Episode 94: Butterfly Conspiracy (Konrad)

He stretched his leg across the face of the trellis and felt the supports below tremble under his shifting weight.

The butterfly was so close, so dear, so important in this quest to find Camilla.

“Come on,” he coaxed it. “Come to Konrad.”

It flitted away.

If only he were a butterfly too, he could interview the swallowtail, ask it where it spent its afternoons. He knew the secret to Camilla’s absence lay with the butterflies, in all their beauty.

Not only the butterflies, but the swallowtails. Why else would that same blue grace their wings?

He felt, rather than heard, Nell’s presence. The beating of his wings disturbed the butterflies into leaving the trellis altogether.

When Nell’s head was level with Konrad’s he asked, “What are you doing?”

It wasn’t like Nell to cut to the chase so quickly. He often preferred to circle the matter at hand until it became obvious to the other person.

Nell wasn’t a butterfly either. Konrad felt the immense grief, the weight of his own failures, as he realized that neither of them ever would be a butterfly. There was no chance of interviewing the butterflies as fairies.

“Looking for Camilla,” Konrad said.

He did his best not to cry. It wasn’t something he made a habit of, crying, and he didn’t intend to start now.

But he’d lost Nell. He’d lost his presence in his head, that constant familiarity that marked their connection to each other.

“In a garden?” Nell asked.

Konrad gestured to one of the swallowtails, which had settled on a flower a few feet above him on the trellis. “She’s very butterfly-like in nature;” he explained, “I thought studying them might give me a clue.”

Nell regarded the swallowtail, and the swallowtail ignored him.

“Are you concerned she may have gone through a metamorphosis?” Nell clarified. Konrad recognized his attempt to sense Konrad’s logic, and so answered in a straightforward way.

“Tracking behavior patterns.” He looked at Nell, curious if his love saw what he saw. “You may have insight too.”

“She was kidnapped,” Nell said flatly. “Her behavior is irrelevant.” He said it, but he looked through the plants nonetheless. He had a gentle, kind heart at the core of all his gruffness.

Konrad leaned over to kiss him and nearly fell as the trellis bowed and straightened under his weight. He wondered why they made the things inverted, with the majority of their weight and beauty near the top of the structure.

Aadya may have done so on purpose, to spite him. Perhaps she was involved in Camilla’s kidnapping too. Perhaps she felt threatened by the final living heir to the Sylph throne.

No. He’d seen the video of her leaving the palace.

Unless it was a butterfly conspiracy. Perhaps Aadya had used flowers to lure them into the palace, into the dungeon, so that they could fabricate a new security tape.

Or perhaps they’d learned to fly in a formation which would resemble Camilla in black-and-white video footage.

Very, very sneaky.

He put Aadya at the top of his suspects list. She had motive and means.

“But where did she go when she left the palace grounds?” Konrad mused. “A meadow or an orchard.” He met Nell’s soft eyes.

He wondered whether the inverted trellis trap could perhaps support both their weight. He had never wanted Nell so much in his life – his scent, not the barn and animals one, but the piney one beneath that. His smooth skin, his warmth, his pliable lips, his arms wrapped tight around Konrad.

“I had hoped to catch a swallowtail;” he went on, “the blue is nearly identical to her eyes.”

He positioned himself to reach toward Nell, to close the gap between them, when Nell said a series of alarming words.

“Zero told me you’re being treated for magical manipulation,” he said, oh so deeply gentle. “When I died, some sort of fog lifted. We’ll have to remarry when you feel better. It’s a good thing you already proposed.”

Konrad froze against the trellis and replayed the words.

Anyone else, except perhaps Spence, who told him something like this, he would dismiss it and be wary of them.

This was Nell. His Nell, the man whose personal sacrifice for the good of the kingdom had been nearly as drastic as Drey’s.

Nell loved this family. He loved Konrad, despite the harrowing reality they lived in, in which Konrad could never be a butterfly.

He breathed and met Nell’s gaze.

Carefully, he asked him, “Is something the matter with me?”

“You’re looking inside a trellis for a swallowtail because of their eyes and a butterfly because of her personality,” he said.

