The Return to Irithara (Children of the Sun Book 2)

“So, this whole time, you’ve been only pretending to be on Relioth’s side?” Mel asked, still very shocked by this development. Even though hours had gone by since Kaleth had shown the whole world what Relioth had done, Mel had trouble believing it. He was incredibly relieved, of course, but still.

How had Kaleth managed to pretend for so long, especially since Relioth knew how to look into and manipulate the minds of others? Hadn’t he found it odd that Kaleth wasn’t letting him look in his?

“Yes,” Kaleth replied, staring into his coffee. He was wearing his usual ensemble, minus the suit jacket, instead of the armor, and Mel was really grateful for that. Seeing Kaleth in anything bearing Relioth’s symbol had been disturbing. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I couldn’t.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it, man,” Rayni said from where she was sitting opposite Kaleth. “We get it. Relioth could have read our minds.”

They were in a very nice room in the Citadel, which Mel didn’t really understand the purpose of. He’d thought the Citadel was only for political stuff, but it seemed that wasn’t true. Everything around them was ornate, including the table the three of them were sitting at. Light orange walls surrounded them, giving the room a calming feel which was exactly what Mel needed after what had happened with Relioth.

It was a little ironic that the fact that they didn’t fight Relioth at all only made him more nervous and on edge. Mel kept expecting him to show up at any moment and attack them, so he did what he usually did when he was nervous and had the opportunity to—he ate something very sweet.

In this case, tea with so much sugar in it that it refused to dissolve fully. Mel would have eaten the sugar without the tea, but Kaleth had given him a strange look when he had been about to put a spoonful of sugar into his mouth, so he’d ended up putting it in the beverage instead. He wasn’t even sure what kind of tea it was—he couldn’t tell through all that sugar.

“You, um, do know I didn’t mean what I said back in Carcer, right?” Kaleth asked Rayni, looking guiltier with every word he said, and Mel quickly joined him in that. He’d completely forgotten about that. Only half a day of being Rayni’s brother, and he was already bad at it.

Rayni snorted and waved her hand. “I’m not stupid, Kal. You told me that just to get me to attack you. That was a really crazy move. You know that, right? In fact, this whole thing was one crazy move.”

Kaleth chuckled quietly. “I just took advantage of the situation. Relioth is very…sure of himself. It never even occurred to him that I could break through his control.”

“I think that’s called being arrogant,” Rayni corrected, munching on one of the cookies that were on the table. Mel had tried one, but it hadn’t been sweet enough for him. “I’m still angry we didn’t kill him, though.”

Kaleth nodded with a grim expression, and Mel stared at his two friends in shock. He’d understand wanting to capture or imprison Relioth, but kill him? And with such a casual tone, too?

Sure, Relioth had killed a lot of people, but that still seemed a little harsh when they had the means to keep him powerless now. It wasn’t like a month ago when they’d had no choice. Although Mel hadn’t particularly liked that plan, either.

“It doesn’t matter, though,” Kaleth said. “He can’t do anything anymore. Not after I posted that video on every single one of the Citadel’s official social media accounts.”

“Did you really need to do that? I think everyone saw it already.”

“Relioth destroyed the projector before the video ended, so there’s a couple more minutes that weren’t shown.”

“Minutes?” Rayni exclaimed, sounding more excited than surprised.

“Relioth talks too much,” Kaleth said, shaking his head in annoyance. Even though Mel had already known this, a sense of relief washed over him as he was once again reminded that Kaleth didn’t like or agree with Relioth. It would still probably take him a while to get that through his head.

“Where is Mereria?” Kaleth asked, clearly doing his best to keep his voice neutral. Mel looked at him guiltily. They probably should have warned him that Mereria was possessing his sister, but that had been about the last thing Mel had been thinking about at the time.

“What, you’re asking us?” Rayni raised an eyebrow. “You were the one who saw her last.”

“So she hasn’t returned to you?”

“Nope,” Rayni replied, eating another cookie.

“I must have injured her more than I meant to,” Kaleth said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin.

