28. Elara
Chapter 28
“What in the name of the Goddess were you thinking!” Batian’s hand was tight enough to bruise, his firm grip around my forearm only barely enough to keep me upright as he dragged me down the hall. I stumbled and lost my footing multiple times, not that he cared, he continued his charge forward, the Boy trailing behind us.
“I was thinking that I could show her how strong I was. Show her that I can fight, that I can stand up to her.” The words came out in a stutter as I tripped again.
“Stand up to her how exactly?” Batian was still roaring as he led me around yet another corner, taking me further from the arena and right back to my rooms. Where I was sure he was going to lock me in. Again.
At least my mother’s Catalyst hadn’t disclosed my favorite exit route that I knew of. He wasn’t locking me anywhere. It was probably the only reason I wasn’t fighting harder.
“Stand up to Mother, show her I’m not sick and weak. Show her she can’t hide me.” I tried to sound firm, confident, something that was hard to do when one is being dragged down a hall.
“She is not hiding you.”
“Really? Because it sure seems like that when she locks me in my room and won’t let anyone see me? Is that why she takes–”
“Can’t you see that we are protecting you!” He roared, pulling me around to face him when we were steps from my door. His voice rattled down the hall, his hand growing ominously warm and bright where he held me. “All we do is try to protect you and all you do is make it impossible for us to do so.”
“Protect me.” I gave a heartless laugh, Batian’s features somehow growing dark. “I don’t need protecting. I think I proved that.”
I may not have won the fight, but I fought, I got up when I was down. I worked hard. No ‘sickly princess’ could do that. Batian laughed, the cruel bark echoing harshly and I flinched.
“You proved you can be reckless. You proved that you are insane, just as so many whisper,” he snarled, leaning in close before pulling me the rest of the way down the hall to my door.
“I fought him, Batian. I stabbed him!” I stabbed his hand, but it still counted. “I dodged, I fought!” He saw, he of all people should have seen.
“If it was a real fight you would have died.” He practically kicked my door open to drag me inside. His voice rattled as he threw me in, leaving me to stumble and slide against the floor and right into the chaise, my fighting leathers creaking as loud as the lounge.
“You don’t know that!” I knew Batian erred more on the side of the weak, sickly princess, but the way he was talking was as though he thought me actually broken and useless. I had trained for years, I had fought hard.
But he didn’t see that.
“You are a Dri, Elara!” he roared, slamming the door behind us so it was only Batian and I in the room, the Boy locked outside. “You are weak and you cannot fight! I am tired of trying to protect you when all you do is work against that.”
If I thought I had been sliced open before, it was nothing compared to this, to this wide gaping hole that was leaving me bleeding and raw.
Batian called me a Dri.
He used that word, that vile word that clung to my soul like a poison, and once again sent all that heat to ice. I flinched, pushing myself to stand as I stared at the man who didn’t even have a trace of a smile on his face.
I always knew Batian sided with Mother on this, but to hear the words spat at me. To have him call me that word. To have him look at me with those eyes like ink that sliced through me.
He didn’t look like my brother at all, and he sure wasn’t acting like him.
Pushing the pain away, I stood up straighter letting all of that growing heat flood through me.
“I’m not a Dri,” I began, lifting my hands to show him, to let that magic explode from me as it had so nearly done in the arena. “I have–”
“You are nothing but a Dri, Elara. Your magic is dead, you are weak. You are a liability. It’s time you accepted that. Your magic dried up when your Catalyst died. You are a Dri, you will always be a Dri. It's time you stopped trying to be anything more than that.”
“But I–” Why did it feel as though my soul was bleeding? Every time he used that word it cut and hacked and left me feeling as though I was cowering in a corner, a scared little girl. Worthless. A Dri.
That’s all he saw me as.
Suddenly, it didn’t matter that I had magic thrumming under my skin, how much that heat was pressing against me.
“I don’t want to hear your excuses; I don’t want to hear all the reasons that you think you are above the measures we put in place to protect you. You say she hides you, that she locks you away, but perhaps if you acted like a princess… Perhaps if you acted like the mature, refined, woman you were supposed to be, we wouldn't have to. Perhaps then, anyone in the Realm would be willing to take your hand. Instead, you insist on acting like a petulant child and bring shame to the Realm.” Every word cut deeper, leaving large open gashes that bled over everything. How could he say any of this? This was not my brother. My brother who protected me, who cared about me, who stood between me and our mother to protect me.
“You only think of yourself.” He said the words as she had and I flinched.