As though that was an answer. He scanned through Nell’s words in search of the one piece that Nell believed justified his suspicion.

Of course he was on the trellis – where else would he find a butterfly?

His search for swallowtails because the decorative blue pattern on their wings matched the blue of Camilla’s eyes – surely there were other butterflies with that same tint of blue, but none that he’d seen in his travels around the garden.

His connection of butterflies and Camilla’s core character seemed reasonable too.

Yet Nell looked at him, waiting.

“Perhaps,” Nell added, “You should trace your own steps, since you both currently think alike.”

He felt a swelling of pride and hope; Nell thought he was butterfly-like?

Perhaps he could become one, with enough time and patience. He was certain they would confirm to him that Aadya had taught them how to mimic Camilla.

Or perhaps…

Yes. Camilla had always been a collection of butterflies. She disappeared so easily because all the butterflies that constituted her person could dissipate.

He might be looking at part of her right now, on the trellis.

His arm reached above him, toward the swallowtail above his head. Camilla. He would capture all of the swallowtails in the garden and then put them in one of the prison cells and work to coax Camilla to resume her fairy form.

“Comet,” Nell nudged, using his nickname for Konrad.

Nell had said that Konrad thought like a butterfly as well. Perhaps Konrad was nothing more than a collection of ruddy brown moths. Nell would be monarchs, resplendent and king-like in all that he did, with his soft skin and his soft eyes.

His sword! That was the problem. Of course the trellis couldn’t support his weight while he held onto it.

He couldn’t take on his butterfly form while he wore the sword either.

Someone had trapped him into it. Long ago, when he was still a child, someone had passed him a dull steel sword and pinned him to this body, this fairy body which could never become a butterfly.

No.

He had chosen the sword.

He’d chosen to train, to distract himself from his punishment, his life-sentence of banishment to an island of men.

He wasn’t bound to this body, because he wasn’t capable of becoming a butterfly. He was bound to this body because it was him and he was it.

Something was the matter with his mind.
“Killing you helped when it was done to you?” he asked Nell.

“No, killing me broke my connection to you,” Nell stated.

Ah. Nell must only be capable of becoming a butterfly when he and Konrad shared the mental connection created by their pixie marriage. His death the other day had severed the connection, left Konrad lost and alone without his Nell…

“Although,” Nell said, a lighter tone as he continued, “I may be able to take you this time…you’d probably feel better. You could visit your dead betrothed.”

Khale. His other love, from long ago.

Khale, who had died for Konrad’s actions.

Konrad had let Khale die, he’d let Nell die, he’d let Drey die.

It was his turn. He squared his shoulders, ready to face justice. “Alright.”

It would be a relief to unshoulder his burdens and become a person who was dead rather than a person with responsibilities, a person with a leaden past.

“What’s your favorite way to die in your dreams?” Nell queried.

In his nightmares, it was always Khale…hurt or angry or tormented. Always Khale, always a sword through his diaphragm and into his heart.

Always revenge. Evidence that Khale couldn’t or wouldn’t forgive him.

Khale wasn’t a killer. Neither was Nell. Truthfully. Konrad should take his own life and save Nell the trouble.

If he flew, high enough, he could make his own death. One fall. “Flying,” he told Nell.

Nell offered his hand, which Konrad clasped gratefully. “Thank you.” They flew up, and up, holding hands.

“You shouldn’t,” Nell warned. Nell’s pink dragon Calamity flew up below them in just such a way that they found themselves seated, facing each other, on the dragon’s back.

Konrad wondered whether butterflies came in pink or whether the dragon could be trusted.

“You aren’t dying,” Nell announced. “You’re going to fight through this spell.”

There was no way to leap now and be assured of death; Nell or his dragon would break his fall.

“What?” he demanded, too harsh.

Nell met his eyes. He seemed to be trying to convey something important. “If you die,” Nell explained with a patient tone, “you’ve accepted that they can beat you. You’d set a precedent for giving up, and you wouldn’t be you anymore. You can fight through this. You can fight through anything.”

Konrad sifted.

If he fought this, he wouldn’t lose any of the ruddy brown butterflies which constituted his person. If he gave in, some would be lost.