“How are you, uh, dealing with that?” Mel asked carefully. He kind of expected Kaleth to yell at him, but that didn’t happen. However, Mel sort of wished it had because seeing Kaleth sad and defeated was much worse than seeing him angry.

“When I found out she was possessing Edras, I…I wanted to get Mereria out of her, but then Mereria let Edras speak to me directly.” He sighed and downed his coffee. “She said she likes being Mereria’s host.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Mel at the same time as Rayni exclaimed: “What the hell?”

“How could anyone want that?” Rayni continued, and Mel silently agreed. But maybe this was something that was possible to understand only after having experienced it. Mel would hardly get an opportunity to figure that out, though, with him not actually having a physical form. Or was the body he was in his actual physical form?

Why was everything so confusing?

“I have no idea,” Kaleth told Rayni, his shoulders slumping. “She said something about finally having a purpose in life. One would think running a multi-billion business would do that fine on its own.”

“I’m sorry, Kaleth,” said Rayni, a sympathetic look on her face. “But…at least she’s happy, right?”

“I suppose.” If Mereria isn’t just making Edras think she’s happy.

Mel blinked as once again Kaleth’s thoughts somehow made their way into his head. It seemed to only happen when they were around each other, and it also seemed to be completely random. Mel wondered if Kaleth could hear parts of his thoughts as well.

“Who’s in charge of the Umbra right now?”

“Rayni,” Mel answered without hesitation, which made his sister startle.

“Wha-what now?” she asked with alarm, which was definitely not what Mel had wanted to cause.

“Well, everyone listens to you now, so I thought—” Mel began to explain hesitantly, but Rayni didn’t let him finish.

“I’m not a leader, Mel.”

“Yes, you are,” Kaleth argued and sighed once more. I never imagined that what I say has any effect on her.

“Why did you choose Kara over me, then?”

Kaleth rubbed his eyes. “Because Kara was expecting I’d pick her. If I didn’t, it would just cause more conflict between you. You have the potential to be a leader, you just don’t usually show that quality until you have to.”

Rayni frowned at him and folded her arms. She didn’t seem to be happy about Kaleth analyzing her. Mel was glad Kaleth agreed with him, though—Rayni would never listen to Mel in this situation.

“Where is Kara, anyway? And Alor and Nef?”

Mel exchanged a look with Rayni. Thankfully, she seemed to understand that he wanted her to explain this one.

“Well, Alor and Nef are back at an Umbra base along with their mother. Oh, yeah, forgot to mention, their mother led us to Mereria.”

Kaleth’s expression soured. Did Orina and Kaleth not like each other? Maybe it had something to do with whatever problem Alor had with Kaleth. Mel didn’t want to ask Kaleth, though. He hadn’t been very happy about talking about the issue before. Maybe Rayni knew what the problem was.

“And Kara?”

“She kinda left,” Rayni said, shrugging helplessly.

“I’m sorry?”

“She gave up. We weren’t making much progress at the time. But maybe she’ll turn up again now that Relioth is taken care of.”

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence which Rayni used to stuff more cookies into her mouth. Mel was starting to wonder if stress-eating was a trait in their family.

“But, on a more positive note,” Rayni said once her mouth was empty again, “turns out me and Mel are siblings.”

“Oh, yes, right, you’re twins,” Kaleth said as if he’d only now remembered. The other two stared at him in shock.

“You knew?” Why hadn’t Kaleth told them about that?

“Relioth used you two as an example when he explained to me how the newer Eternals are made,” Kaleth explained, grimacing slightly. “Sorry, I should have told you. I just…forgot.”

Mel scowled at Kaleth, for once feeling a little angry with him. How could he just forget such an important thing? Then again, he had been dealing with a lot at the time, pretending to be helping Relioth and lying to everyone including Mel at that point…. Actually, now that Mel thought about it a bit more, under how much stress had Kaleth been this past month when any tiny mistake could mess everything up?

