Chapter Twenty-Seven
With my back to the cauldron and the aftermath of what I just witnessed, I remain leaning against the same wall, arms crossed and biting into my gums until I taste blood as much as I smell it.
Eliaz potters about in silence, the significance of what he has just done hanging heavy in the air.
All this time, he has been using Neyktar and I was a fool not to have seen it before.
To not have even guessed it when Ansel Reyer had mentioned blood magic back in the parlour, the way Eliaz had fallen quiet – his lack of input.
Fuck. It’s all so confusing, the man who wishes to form an alliance, using a kind of magic so wicked in the eyes of the Virtuae Gods – it’s a wonder the gods don’t decide to smite him into oblivion.
The light clinking of glass and metal behind me comes to an abrupt stop. ‘You’re not even going to ask any questions? Seems unlike you.’ He almost sounds annoyed at the fact I haven’t said anything in the last twenty minutes or so.
‘I’ve seen enough,’ I say over my shoulder. ‘I want to leave.’
Looking up at the trapdoor, I feel around in my pockets for the keys, an action I have repeated in vain the whole time I’ve been standing here. Reluctant to try the door and risk looking like an idiot when it doesn’t open for me, I elect to wait here until Eliaz opens it.
‘I’m not done with my—’ he pauses, in search of the right word. ‘—demonstration.’
‘Was that what that was? You can’t expect me to witness what I just did and move on with everything as normal. It’s Neyktar, Eliaz. Blood magic. It feels sinful to even talk about, I don’t care to see any more.’
‘Please.’
That pathetic word I had just screamed at him as he created his dreadful concoction sounds truly pitiful coming from his mouth.
I drop my arms and turn to him. He is sitting, knees up, back against the wall opposite me and his eyes are wide and beseeching and glistening with – tears? The switch to this version of him from the one that had chanted those dreadful incantations is unsettling, to say the least.
There is a vulnerability to him now, the way he stares at me, a shattering to the facade, and I know in this moment, that this is his true form.
The plum hue of tiredness that lines his despairing eyes, the peppering of freckles over his pale skin, the lines of worry deepening in his forehead. He looks now, beautifully, tragically, and wholly – human.
It takes a lot of strength not to get on the ground next to him and comfort him as I did his sister.
Instead, I do what he expects me to do most. I ask a question.
‘Why do it?’ When he doesn’t answer I slide my back down the wall and sit cross-legged on the floor. ‘I can see now how much it pains you, to be the person it makes you, to do what it makes you do. Why do it?’
A single tear falls down his cheek as he turns his gaze to the floor. ‘I had no choice.’
‘We always have a choice. Like I had the choice to let you open up to me, or pry you open myself.’ I sigh, still trying to figure out what to do with this sudden break in his villainous pretence, offering up honesty and self-awareness in place of awkward consolation. ‘And I chose wrong.’
‘They were dying, Eira,’ he says in a trembling whisper. ‘I had to find something that could save my people – my parents. I couldn’t just sit back and watch my family die until I eventually passed too.’
‘But it wasn’t just your responsibility. Your parents, they didn’t try and do something to stop the affliction?’
He shakes his head. ‘My parents placed their faith in the gods, a foolish belief that the gods who got us in this mess would admit they were at fault and pull us out of it. But the Virtuae Gods do not believe in blunders, not of this scale.’
‘So, you took it into your own hands.’
‘I found a way for us to keep our lives – the powers were just an unexpected bonus. But my parents refused to partake, and I tried to show them, with Calli, but something went wrong and—’
My throat dries to sandpaper. ‘Calli’s eyes.’
‘I hadn’t realised that this wasn’t just some untapped power source I had discovered. It was a thing that gives and gives and expects payment in twofold in return. I didn’t know.’
I fall silent, unable to find the right words, if there are any that would do.
Eliaz has spilled the extent of his desperation, the lengths he has gone to find a way to deliver these people from the affliction into a new chance at life.
I saw the way he made that concoction, the Neyktar that he practiced as though he'd done it a thousand times before, the way the fumes had transformed him temporarily.
