Chapter Eleven #2
Exile, in nicer words. Eric could only paw helplessly through the letters of proof of his father’s continued treachery until his eyes caught on the number, the sheer amount of gold his father had borrowed. “Oh, gods!”
“Some has already been returned,” said Ramsay hastily. “And the temple understands that these are exceptional circumstances.”
“Brother Ramsay and I have several proposals for you, if Your Lordship would be amenable to hearing them,” Ned chimed in, gently prying the letters away from Eric’s clutched hands so he couldn’t keep staring at them.
“I – yes, yes. That would be very helpful,” he said faintly.
From the outside, the situation was ridiculous.
Brother Ramsay and Ned babied him through several plans, most of which they needed to repeat several times until the details penetrated the fog of shock that surrounded Eric.
They reassured him and plied him with more tea as Eric looked through them all.
Some he agreed to immediately. Selling the horses?
Fine, he didn’t care. Others – leasing out use of the ports that made Marrawshire so profitable – he would have to look over the details and ask Ned to explain it properly to him later when Ramsay wasn’t around.
For now, he promised to think through them all.
“It sounds like Miss Petra has been thinking ahead,” said Ned encouragingly when Eric mentioned that she might do something with the country house’s gardens.
“Any repayments to the temple, we would report it as a generous tithe, to reduce the tax,” added Ramsay. Eric could have hugged the man at this point.
“Great,” said Eric faintly. “Let’s do that.”
“I’ll draw up a summary for you to have a look at,” promised Ned, “If you’ll bear with me, we’ll draw the agreement for repayment up now.”
As he left the room, Ramsay peered at Eric quickly. “Your Lordship. There’s something else I would like to mention while we are alone. I deeply beg your pardon for this intrusion.”
Eric grimaced at Ramsay’s tone. “Just come out with it, Brother.”
“As you may know, my order is tasked by our King with the purification of the demonic across the lands,” said Ramsay haltingly. “And while I am not of the demon-hunting ranks within my order, all members are trained in the sight of the demonic.”
Eric frowned. This was a different direction, he could not anticipate what Ramsay was hinting at. Eric had never interacted with the king’s demon hunters before, since they tended to avoid both Ixthan and Ceronzar. “Yes, I’m aware.”
“I’m afraid… I’m afraid Your Lordship has a touch of the demonic inside him,” said Ramsay apologetically, with the air of someone breaking the news that Eric might have a cold. “And periods of turbulence are when demons strike most commonly, taking advantage of humans undergoing difficult times.”
“You think I’m possessed because my father was just executed?” Eric could only blink up at the man from his chair.
“No, not at all,” Ramsay said quickly. “Only that you are susceptible to the lures of a demon and may have attracted the attention of one.”
Eric didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He didn’t know how to tell Ramsay with his open, earnest face that he’d been susceptible to the lures of one particular demon for years now, and he could be reasonably certain he’d attracted his attention recently.
In fact, if Ramsay could detect a touch of the demonic still inside him…
Ye gods. Eric half considered throwing himself into the fire to get away from this conversation.
“I spend a lot of time with Prince Ixthan,” said Eric, hoping his voice sounded even halfway normal. “I had to borrow this cravat from him after mine met with an unfortunate demise this morning. Could that be why?”
Ramsay did not believe him. Eric could see it in his eyes. But Ned returned then, with paperwork for them to sign and they both thankfully let the topic drop.
Eric returned to the palace feeling equally discombobulated as he had left it, though for entirely different reasons.
Though his first instinct was to immediately check on Ix, he made a much-needed detour to his own rooms. He carefully removed Ix’s cravat though not without one last guilty inhale of the perfume, and dunked his entire face in freezing cold water.
He just needed a few moments to himself.
Just to be alone with his thoughts, or lack of thoughts.
If any demon out there could offer him a blessing of forgetfulness, Eric thought he’d be sorely tempted to take it.
And then he laughed at himself for being so dramatic.
He wiped his face and hands dry carefully and as he checked his reflection, he noticed something strange about his necklace. It was glowing.
Eric normally didn’t see it, tucked inside his shirt, but it had rucked up when he’d taken the cravat off. Carefully, he ran his thumb under the chain and pulled it out properly. The amber stone pulsed steadily, though there was no heat, getting brighter.
“Ix? Ixthan? Are you all right?” Eric dropped everything and dashed across the wing, shouting into the corridor.
He skidded to a halt outside of Ix’s bedroom door and threw the doors open so hard they banged against the wall.
Empty. He dashed to the study next. Also empty.
The amber was a heat against his chest now.
The final door was the parlor and Eric nearly collapsed when he saw Ix.
He had company. A demon. Over eight feet tall, with enormous antlers that protruded from his head, furred from the neck down with the hind legs of a deer.
A strangely incongruent tail, bushy like a squirrel’s except it was enormous, the entire height of him, enshrouded in shadows that obscured half of him from view.
The demon had a hand around Ixthan’s throat, lifting him bodily off the ground. Eric blanched.
“Eric. What’s the matter?” asked Ixthan, as if this was an everyday occurrence, his feet barely scraping the ground.
“Oh gods! Do I – how – um, begone!” yelled Eric, forgetting every basic demon-repelling sermon he’d ever heard.
“No,” said the demon, with some amusement.
“It’s all right, it’s Lymond,” said Ix, gesturing up and down at the demon. The face, largely obscured by a swirling mass of shadows, peeled apart like rotting fruit to reveal Damian of Lymond’s face, perched incongruously on top of… whatever the rest of him was.