Mel looked at his sugar-filled tea, now angry with himself. He wanted to give Kaleth a hug now instead, but the table was in the way. And he’d probably hugged Kaleth for much longer than acceptable today already. Kaleth had actually had to tell Mel to let go of him after he’d refused to end the embrace after Relioth had disappeared. That had hurt a little, but Mel understood. Kaleth wasn’t good at handling these things, especially around a large group of people.

Rayni didn’t seem to share these feelings though. She looked pretty mad, in fact. “Are you kidding me? You knew how this whole thing works, and you didn’t tell us?”

“I didn’t have a way to let you know because I didn’t know where you were. And I was also very busy,” Kaleth defended himself with a very annoyed tone of voice. “Speaking of which, do you think you could get the Umbra to help me?”

“I guess?” Rayni said, shrugging slightly. “Help with what?”

“I’m going to lead an attack on Aleara soon. We need to kill Irif before she can create her own Eternals, and I could use more soldiers.”

“That’s not funny,” Rayni said after a moment of silence, and Kaleth looked at her seriously.

“I wasn’t joking.”

Mel just stared at Kaleth with his mouth hanging open. Kaleth was planning on flying all the way to Aleara and attacking the palace? Even though Mel didn’t know much about Irithara, he did know that the palace was heavily armed against Eternals, otherwise Relioth would have destroyed it already. How could Kaleth assume he would survive such an attack?

“There’s a rebel force of Eternals in Irithara I’m in contact with whose mission is to kill Irif, so we’ll join forces. Although the attack was originally planned to take place in two more months. Yris will be happy to hear there’s a change of plan.”

Mel had no idea who Yris was, but judging by Kaleth’s tone, he didn’t like them.

“But why didn’t you let Relioth help you, then?” Mel asked, confused. This sounded incredibly dangerous, so having Relioth on Kaleth’s side would be a very big advantage.

“Oh, well, I lied to you a little when I said Relioth wanted to only kill Irif,” Kaleth admitted, looking at Mel apologetically. “His goal was to kill every Eternal in Irithara, which would no doubt lead to an incredible number of innocent people dying as well.”

“Why would you lie about that?”

Kaleth sighed. “I thought that maybe you wouldn’t take so many risks if you thought all Relioth wanted was to kill Irif. It clearly didn’t work.”

“You never told me that,” Rayni said, looking questioningly over at Mel, who shrunk back into his chair. He’d completely forgotten to tell her after what had happened in Carcer. And now he felt terrible.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kaleth said, making Rayni focus on him instead. Mel couldn’t be more grateful for that. “It was a lie anyway, and I’m glad you brought the Umbra here. I’m honestly not sure I’d manage to kill Relioth on my own.”

Mel’s heart clenched painfully at that. So did that mean Kaleth might have died if they hadn’t shown up? Mel didn’t want to imagine that, but he couldn’t stop himself. Now he was really glad they’d come here.

“With Relioth out of the picture, and Irif dead, we’ll hopefully finally be able to put an end to this ridiculous conflict,” Kaleth finished.

Mel and Rayni exchanged another look. Mel was actually a little surprised to see Rayni so skeptical. Wasn’t she usually behind crazy-sounding plans like this? Not that Kaleth’s was that crazy, just very dangerous. Irithara had othrin bullets, after all, and most likely a lot of them.

“You realize there’s gods know how many Eternals other than those two on the planet, right?”

Kaleth smiled. “Yeah, I’m aware. But with Relioth gone, they have no one to follow, so I doubt they’ll try something anytime soon. They really have a problem with organizing.”

“You really thought this through, huh?” Rayni asked, still sounding skeptical, although she did also sound a little bit impressed.

“I always think everything through,” Kaleth replied and gave Rayni a look of annoyance when she laughed. “Will you try to convince the Umbra to go with me?”

“Yeah, sure,” Rayni said unhappily. “But I’m going too.”

“Me too,” said Mel. Rayni and Kaleth gave him stern looks immediately.

“No,” they said at the same time, and Mel’s shoulders slumped.

“Why not?”

“We don’t want you to get hurt. Or worse,” said Kaleth, and Rayni nodded, suddenly completely serious. Mel wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her look like that before, and he couldn’t say he liked it.