What I can’t seem to understand is, how he gets the power from it, how it keeps him living.
‘Show me the next step,’ I say. ‘You said you’re not done with the demonstration, and I think I need to see it to fully get the full picture. Show me the next puzzle piece that will help it all click.’
Eliaz swallows hard and rubs his hand over his mouth.
Either out of discomfort or shame, he still does not look at me.
He pushes himself up to his feet with visible effort, brushing any dirt or residue from his trousers before heading back over to the cauldron that now hangs warm over a pile of smouldering ash where the logs had once been.
I don’t bother getting up from the ground, already dirty and getting increasingly tired by the minute. Besides, there’s some dim ember of a feeling pulsing there in my stomach that tells me Eliaz will sit once again, seeing as how much his conjuring up at the cauldron seems to have exhausted him.
And that feeling proves to be true, because after a rattling of glass and metal, he parks himself by my side, back against the wall, still avoiding my inspecting gaze on him.
He sets down the flask of faded red that I had held in my hand an hour ago, and it meets the ground with a resounding chime like a singing gong reverberating from a significant strike.
It is a low and full noise, one that communicates to me that the empty flask has now fulfilled its purpose; it has been filled. With a vile blend of all the ingredients Eliaz threw into the cauldron.
He stares at it, regarding it with the same displeasure I do Odette’s gruel. But his fingers twitch eagerly, that hungering part of him breaking through his restraint. He hates it, that is not difficult to deduce, but he wants it. His body screams its withdrawal.
‘You drink it. Don’t you?’ I say at last. ‘You have to ingest it to activate the power in you.’
The muscles in his jaw clench. ‘Something like that.’
‘And what would happen if you just… didn’t?’
‘I am human. This repulsive elixir stops me from feeling the physical effects of time, meaning I do not die.’ He rolls his head in a circle on his neck and shifts his shoulders, thinking further.
‘I would deteriorate slowly, and around a few days after I last ingested it and it leaves my system entirely, I would proceed to die an excruciating and incredibly dramatic death’
‘Incredibly dramatic sounds like you, right enough,’ I have the audacity to joke, a lapse in awareness of who I talk to, being too used to Lillienne’s company and her extreme sense of humour.
My skin burns red at how inappropriate a thing to say that was, how insensitive and thoughtless.
I bite down on my bottom lip. Hard. Eliaz finally looks at me, light eyebrows knitted together in the middle of his forehead, lips parted with astonishment.
Fuck. Of all the things being carted off to an isolated life in the countryside has done to me, it certainly didn’t have a positive effect on my social skills. They remain abysmal.
To my quiet surprise, Eliaz’s features relax and his lips curl with the ghost of a smile. Amusement shimmers in his eyes.
‘Not as dramatic as what you just witnessed not too long ago. But I have been known to add a certain theatrical flair to otherwise dismal affairs.’
I laugh with pure relief at his reception of my poor attempt at lightening the mood.
It is nice, if not incredibly disorienting, to laugh with the man that made me vomit with fear barely a week ago.
Personal growth on both our parts I’d say.
But it does not change the fact that his power juxtaposes mine in every way possible.
I am not heartless. It is clear to me that Eliaz resents this part of him that comes with survival, and the ability to control and protect.
He does not need me piling my turmoil on top of his own.
I am no saint. We are all sinners in some way or another.
It is how we deal with our sins that defines us, and Eliaz atones with a selflessness that cannot be ignored. He has made a monster of himself in order to make humans out of his people. And above all, he has done it for survival, and for that he cannot be faulted.
I smile at him, closed-lipped but sincere, earning me a grateful one in return. ‘Your book, that’s where you found the recipe for your—’ I wave my hand in circles over the flask. ‘—potion?’
‘It’s certainly not a potion. I think of it more as an elixir of sustenance,’ he replies with his infamous theatrical flair.
‘It is in the book. I found it around half a mile from the Divide, just laying there on a stump of a felled tree. I have never ventured to question it, for fears of where my curiosity might lead me.’
I nod in understanding. ‘It sounds ominous though, you have to admit. A book of sacrilege and dark power just left there in the open for you to find. Seems almost… intentional, does it not?’
