Chapter Thirteen #4
She froze mid-word when she caught sight of Ethyr and barreled past the two priests next to her to grab hold of him.
“Where have you been?” She spoke only slightly above a normal volume, but the pitch of her voice betrayed her angry panic.
Ethyr couldn’t meet the ferocity in her eyes, looking away and raising his shoulders. “I… was… trying to find my earring,” he said as guiltlessly as he could.
“For six hours?!”
“Was it… six hours…?” He trailed off, unable to keep up the facade of innocuous surprise.
Klara gripped his wrist with an iron hold and pulled him through the suspended ruckus of the priests, who were all standing and watching now.
Anger propelled her strides and he had to lope at an awkward half-run to keep up with her as she walked him out of the temple and all the way down the road to the palace.
Yorith’s study door was wide open, echoing his livid rant through the hall that was conspicuously avoided by servant and guard.
“—in my life! I’ve met toddlers with more maturity and sense! What more can I do? That selfish brat is going to be the death of the kingdom and I don’t have a—”
The muffled voice of a much calmer man interrupted.
“I hope he did fall off the cliff! And if he didn’t, I might throw him into the waterfall myself!”
The shouting fell to an abrupt stop as Klara and Ethyr stepped through the doorway.
Yorith, the wispy hair at the top of his head disheveled and the clasp closing the top of his robe half-undone, stood with a straight and stoic Lyrian.
Both of them turned at the arrival, Lyrian with collected calm and Yorith with the deranged fury of a man at the end of his rope.
“He was in the temple, sir,” Klara said, not letting go of his wrist as though he would sprint off the second she did.
“I… I fell asleep,” Ethyr lied, staring at the plush rug. “I’m so sorry.”
“You fell asleep?” Yorith seethed, striding forward. He raised a hand as though he would slap Ethyr, but caught himself, lowering it in a clenched fist instead. “You were nowhere to be found for hours! Where were you?!”
Ethyr scrambled to come up with some other excuse, or at least determine whether telling the truth was a good idea or not, but he took too long.
Yorith turned to Lyrian. “Send soldiers to his village. Burn it to the ground.”
Ethyr's heart stopped. “No!” he gasped, latching onto the priest’s sleeve. Yorith shook him off like he was an errant bramble. “Please! I wasn’t running away!”
“I warned you what would happen in the wake of continued abdication,” Yorith snapped. “It is your hands alone that have done this.”
“Sir,” Lyrian said steadily. “Surely that is an overreaction. He clearly had no intention of neglecting his duties. It is not as though he had any; he would have been otherwise asleep all this time.”
Yorith stared him down coldly. “Do not lecture me on reactions and responsibility. It took you over an hour to arrive here after you were informed of the situation.”
Lyrian stiffened. “I was coordinating my soldiers to search the city and roads. Or would you rather I had waited for you to command me to do so and delay the effort by precious minutes?”
Yorith ground his teeth. “An hour is an unacceptable length for that task. Those are your wasted precious minutes.”
“And now you wish to lecture me on military strategy and protocol?” Lyrian said, eyes narrow and smoldering. “Priest?”
“You speak out of turn,” Yorith barked.
Lyrian stepped forward. Yorith stood tall and proud in the face of his advance, but it did nothing to diminish the contrast between the two: Lyrian’s broad shoulders and well-built muscles against Yorith’s feeble frame and age-deteriorated physique.
“Need I remind you my father and the rest of the council spoke beside you as equals before you manipulated yourself into this position of twisted, delusional superiority.” Lyrian’s words fell like a cut of the sword at his waist. “One would think you’d relish in the opportunity that such a naive, uninformed king gives you; to truly secure yourself as the real sovereign and indomitable power of Hyancia.
That you’d rather bully and abuse a child is sickening to me.
If you want your petty, vile revenge against this boy, you can send your own men to do it.
If you could even coordinate it properly. ”
Yorith’s rage turned his face red and, for once, held his tongue. Lyrian gave him no time to respond anyway, turning on his heel and storming out.
Ethyr watched him stomp past, speechless too.
“Take him to his room,” Yorith said, so quietly it was almost incomprehensible, but it wasn’t a demure quiet. It was the frigid wrath of a man too angry for passion.
Klara had loosened her grip on Ethyr’s wrist in her shock, but it tightened again at the High Priest’s orders. Ethyr resisted her pull, but she still tugged him easily from the study.
“Please don’t do it!” he begged over his shoulder. “Please! I’ll do anything you want!” He couldn’t see Yorith’s reaction, if there was any, behind the wall as Klara dragged him down the corridor.