“Well, I don’t want you to get hurt,” Mel argued, looking at the two of them pleadingly before hanging his head. When he heard both of them sigh, though, hope filled him immediately.

“Fine, you can come with us,” Kaleth said in defeat. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I promise,” Mel said, grinning at Kaleth, who smiled back. It was such a small thing, yet it made his heart race all the same.

When Rayni left to go talk to the other Umbra, Mel used that as an excuse to be alone with Kaleth. Mostly for the other man’s benefit. Mel had noticed that Kaleth was much more likely to have an emotional conversation when they were alone, and he wanted to make sure Kaleth was doing okay.

Kaleth was clearly very worried and for good reason. He wanted to go kill Irif in her own palace, and if Kaleth got shot too many times, even as powerful as he was, he would die. Or at the very least he would become too weak to fight, which was maybe worse. Mel had heard stories about what Irif did to people she hated, and Kaleth was going to be on that list soon enough.

He tried focusing on Kaleth’s mind again, even though he expected to hit a wall once more. Surprisingly, though, that wasn’t the case. There was still a wall around his thoughts, but not Kaleth’s feelings. What Mel came in contact with was a mess of nervousness and dread, but also happiness and excitement.

That was a rather strange mix, especially considering that if Mel hadn’t used his powers, he would never be able to tell. Kaleth’s face was just as neutral as ever with a tiny hint of a smile whenever he looked over at Mel.

While that was incredibly flattering, Mel wanted to see that smile get bigger. Toothy grins really suited Kaleth, but they barely ever appeared, and that made Mel sad. It was a little silly to be sad over this, but Kaleth deserved to be happy. He’d had such a sad, complicated life, and it made Mel angry that it continued to be that way.

He blinked, realizing that he didn’t really know that much about Kaleth’s past to have such a clear idea of it. Not because he didn’t care—he cared a lot—but because Kaleth shared very little.

Once again Mel wished he understood how that bond of theirs worked, so he could use it to understand Kaleth better.

“Are you okay? You’ve been frowning at that tablecloth for about five minutes,” Kaleth told him with a smirk.

“Huh?” Mel asked, blinking up at him. “Oh, sorry, just thinking.”

Thankfully, Kaleth didn’t ask what he’d been thinking about. “I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, as well.”

He said it so softly, Mel wondered if he had been even supposed to hear it, but he had, and now he couldn’t help but ponder what Kaleth had been thinking about. So he just asked.

Kaleth seemed a little surprised, but he did answer. “Oh, um, about us—er, I mean the soul bond. The soul bond.” Kaleth scratched the back of his neck, unsuccessfully trying to hide the fact that he was blushing. “Do you want more tea?”

He didn’t wait for Mel to answer and was already getting up and heading to the electric kettle that was on a table next to the kitchenette in the corner.

I’m forty and I’m acting like a teenager. I swear I wasn’t this awkward around Teran, and that was twenty years ago.

Mel really felt bad about listening in on Kaleth’s thoughts, but he couldn’t help it. Kaleth was pretty much screaming them at him, and Mel just wasn’t strong enough to ignore them. And after hearing that, Mel’s chest was fluttering with excitement. Did this mean Kaleth really liked him back? He’d heard Kaleth deny it, but that had been said to Relioth. And why else would he be comparing being around Mel with being around Teran?

For some reason he was feeling braver than usual, and he wanted to figure this out, so he got up and walked over to Kaleth gingerly, as if walking up to him too fast would startle him. The man didn’t move apart from rummaging through the tea collection. Mel could now pick up on his nervousness even without directly focusing on his emotions, and Mel really disliked that he was the cause of it.

He put his hand over Kaleth’s, which stilled his movements and made him look at Mel, but at the same time it made him more flustered. Mel had to admit that looking into Kaleth’s deep green eyes from this up close wasn’t leaving him calm either, but it did make him realize that Kaleth had a few light freckles on and around the bridge of his nose. He’d never noticed that before. Probably because Kaleth usually didn’t let Mel get so near him.