‘I will not pretend I am a better person than whoever left it there.’ He shrugs. ‘Besides, if someone truly had ill intentions towards the finder of the book, why give them the very thing that provides them with the power to put up a real fight? Hardly seems logical.’
‘Nothing ever does,’ I impart as though it is the most refined piece of wisdom that could rival that of the Virtuae Gods themselves.
‘I can only be grateful for what it gave me, and I don’t mean this power it gave me.
’ He shakes the notion away with his head.
‘I should have let myself become human and die, as is natural. But what it did provide me with, was time. And I try to use that time to ensure I help as many people as possible to avoid a fate like mine.’
‘Even the most dangerous and governing power can’t overthrow your need to help others,’ I think aloud. ‘That speaks volumes to your character, truly.’
‘Just as your ability to say the worst shit at the worst times speaks to yours,’ he teases with a bump of his shoulder on mine and a smirk.
‘Gods help me,’ is all I can think to say.
In this moment, I want so desperately to ask him about what he said to me this morning in his bedchamber. About my father trying to kill him, about the fact that he only believes now that I wouldn’t attempt it either.
But the enjoyment in his lighter side’s presence stops me before I can give it a second thought. For now, it is nice to know something, and to not-hate the look of Eliaz’s face for once, his cheeks rosy and round with his smile.
‘The gods will do no such thing,’ his voice is still teasing, but his eyes glaze over with sorrow, knowing all too well the truth of his statement. Even if I myself am not ready to admit it.
‘Right.’ I get to my feet, wanting to avoid any sour turn in the conversation, to have at least one pleasant memory of him when I think of who I am working with to save my people.
‘I will leave you to your… uhm… drink.’ I wince at the awkwardness hanging between us.
‘And thank you for giving into my relentless pestering for answers. I certainly feel better.’
He chuckles, looking up at me with genuine enjoyment. ‘For what it’s worth, I am much refreshed also. Perhaps I am in need of some pestering every now and then.’
I breathe a laugh then pivot on my heels, turning to face the ladder, silver rungs not as deadly-looking in this warm light.
‘Wait,’ Eliaz says, moving already to the direction of the cauldron when I look over my shoulder at him with confusion. He walks towards me, tatty leather book in hand, extending it out to me.
‘Oh no, I can’t—’
‘Another gesture of openness, please. Before I change my mind.’
‘I can’t,’ I say, curling my fingers into a ball in reluctance.
‘Please, do. Maybe you will find something in it that can help us in our efforts to stop the affliction, to take down the Divide. Perhaps you’ll find something in it that I am blind to.’
‘No, I mean I actually can’t read it. The book literally bound itself tighter when I touched it earlier, it doesn’t want to be read by me.’
Eliaz looks at me as though it is the height of ridiculousness. ‘Nonsense. Try it,’ he says, thrusting the book into my hands.
I sigh, fingering the end of the rope cord’s frayed edge. ‘Fine.’
I tug on the cord, fully expectant that it’d pull itself from my grip in objection, and when it allows me to unravel it without any issue, I slump in confusion. I can open the book with as much ease as is usual for an inanimate object.
‘Great. That doesn’t make me look insane at all.’ I slam the book shut with annoyance.
Eliaz rolls his eyes, smirking. ‘Must’ve imagined it.’
‘Yeah. That’s what you want me to think.’ I send him a scowl over my shoulder as I make my way to the ladder, rewrapping the rope around the book.
I don’t look back at him again as I climb upwards, book tucked under my arm, but I find myself smiling regardless.
Calli is waiting for me when I push the, thankfully unlocked, trapdoor open, sitting cross-legged on the floor, biting her nails. She straightens up when she sees me, clambering over to me as quick as her body allows.
‘Eira! Please forgive me, Eliaz told me to wait here, and I didn’t want to make anything worse seeing as I’m the one that—’
I throw my arms around her as soon as I am fully into the library, the book clunking to the floor at our knees. She doesn’t question why. The black leather book on the floor tells her all she needs to know. All that I now know.