Chapter Fifty-Two
‘Step aside,’ I instruct Cole as I reach the top of the spiral stairs and find him standing directly in front of the study door, hands rested on his hips. He doesn’t budge.
‘You might want to think about listening to her, Cole.’ Eliaz appears by my side. ‘Unless you wish to be burned to the ground with the door.’
Cole’s head snaps in my direction, eyes narrow tunnels to mine, mouth agape.
I take a step to the side as though he is the one capable of shooting fire, from his severe gaze no less.
‘You’re hardly able to fell a giant slab of oak and iron with a little candlelight. We’re looking to break it open, not lightly toast it.’
Anger roils in my blood, a hot churning of frustration that I have to ball my hands into fists to avoid it escaping my fingertips and heavily toasting the raven-haired bastard of Attanae.
He has the audacity to laugh when he sees how he has riled me, which only causes me to fall deeper into rage.
The furnace of my power sparks awake, crackling into lashing, ravenous flames.
But I will need more than this to get past that godsforsaken door – and the smug, obstacle of a man standing before it. I need to feel more, to accumulate more power.
So, I let it all in. Every repressed feeling. Every shoved down thought. Every painful memory. Every fractured, biting piece of reality.
I allow it all to flood into me, to fill me up like a goblet of acrid, spoiled wine, until my anger is swimming in regrets and sadness and torment and pain. Until I am full to the brim with relentless emotion that I can push outward from my hands.
In the air between me and the door is that round, crackling manifestation of it all. The blue ball of flame that brought down the gates of Grange. My tears hiss as they meet the burning skin of my cheeks.
‘Careful,’ Eliaz warns, knowing the extent of my control. I shake away his caution with my head.
Cole barely has time to dive out the way as I push it with every ounce of strength that I can muster, as far from me as possible.
Trying to be careful has gotten me nowhere.
I am unleashed.
Every vulnerable and shameful part of me hurtles towards the study door, crashing into it with a resounding slam. The force of it shudders through the floor, and I have to grab hold of the wall to keep myself from falling.
And there it is, the smoking portal into my father’s past. Cole clambers to his feet, his face contorted, his mouth almost foaming like a crazed animal, like a granphid ready to pounce. ‘You could’ve killed me!’
Exhausted and dizzied by the exertion of conjuring up my power, I can only bring myself to shrug. He lunges at me, snarling, but Eliaz steps between us before he can reach me.
‘She’s insane!’ He thrashes in the arms of the Umbrian king, claws bared.
‘She wouldn’t have come close to that if you didn’t provoke her,’ Eliaz growls. ‘Consider yourself lucky she had enough grace to aim for the door and not your head.’
He shoves Cole away from him by the shoulders, sending him stumbling backwards on his heels.
I walk towards the gaping hole of the study door, my legs trembling as I will them to keep me upright, unable to bear the thought of my weakness showing in this moment.
Cole’s eyes track me as I pass him, his chest rising and falling with rapid, angry breaths.
I bring my hand out the charred smoking wood, running my fingers over the deliciously hot indents.
‘And I wouldn’t have missed,’ I say before climbing through.
‘Not being very careful.’
‘He has never been worthy of my care.’
But I say this into the study. The room is exactly as it was that day.
A dark, cluttered space, only a small shaft of light streaming in from the window to bring the piles of letters and scattered books into view. The dead fireplace, and the dusted armchair staring into it. The large oak cabinets full of trinkets and more books, all thick with a layer of passed time.
I barely hear Eliaz and Cole as they enter, the sound muffled by the thump of blood and fire in my ears as I approach that red stain on the stone floor next to the desk. I stand on it, hot tears splattering by my feet.
I was foolish enough to grieve him. I let the memory of him cling to me, sink its pointed teeth into my flesh and knaw and knaw until I was the only thing keeping it alive, the only thing sustaining it.
Even after I found out who he truly was, behind his fatherly facade, I let it suck the life from me, desperate not to lose that false version of him I kept real in my mind.
But now, as his blood marks the ground beneath my boots, I rip that leeching memory from me and watch it die as he did, on the ground, whimpering and in pain. ‘You deserve worse, Father. So much worse,’ I whisper through the salt and iron.
‘Eira?’ Eliaz stands at the corner of desk; hands braced on the wood. His gaze is locked on something there, in the centre of it, and I follow his eyeline to whatever it is that has him so dumbfounded.
I hadn’t noticed it when I entered the room, but the desk is empty of all the usual clutter. No tipped inkpots, no crumpled parchments or old crystal decanters of my father’s favoured spirits.