“Y-you don’t have to make me tea,” stammered Mel, removing his hand. His previous confidence had all but disappeared, but he couldn’t move away from Kaleth anyway. “I can eat the sugar without it.”

Kaleth’s expression suggested he was doing his best not to say anything concerning that topic. Mel really didn’t understand why Kaleth had such a problem with Mel eating raw sugar, but he was clearly trying his best not to ruin it for him, which warmed Mel’s heart.

I can’t believe we reached the point where I can’t deny him anything. Especially not when he has that kicked puppy look. If something happens to him in Irithara, I’ll never forgive myself.

Mel almost let out a sad laugh. That was the exact same reason he wanted to go to Irithara in the first place, and the exact same way he felt about it. Mel wondered if Kaleth could hear his thoughts at random as well. He had to, right?

Which begged the question: just how much had he heard already?

They were still staring at each other, neither of them daring to move. The kettle had already finished boiling the water, but Mel had barely noticed that. And then Mel did the unthinkable—he leaned in and pressed his lips against Kaleth’s.

He wasn’t even sure how it happened. It was like he hadn’t even been in control of his body when he did it. Mel had just felt like kissing Kaleth, so he did, and now he was fully regretting it. Kaleth hadn’t done anything except for tensing up, but Mel was too afraid to open his eyes to see the glare Kaleth was no doubt giving him.

Mel really should have known better. Kaleth could barely handle hugs from him, much less this. Wishing that he could teleport himself away like Relioth, Mel was about to pull away, finally finding the strength to do so, but then Kaleth buried his fingers into the hair on the back of Mel’s head and kissed him back.

It wasn’t exactly how Mel had imagined kissing felt like, but that was probably because he had no idea what he was doing while Kaleth clearly did, which made the whole experience rather unbalanced. And a little embarrassing given Mel was the one who started it.

Still, despite his lack of experience, Mel poured every ounce of respect and love he had for Kaleth and received the same in return. Except it was so overwhelming and powerful, it made him dizzy. And it didn’t take long for Mel to figure out why. Kaleth wasn’t just trying to express how he felt through the kiss, he was also broadcasting his feelings right into Mel’s head, something that was definitely not a usual part of this activity.

The kiss ended soon after, leaving Mel dazed, out of breath, but also incredibly happy. It was really weird, but he couldn’t stop smiling right now. Feeling first hand just how much Kaleth cared about him was still hard for him to process, but it was amazing. He just hoped he’d managed to get across just how much Kaleth meant to him too.

Judging by the wide grin on Kaleth’s face, he probably had.

His eyes were glowing a little, but they were still clearly green.

“You really were serious when you said I mean a lot to you, eh?” Kaleth asked, his voice not nearly as composed as it usually was.

“I wouldn’t lie about that,” Mel replied seriously, still smiling.

There was a moment of silence between them, but this one wasn’t even a bit awkward. They just stared into each other’s eyes for a bit, completely content. At least until Kaleth broke eye contact.

“I, uh, didn’t realize you were taller than me.”

Oh, right, Mel had almost forgotten this was still Kaleth after all of that, and that there was just so much emotional expression he could manage. But Mel didn’t mind—he’d already gotten so much more of it than he’d been expecting, and he would never want to make Kaleth uncomfortable and push him beyond what he could deal with, so he humored him and laughed.

“Just by a little,” Mel assured Kaleth, who shook his head and huffed out a laugh. His eyes scanned Mel’s clothes, and his smile morphed into a frown.

“There’s still a couple hours before my usual check in with Yris. How about we finally get you some new clothes?” Kaleth suggested, evening out the strings of Mel’s hoodie. “I can buy you a soda on the way if you still want something sweet.”

“Oh, I’ve never had that,” Mel said with excitement and Kaleth gawked at him.

“How is that even—oh, nevermind, let’s just go.”

Even though Mel still didn’t really understand why he needed new clothes, it meant spending more time with Kaleth, so he had no problem with it. He just hoped Kaleth wouldn’t make him wear a suit.