Chapter Eleven #2
The room bursts back into action as soon as he is gone.
Diarmid sits up in his bed, regarding Calli as she joins me at his side.
‘Your brother is very…’ He scratches his head with wrinkled fingers. ‘… commanding.’
Calli chuckles down at him.
‘Surely that’s what you’d expect from the Umbrian king.’
The stable-manager slumps into a faint.
And I can’t say I blame him.
Eliaz does not return to Daegon manor until well after supper time. The slop of the cook’s porridge sits like concrete in my gut whilst I sit with Lillienne, who is now alert and joking at my side. Her usual self, only, muted. In presence and personality.
‘You really need to stop all that weird fussing, Eira. I’ve literally never felt better.’
I roll my eyes. ‘Sure, drained to the point of mortality and you say you feel unchanged by it.’
Lillienne looks to her hands on her lap, smoothing the sheets flat on her legs.
‘All I know is that I was in excruciating pain and now I have been relieved of it. Anything else I will face when it comes, even old age if I must.’
‘I will find a way to fix this, Lillienne. There has to be a way to restore the power, to you. Maybe if we take it direct from the Relic—’
‘That’s treasonous and you know it.’ She shoots me a look of caution. ‘And besides, if there were any way around this, don’t you think he would have already found it?’
I shake my head and lean forward as if it’ll help me convince her of my argument if she can see the desperation on my face better.
‘But that’s just it, what if the answer to all of this lies on our side of the Divide? Then we have a chance of finally finding a solution to this that relieves him of the burden of it all.’
Her eyebrows arch at me.
‘You said he does this to atone for his inability to help his own people when this all began, correct?’
‘That’s what Calli told me,’ I reply.
‘Well, then this is not a burden to him, it is a duty – a responsibility even. You really think in all the decades of him crossing through that Divide all on his own, somehow bringing afflicted Reyheni to Umbra, he wouldn’t have also searched for the answers there too?’
I slump into the chair, lips parted with the lack of words.
She’s right to a certain extent, Eliaz would have had access to a lot of information about the affliction in Reyhen, I mean we have to infer that he found the solution to the side effect of death in some way.
But he did not have access to the Relic itself, or to the abundance of information in the heart of the castle, in the places he would not think – or know – to look.
There is certainly some hope in that, hope that there might be a way of keeping the immortality from draining completely.
We have to at least try to find more answers, because the answer slinking around in the back of my mind scares me too much to speak aloud.
It involves the Divide.
‘I do not know what the king does, and what his end goal is with this all,’ I say, rubbing a hand across my chin.
‘Do you trust him?’ Lillienne asks, eyes searching for signs of uncertainty in the tension of my face.
‘Gods, all this talk of trust is making me nauseous,’ Eliaz’s voice butts in in place of my answer. I direct a scowl at him standing in the hall, leaning on the door frame, hair frizzed and eyes taunting.
Someone has nerve.
‘I would think someone like you wouldn’t even give consideration to any gods, seeing as you’re diametrically opposed to such high beings.’
He doesn’t bite. ‘Calli and Cole are waiting in the parlour for our little meeting. I assume you still care to attend. Perhaps I might even tell you the details of my end goal here. But I am a selfish individual – or at least I remain that way in your eyes.’
I bite down on my tongue until blood pools on my tastebuds, metallic and familiar. Grounding.
‘I find it very interesting you are so vexed by my words but seem to have lost the apology for your behaviour towards me on your way here.’ I get to my feet, watching as he narrows his eyes on me in frustration.
Any of the initial fear I had of him has dispersed into something close to aggravation. He has toyed with my mind, distorted himself into the image of a monster with whatever power it is he holds, and threatened me before multiple witnesses – not to mention without.
But now, despite all of that, all I see before me is a man who will go as far as altering a person’s perception of reality in order to avoid them seeing in him what I catch a glimpse of in this very moment.
A tortured, pathetic, and weak soul. A ghost of the man he was before he sacrificed a part of himself in the name of a grudge.
‘I see no need for an apology on my part,’ his voice is strained, unconvincing.
I stride to him, chin high, lips tight, and don’t stop until I am only inches from him. An intimidation tactic he has used on me many times already. His jaw clenches.
‘That’s quite the damn shame,’ I breathe. ‘Because I don’t know about you, but I find it incredibly difficult to let go of a grudge.’
I push his chest with both hands, and he staggers backward, the element of surprise working deliciously to my advantage, and let him watch me walk down the hall with a stunned look that makes me smug with triumph.
He has no choice but to stomp after me, tearing through the air next to me, seething and irritated. I smirk at the sight.
Eliaz Daegon, I’ve got you figured out.
And two can, most definitely, play at this game.