There is only one object lying solitary in the middle of the desk. The swirling detailing, the rusted red of the jagged blade. The flash of gold along the length of it.
The dagger. Sirnet.
‘No.’ I inch backwards, unable to believe the sight of it. ‘It can’t be this easy. It can’t just be here.’
‘You don’t think it is a trap, do you?’ Cole’s voice asks from the direction of the door – or what’s left of it. But when I turn to look at him, I find empty air.
‘Who would do such a thing?’ His words come from behind me this time, low and taunting and again, and yet, he is not there. I scan the study for the source of his voice, my heart racing as I realise that there is no sign of him.
Of the arrogant, bastard son of the emperor.
‘Eira, what’s going on?’ It is Eliaz who asks this, his forehead creased with concern.
‘Cole, he’s—’
‘I’m right here, Eira.’
All the blood drains from me, as I turn my head slowly to my left, to find the raven-haired man smiling back at me, as he leans on the desk, mirroring Eliaz. ‘You look as though you’ve encountered a ghost.’
‘No, no, no.’ My breathing quivers as my gaze darts between the two men, unable to discern which one, if either, is real. Eliaz tries to reach out for me as I back further away from the desk, but I dodge his touch, clutching my arms to my chest in protection.
His eyes are wet with hurt, glistening with confusion. ‘Eira, it’s okay. I’m here, look at me.’ He dips his head so that our eyes are level. ‘We’re all here. You’re here with us. Come here.’
A part of me wishes to reach out to him, to feel the rough skin of his fingers as they entangle with mine. To squeeze his hand hard enough that we both feel pain. To watch his eyes as he reacts to it.
So I can be sure we’re both here, we’re both real.
Still, I retreat from him, shaking my head to dispel the thought. Nothing feels real. Not him. Not Cole. Not me.
‘She’s deranged.’ Cole bites through the moment, Eliaz and I both snapping our attention to him. Not from where he stood at the desk, but behind me, where he now leans on the mantelpiece, twirling the hilt of Sirnet between his fingertips.
Eliaz’s hands find my shoulders, and he pulls me back, into him. His body is warm and solid, his heart hammering through him and into me, until my pulse seems to synchronise with his.
I lean my weight into him, trying to process the sight before me. Cole seems only to relish in our confusion, our fear.
‘Cole, what are you doing with that? Hand it over,’ Eliaz’s voice vibrates through me.
Cole does not lift his head to us, his answer is a slow chuckle, as he positions the dagger flat in his palm, inspecting it. ‘Looks like it could do a lot of damage.’
‘S-stop messing with us, Cole,’ I stutter out.
I try to lift my hand subtly by my side, feeling in the air for the Relic’s energy, so that I might wrap it around the dagger and wrench it free from his hands.
But Cole beats me to it, and with dismissive wave of the hand, eyes still on the dagger, I am propelled backward by a forceful blow of air. Eliaz falls to the ground as my head collides with my father’s desk.
The pain is so overwhelming, so potent, that it verges on numbness, and I could convince myself of a tension headache if not for the blood that comes away on my fingers when I feel for any damage.
Eliaz practically jumps to his feet, primed for a lunge at Cole. ‘You fucking traitor!’
The scene in front of me seems to shudder in my vision, like water disrupted by a pebble.
Cole still does not lift his head. My hands coated in my own blood.
Eliaz with his fist raised as he lurches towards his traitorous friend.
All of it as though beneath the surface of a lake, and I am watching it from above.
‘Eira?’ A gurgling voice seems to sound out in my ears. ‘What on earth is going on here?’
Light, feminine, pissed. Mother.
There she stands, all blurred and wobbling before the hole in the door.
Eliaz curses as he comes crashing into the wall where Cole should be, his fist shattering into the bricks where that dark-haired head had been.
‘Well, well, well,’ his voice echoes, from no point of origin.
My mother gasps, falling against the doorframe, her head slamming into wood as mine just did.
Cole appears there, holding the dagger mere centimetres from her eye, teeth bared like a wild beast, eyes dark and thundering with hatred.
‘If it isn’t the bitch who killed my father. ’
Dizzy with the wound to my head, I cannot fully comprehend his words. I just spoke with his father, I—
‘What are you talking about, Cole? We were just in Attanae with your father. She couldn’t possibly have gotten there and back in the time it took us to get home.’
Cole laughs to himself, shaking his head as though he cannot quite believe something.