“I don’t only think of myself!” I was ready to fight him, but he only gave one guffaw of a humorless laugh that stopped me in my tracks.
“Is that why you inserted yourself into the event celebrating my wedding, because you were thinking of Aeinya and I?”
“I–” I didn’t know what to say. It had been Aeinya’s idea, but hearing him now, I couldn’t say it, I didn’t know how to answer him. I wanted to prove myself, I wanted to be in my family's life. I wanted to be in what should be my life. But I guess I had, everything I had done had been all about me.
My face suddenly felt very hot, a weight landing on my chest that might have been a branding iron. My leathers creaked as I fell back into the chaise, those hot tears falling down my cheeks. My palms were filthy, the dirt and scars of hiding in corridors and gardening, and all the things I wasn’t supposed to do smeared with the blood of Lix.
“You don’t think, Elara.” Batian said after a minute, his rage was subsiding, even if I was still sitting there with my soul bleeding over everything. “You don’t act like the princess you are supposed to be. We have done everything to keep you safe, but you can’t even follow the simple rules.”
I said nothing, I only stared at my hands as Batian’s stupid white boots stepped into view.
“You almost got yourself killed, Elara, and for what?”
“I wanted to prove I wasn’t weak.” I spoke barely above a whisper.
“You couldn’t even lift the sword, Elara. You couldn’t even face his magic. You would have died if I hadn’t stepped in.”
“I know how to fight.” My head snapped up. He stood over me, all of that towering disappointment dripping from him as I glared right back at him.
“What? With wooden swords?” He laughed with that heartless sound again and I jerked.
He knew. My body was wooden as I stared unseeing at that twitch of a wicked smile on his lips. He knew about my training, about the Boy and I fighting. He knew, all this time, and all this time he still called me sickly and weak.
“I know you think you are secretive, that I don’t know what you do. But I do, Elara.” I did not like that wicked taunt that lined his words, the way it slithered over my spine. I wanted to recoil, to shift away. My defiance melted with each menacing word. “I know everything. If I need to lock you in here alone for the rest of your life in order to keep you safe then I will.”
“No!” I jumped up.
“No?”
“I… you can’t… I’ll do better. I’ll stop…” My heart broke a little more with every word, with every promise that chipped away at everything I had been able to gain.
“Prove it, Elara,” he stepped back, wiping the front of his tunic as if I had gotten dirt on the golden embroidery. “Because if anything like this happens again then the last of the luxuries you have will be stripped away. You are my sister, Elara, and I love you, but I will do what needs to be done.” His voice was soft, but he didn’t look at me as he said it, his focus was only on the Boy’s partition.
He paused as though I would respond, but I couldn’t make the words come, I couldn’t make anything pull past the knot that was in my chest.
“I don’t want to be harsh,” he continued, turning toward me and straightening his tunic again. “I don’t want to be cruel, but I am the next Ramal…”
“But you aren’t the Ramal, yet, you are my bro–” I didn’t finish, Batian was already shaking his head. “Batian? You’re not…” my voice caught at the look he was giving me. “Father…”
I couldn’t even bring myself to voice what I already saw in his eyes.
“Father’s health has reached a breaking point and he is stepping down at the end of this sun cycle, after the wedding I will be crowned.” He was back to straightening his cape.
“When?” Father’s health was poor, and I knew he was struggling, possibly due to his distance from his Catalyst, but it wasn’t that bad. I had just seen him, he saw me, he knew exactly what was happening. He was fine.
“When we arrive back at the Runturin from the wedding the crowning will take place. I will be stripped of my name and will take on that of Ramal, Elara, and I will do anything to keep you safe. To make sure you are protected.”
To make sure you are hidden.
He didn’t say it, but it didn’t matter. I heard it anyway, heard the words that I never thought I would hear my brother say.
My brother who loved me, who always smiled, who would tease and laugh and always cared for me. Looking at him now, however, that man wasn’t there. It was only Mother’s icy glare, only her harsh stare hidden in his dark eyes.
It was only the future Ramal, the title having swallowed what was left of my brother whole.
“Do you understand, Elara?”
I nodded, “Yes.”
I understood everything.
“Good. Then prove it. You will be part of the caravan of the Walk of the Maiden as Aeinya takes her first pilgrimage to the Temple of the Sister as the future Queen. You will attend my wedding, as you wish, but one foot out of line and we will have to find another arrangement for you.” I nodded again, and his smile finally made a return, although it was almost a ghost of what it once was.
