained," Cassian said quietly. "Your father, as chief, would have been protected. A half-human heir would have been protected too. Someone needed him gone before that title could land on him. Someone needed all of you gone."
He watched understanding creep across Calhoun's face, slowly, like frost over glass.
"Unless..." Calhoun whispered. His eyes widened, and the blood drained from his cheeks. "Unless there was..."
"A coup," they said together.