No. That wasn’t it. This was deeper than that. He shook his head, an effort to shake away the fixation on butterflies. Shaking his head did nothing.

Something was the matter with his mind.

He pushed against it.

“I don’t know how,” he confessed. “I don’t feel like anything is wrong. I…” he breathed in this fresh air from this elevation. Perhaps that would clear his mind. “Camilla is like a butterfly. Following one to learn from it makes sense.”

“Your focus is off,” Nell told him. “You know butterflies. You love butterflies.” He reached for Konrad’s hand, possibly in an effort to secure his attention. “Following a mouse to its food does not teach you where it nests.”

Of course not. It told you where it ate. Did mice eat butterflies? Probably not. But birds did. Following a butterfly showed you what birds ate, because birds ate butterflies, even the beautiful swallowtails.

“You’re saying,” Konrad struggled to push the thought to the surface, “you’re saying Camilla is a butterfly, but a raven stole her. I need to catch a raven, not a butterfly.” He thought about ravens. They were so different from butterflies. They ate carrion, for one. They did not appear to have a penchant for flowers or nectar. They did not metamorphose. “What color are Tarragon’s eyes?” he asked Nell. He couldn’t seem to remember, for himself.

“Comet,” Nell murmured. He turned Konrad’s hand over and studied the palm, the lines etched in time, the markings and calluses that made it Konrad’s hand. “It’s not about what they are like. It’s about the details. You forgot the details.”

“No, I haven’t,” Konrad defended. He listed to Nell all the details that seemed like they mattered – the circumstances of the rebels’ departure from the Salamander palace years ago, the twins’ recognition of certain palace staff, the circumstances of Camilla’s disappearance, possible enemies who would target Camilla – the list went on for some time.

“How will you find Camilla, looking for sparrows when the guy is working for Ionia, a woman you’ve met? When Zero has wicca? You’re wasting time.”

Konrad looked up. Something was deeply the matter with his mind. He could feel it. Wasting time. Camilla, Indigo, Zero…they all relied on him to solve this mystery and save Camilla if he could manage it.

He knew Ionia. He knew her obsessions and tendencies and brand of familial zealotry.

“I’ve met Ionia,” he agreed. Of course he had. He knew her well enough to guess at all her intent. He could estimate, even, the idiosyncrasies of her behaviors.

“I’ve met her too,” Nell agreed. “Bentley, when he has a feeling, has to ask the right question. You usually see the question. You can’t now, but you can still ask them. Or I can.”

Konrad shook off Nell’s plans; they wouldn’t work so well as this: “I know where they are,” he declared to Nell.

“The loft?”

The butterflies threatened to return. He had no idea what Nell meant by that.. “Which loft?” he asked.

“It was a joke,” Nell said. “Where do you think they are?”

He didn’t think, he knew. With certainty. He knew precisely how to find them, and he had a series of nagging memories which gave him a suspicion of the results his search would yield.

“She’s not a raven,” Konrad explained. He felt a surge of energy at the clarity of this thought. “She’s a wolf, and wolves make dens.”

“Where?” he asked.

“We need to inventory existing houses,” he thought aloud. “She’s not going to build homes; that would give her away. She’ll take what already exists. Abandoned homes, empty places. It will have to be a quiet inventory.” He didn’t want any of Ionia’s spies knowing what he’d realized. “We’ll need to go through work requests and find which houses never ask.”

Relief washed over Nell’s face before humor took its place. “Good. Now, let’s go get some snow cones.”

Konrad tilted forward, hands on Nell’s thighs, and kissed him in thanks. “I may need your help again,” he warned. “I’ve pushed the fog back, but it’s still there.”

It loomed, like a sandstorm in the desert.

For just this moment, and hopefully for some time to come, he held it at bay.

Nell returned the kiss with one of his own and knotted his fingers in Konrad’s hair.

They were in the air, flying together on a dragon. He knew how to find Camilla. There were no butterflies in his mind.

Nell’s patience and goodness astonished him at times, but today he reveled in it.

“I’ll be here,” Nell promised, shifting away from Konrad. His eyes lit up with amusement. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

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