“Elara, my most precious sister.” Whatever harshness had been in him faded away as he closed the gap between us. “I will do anything to keep you safe. Please know that. All of this, it is only because I love you. Please trust that I know what is best for you.”
He spoke calmly, but the tone was all wrong. He was all wrong. He may be smiling, but it wasn’t his usual sunny grin, it didn’t touch those eyes that didn’t look like his at all.
“I understand.” I was barely able to choke the words out.
“Good, now stay here. I need to have a word with your Boy.”
He pressed his hand to the top of my head, the weight seeping through my bones, before he turned, his high boots clacking on the floor as he strode out. I only caught a glance of the shrouded figure in the hall before Batian closed the door, the latch bouncing against the lock as it failed to close all the way.
“What in the seven hells were you thinking, Boy!” Batian immediately went into the same tirade as he had on me and I stiffened.
“She could have died in that pit. She could have died a hundred times over this week, yet you follow along like some dog. I did not train you to be her lap dog. I trained you to keep her in line. I trained you to protect her and fight her if needed, but you only follow. You only bow and preen. What good are you if you cannot do what I ask? You let her into that pit! You put her in danger!”
Jumping up, I raced to the door, I couldn’t let the Boy take the brunt of this. He had trained me, sure, but he was not the one who had the idea to put me into the Pankreatin. He was not the one who had strode into the arena. If anything, he had tried to keep me out of it.
“What do you have to say for this… this… recklessness!” Batian’s voice snapped over stone, the fire in the sconces flicking both in and out of the hall. Silence dripped through the hallway for less than a breath before Batian roared in a low hiss that was closer to a growl.
“Speak!”
My feet froze at the word, my hand on the cold knob as I prepared to fling the door open and yell at Batian to leave the Boy alone. Instead, I might as well have been plunged in ice water.
“I do not simply follow, my Prince. I am doing as you have trained me.”
The air was sucked out of the room as I stared at the door, my world upending at the voice that had seeped through it.
By the Goddess. He could talk. He was talking. I knew he wasn’t allowed to, but for some reason I had always assumed he couldn’t. That it wasn’t possible.
But now… to hear him.
His voice was deep and clear and calm. More than that, I had heard it before, in the arena moments before. He was the one who had yelled. I couldn’t move as I stood there, listening to the voice I had dreamed my whole life to hear.
“I will always do as I have been trained. She is headstrong, she is–”
“Silence,” the word was mixed with the sound of a slap against leather. Through the crack of the door I could just make out the Boy, Batian flexing his hand over his curled body after the impact of a hit.
“I don’t want excuses, Boy. I want you to do your job, or I will replace you. Do you want that? Do you want to be removed from this post? To fail in your task and the Queen to bestow that promise on you that she made so long ago?”
“N-no. I will always be her servant, I will always do what she wants.” He hissed with a low moan of compliance, my own heart skipping a beat as the stuttered handwriting in his journal flitted through my mind.
I am doing what she wants.
My hand tightened around the knob.
I had assumed then he was writing of my mother, but to hear him say it. It was more than just him doing what she wants. He was her servant. My mother’s servant, Queen Dalyah. He was not my friend at all and was simply reporting everything right back to her. My body felt as though it was being encased in lead.
“Good. I don’t want any more mishaps, Boy. This will earn you twenty lashings. I would hate for you to make it more. I know how it affects your work.” Batian smiled at the Boy, but the face was nothing like the brother I knew. It wasn’t even the twisted anger I had seen in my room minutes before. This Batian was different altogether. This Batian was harsh and vicious. In fact, I didn’t see my brother in the man, there was only the icy grin of my mother.
My brother wasn’t there at all.
I flinched away from the door, backing into my room as my mind spun from what I had seen, and what I had heard. A monstrous version of my brother, and the Boy…
The Boy could talk.
Years he had stood by my side and he hadn’t said a word, not when I was sobbing and alone, not all the times he had saved me. I knew I should be upset, but I couldn’t even get my mind around it.
He could talk; and worse, he served my Mother. I had heard it, but I had also read his journal. I had also seen my brother, my kind and gentle brother, punch him and promise more lashings. More. As though the Boy had had them before. As though Batian had been the one to deliver them.
Everything, absolutely everything I knew in this world was turning on its head. That fluttering nausea from before was making a grand comeback.
I was missing something, but if he could talk, I was going to find out exactly what.
He could talk. By the Goddess! He could talk!
“I don’t enjoy these conversations, Boy. Do what you were trained to do or there will be consequences.” Batian’s voice hissed through the open gap in the door.