“I see,” said Eric faintly, and lowered himself into the side of the sofa furthest from Lymond. So this was Damaris then. The shadows slithered over Damian’s face again and Eric swallowed before he could gag from the sight of it.
“I’m sorry, they’re just testing out a theory,” said Archie.
Eric screamed again; he hadn’t even seen the man, tucked away as he was in an armchair.
He held a notebook, in which he was earnestly scribbling notes and gave Eric a timid smile.
Eric had no idea how he was acting so normally confronted with the way Damaris’s body ebbed and flowed, but he supposed Archie had to be used to it.
Eric got a hold of himself. “Right. Good. Yes, that’s good. What’s the theory?”
“Um, there’s a few theories. They’re trying to see if Prince Ixthan’s magic was dispelled or if it has been consumed, or whether it’s his access to magic that has been blocked, I’m to understand,” said Archie, flicking back a few pages and showing Eric his notes.
He and Damaris must have arrived not long after he left, judging by the number of things they’d tried although none of it made sense to Eric.
“And where does the strangling come in?” asked Eric. Damaris was growing taller before them – something his eyes refused to acknowledge was happening – and Ix’s feet were swinging clear in the air now.
“It’s, uh,” said Archie before looking into the distance.
Eric turned to see what he was looking at, but it was just a random patch of wall.
“I’m sorry, I’m not very used to this yet.
The talking out loud and magically at the same time thing.
Damaris says sometimes a demon’s magic can react to when the demon is in peril. ”
They stayed like for what seemed like an unnecessary length of time. The two demons presumably had some way of speaking to each other and Archie could communicate with Damaris without words so the only person stewing in silence was Eric.
Eventually, Damaris lowered Ixthan onto the floor, who grimaced and rubbed his neck and then threw himself into a chair as casually as if he hadn’t been two seconds away from suffocating.
Damaris shrank down into his Lymond form, which Eric presumed was for his benefit given no one else seemed to care.
“I can confirm you have no magic, nor any connection left to your magic,” said Lymond. “I know not of any further way to help you.”
“But you said his magic isn’t gone, not completely,” said Eric, holding his necklace up as a reminder.
Ixthan held a fingertip to it. Nothing happened. Ix tried again, and looked at Lymond. “I no longer have the sight.”
“There was no magic to see,” said Lymond.
He glanced at Eric, his expression so blank Eric had no idea how he had ever thought him human.
That was his only warning before the demon thrust a hand towards him; the fireplace flared up high and a ball of fire shot out from it at him.
Eric threw a hand up without thinking and heat sizzled against his face.
He flinched back, then felt a bizarre pressure in the back of his head until his ears popped, and then it was gone.
“It works still,” said Lymond, casually. “But the magic is held within the object, it does not come from you.”
Eric laughed uneasily, wafting away the smell of smoke with shaking hands and trying not to wonder whether Lymond would have extinguished the fireball if the spell hadn’t been fully working.
“So Prince Ixthan’s magic is definitely here, but unreachable,” said Archie thoughtfully. “What about the wards?”
“Also still working,” said Lymond after a moment’s pause. “Interesting.”
“Interesting how?” demanded Ix.
“No full demon could survive this. If I were separated from my magic, I would cease to exist, and so would all my magic workings as they are a part of me. You are better off asking one of your mages about this, I would not know. Demons do not use magic in this way. It would be akin to if I chopped off my finger and put it in a pendant for you.” Damian shrugged.
He flickered, then disintegrated. Eric had to look away again as Damian melted, his face and body and hands distorting into an oozing black puddle that slithered into the shadows attached to Archie’s feet.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help, Your Highness,” said Archie, bowing nervously. Eric had no idea how his stomach didn’t lurch at the sight of the demon like that.
“Yes, all right, go,” said Ix with a scowl, waving his hand.
Archie drew something out of his pocket uncertainly. “I think you should have this back, Cousin? It doesn’t seem fair. We appreciate it though.”
Ixthan scowled at him and made no move to take it so Archie left it on the table as they left.
Eric picked it up after the door closed and examined it.
He recognized it, a gold ring inlaid with a tiny amber stone.
It came from a matched set of ten items of jewelry, which included his necklace; he vaguely remembered Ix giving it to Archie when they’d bumped into him in the palace library a few months back.
“I suppose they have no use for it because they work for Jasper now,” said Ix, throwing himself into a chair with a huff.
Eric hadn’t realized Ix had been holding himself so aloof for Archie and Damian until he pressed his face into his hands, rubbing his eyes.
Eric came up behind him, tentatively pressing the heel of his palm into the meat of Ix’s shoulders.
Tense. He dug his thumbs in to the knot he felt.
“I don’t care,” Ix clarified, though he did lean back into Eric’s touch with a groan that coming from anyone else, Eric would have called obscene.
“They can pick whichever hellsdamned prince they wish to align themselves to. The tracking spell on the ring would have been useful though. If only I could activate my magic to use it.”
Eric tucked that thought away: he wouldn’t be surprised if there was something similar on his necklace. “Do you wish to ask the Magisterium for help again?”
“No. I’ve given them all I can bear to, I’m sure they could find a way to take Lymond’s information and exploit it for their summonings. I’ll have to do the research myself. What about you, how were the estate managers?”
Eric told Ix about Brother Ramsay and the horrific sums his father had swindled from the Temple.
The expression on Ix’s face implied that if Eric’s father was not already dead, he would go kill the man himself.
Though neither of them had good news to give, Eric found this comfortingly domestic.
He leaned his head against Ix’s shoulder and Ix’s hand fell naturally on his thigh, as if they had been doing this for years.