“Yes, your majesty. You have my promise.”
“Good. Because I’m done giving you chances. If something else like this happens,” Batian laughed then, the sound harsh and high before the grind of leather on leather echoed, a low grunt issued alongside it. “Don’t fail me, Boy.”
I was frozen, listening to the Boy's pained breaths as the quick steps of Batian’s boots took him in the other direction.
I stood, staring at the door as I waited for him to enter, waited for answers.
After a few moments the door slowly opened, the Boy stepping in on those silent feet. He froze as he turned, the door shutting behind him as he saw me standing there, staring.
“You can talk,” I said after a minute, trying to swallow down the large knot that had taken up residence in my throat.
He said nothing, he didn’t even move.
“All this time, you could speak, and…” that knot in my throat was getting bigger. “You work for my mother.”
That time he stepped forward, his head furiously shaking as he clicked twice. ‘No.’
“No, what?” I demanded. He clicked and shook his head.
“Answer. I heard you speak. You said you serve my mother. You said you serve the Queen.” He clicked again and as though I was caught in the landslide of emotion, all of that fury I should have felt the second I heard him talk released.
“Don’t click. Don’t gesture. I heard you talk. Talk!” I yelled the words, taking two steps forward. My eyes burned, my body ached, every inch of me was tied in tight balls of agony as that heat continued to ripple below my skin. But he stood there, shaking his head.
“Why won’t you say anything!” I was roaring now. “You’ve always been there. You’ve always supported me. But you serve my mother, and now… now you won’t talk?” I pushed, still nothing. “I heard you, you know, in the fight. I heard you yelling. You’ll talk then, you’ll talk to Batian… but not… not now… not to me.”
The burning in my eyes was boiling over, tears that I had spent so many days of my life refusing to shed breaking through that carefully crafted dam.
He exhaled, the sound sharp and stuttered as he stripped off his gloves, throwing the things to the ground as he raced to me. Those soft, hot hands cupped my face, lifting my gaze to him, lifting me toward the expanse of black that was him.
That had always been him.
For one breath I expected him to rip that off too, I expected to stare into his eyes for the first time. But he didn’t move, he was frozen, his hands hot, his breath rattling through the dark fabric to whisper over my lips.
“Don’t cry, Elara.” His spoke in barely more than a gasp, the deep rumble that I had heard in the arena and in the hall drifting between us. “I never like to see you cry.”
Eyes wide, I stared at him, those tears still falling. Placing my hands over his, I shuddered as his thumbs moved over my cheeks, all of the warmth between us fluttering over my skin.
“Who… who are you?” I asked the question I had wanted to ask so many times before, the question that burned between us like a hot iron, but he shook his head.
“I’m yours, Elara. I always will be. Dalyah is… I… Please trust me. I do not willingly work for her, but cannot say any more.” His hands cradled me softly as he leaned in, that shroud pressing against my forehead with the pressure of what I would assume was his lips, the burn of a promise fluttering between us.
He didn’t even touch me, but my stomach spun all the same, the anger trying to dislodge itself at that touch, at that soft promise.
I looked up, trying to see him, to see anything. There was nothing but black fabric. My hand shook as I lifted it, pressing it against the shroud where his cheek should be. His jaw tensed as I pressed my palm to his face. For a moment it felt almost as if he was right there and there was nothing between us.
His hot breath drifted over my forehead as we stood there, his lips against my skin, his hands soft against my face. My hands pressed against his cheeks, surprised to feel the wetness there.
“But how can I trust you? You work for the Queen–”
“I don’t.”
“But how–”
“Please, Elara,” he whispered, his lips still shuddering against my skin. “Trust me. She will kill her if I fall out of line.”
“She will kill who?” I tried to pull away, to look at him, to beg for questions, but he held me there, his lips pressing against my forehead again.
“She will kill us all, Elara. I need you to trust me.”
He didn’t need to say more. I knew. I knew who he meant, I may not know who the ‘her’ was that was being threatened, but it didn’t matter. We were all trapped in the same hell.
Me, the Boy… My father.
Perhaps even Batian. Batian who had always been so happy, so calm, so loving. Batian who had… changed. Something had happened. I wasn’t sure what, or how, but something had happened. That man, that angry man, it wasn't my brother. It couldn’t be.
“Know I’m always with you,” he said, the wetness against my hands increasing. “Even if you never hear my voice again. I will never leave you. I will always be with you, until the end.”
He kissed my forehead again before he pulled away, the shroud drifting back behind his partition. Leaving me standing there, alone.