Chapter 30 The Tea #2
I felt far away, like I was back within walls.
Like I should be at work in the tailor house.
I was trapped, an endangered animal waiting to be poached.
The Sapphires would come soon. Saffron had not begun his conquest just to end with Lestivia.
Prince Payn had warned me. He said I would learn what it meant to be an heir.
What did he mean by that? What did it mean to be an heir?
Oh Gods, I was an heir to Castivian.
Trista moved like a ripple in lake water. “What do you think?” she asked.
Was I really an heir? I had the mark, but Xavian had yet to declare himself king. Had I brought the deed for nothing? Was I born for nothing? Was I nothing?
“It’s terrifying,” I mumbled.
At the bar, a man dressed in black caught my eye. I nearly mistook him for Riven, my core heating at the flash of his memory.
I couldn't shake his voice, his mouth, how his hands felt on me. I needed to see him. He needed to know how I felt.
“You’ll see the beauty in the horror, just keep drinking,” Trista assured me with a clumsy pat on my shoulder.
I shook my head. “I see everything.”
Riven was not, and would never be, an option. He was just a man, and I was just another woman to him. Even Luna said he had plenty of others.
“Go see it! Go see it all!” she urged, pointing outside. The rowdy ocean rocked ships in the harbor as dark clouds rolled in.
I could see it all.
As I shuffled to get up, she practically pushed me out the door. “See the world, Elora! It’s so beautiful!”
Outside, too many people crowded the streets. Too loud. Yet, eerily quiet all the same. Standing still was not an option; my body demanded to move.
I progressed through the city, blinking hard and wiping my eyes—failing to see straight. Time drifted, yet its pace eluded me.
Prince Payn was going to come for this place.
I was alone. Luna was probably dead. The people in the Waywards had no way out.
I had nowhere to go. My brothers were nobility.
My parents abandoned me. I’d abandoned Moonhill.
Riven kissed me. I kissed him. Two men died at my hand just last night.
I’d lost track of how many lives I’d taken.
Everyone around me was oblivious. War was coming, and their own kind were already imprisoned across the Sea of Blades. Why did no one care?
The sky cracked as lightning split the clouds, and thunder boomed.
As the downpour erupted, the streets cleared, everyone running inside.
I was the only one left in the rain, wind thrashing through my dark hair.
The ocean roared as the storm waged war on the city. I did not seek shelter. I embraced it.
We understood each other, the sky and I. She was capable of setting the entire world on fire, but she spared us, time and time again. The storm was loud, but my thoughts were deafening.
Each step weighed on me, my sorrow threatening to break me from the inside out. I’d been disowned, abandoned, hated, all from the moment I was born. If I dared to reveal that it hurt me, the world would hate me for that too.
“Elora!” a voice called out.
Maybe it was the wind, or perhaps my conscience trying to bring me back from the tea.
I looked towards the sky, letting the rain consume me.
I was so tired. I had tried for so long to push the storm inside me away.
Even here in Castivian I was not good enough.
I had never known love, not even from my parents, and I never would, because no one cared to even know me.
“Elora!” a man roared again. A firm hand gripped my shoulder. I had no choice but to spin around and face him, my drenched hair flinging to my face.
My brother stood before me, dark curls dripping and brows narrowed, dressed in Brotherhood black with blades strapped across his body.
I was so tired.
“You’re coming home,” he demanded. “This is enough.” His voice was of someone who’d inherited authority and wielded it as naturally as he breathed.
He made the mistake of believing I gave a shit. “I have no home.”
Red flushed through his cheeks and ears as his eyes sharpened. “We shared a womb. These lands are your birthright as much as mine. Enough of this wallowing. It’s unbecoming of the Lyon’s blood.”
Xavian’s eyes were as dark as mine, which was strange for a Natureless man. Trimmed beard, expensive weapons, a silver chain around his neck—he was put together, even in the rain.
“I don’t know you,” I snapped, as viscous as I could given the effects of the tea. He’d never cared about me before. There was no need to start now.
Pain flickered in his eyes, so quickly I questioned if it’d actually happened. “I know you better than you think. I have lived through the dreams.”
He knew about the dreams?
His voice rose over the storm. “I know you, because I have lived your memories in my sleep. I knew our mother, because I saw her through your eyes. I walked through every home you’ve lived in.
Loathed every person you’ve hated. You gave me at least one dream a month as a child, and lately, I don’t even have to be sleeping to see whatever misfortune you’ve sent for me to witness.
I’m aware of every flaw you have, and trust me, there are many.
But goddamnit, we’ve been offered a kingdom, and you will not force me to watch you suffer in my mind while I rule. ”
I backed away.
If what he said was true, then my mind was exposed, and had been for my entire life.
My dreams weren’t dreams at all. They were memories—his memories.
“That’s not possible…”
Thunder rumbled above as lightning struck the ocean.
“Ask me anything, something no one else would know about you. Or better yet, how did you learn how to read?”
“What are you talking about?”
His fists curled in aggravated desperation. “When you and mother lived in that awful baker's cellar, hiding away from his wife, how did you learn how to read?”
I hadn’t thought about that in ages. Mom hadn’t liked the baker much, but he let us stay there for two entire summers before his wife found out. She came at my mother with a knife, and I cried, pleading for mercy.
“I’m not scared of this musty wench,” my mother had said, barreling into the baker's wife and knocking them both to the ground. She threw the knife across the room for me to grab. I was only five winters old and wasn’t supposed to hold knives yet, but I did that day.
“Fate will punish you for this! He is a fair God, and he will seek justice against you!” the wife screamed. My mother grabbed the woman's face and landed a sloppy wet kiss on her mouth.
“Now your God can drag us both to hell,” she laughed wickedly.
“Remember!” Xavian pressed. “How did you learn how to read?”
My eyes fluttered.
Long before we were caught, I grew bored of silently hiding.
Mom was allowed to sneak out at certain hours, but I usually stayed in the cellar, rarely even allowed to speak.
The baker brought me wooden trinkets every so often, and my mother taught me to sew, but it made my small fingers hurt, and I pricked myself too often.
There were stacks of books in the cellar, but my mother didn’t know how to read.
I wanted to know what those pages said so badly that when I dreamt at night, I felt like I was sitting in a grand library with a teenage boy in front of me, pointing to letters.
“Go over it one more time, just in case,” my tiny voice would say in the dreams. I knew it differed from my real voice, but in dreams that was okay.
The teenager smiled softly. “Okay champ. The ‘b’ makes the buh-buh-buh sound. So, we can make words like B-E-D. Buh-buh-bed. We could also make, b-a-b-y. Buh-buh-baby.”
There were dozens of letters drawn out before the teenage boy looked ready to retire from the library.
“Thank you, Clarke. I need to see Lord Elliot now for help with my dream. She might nap soon… I need to send her this memory quickly. She’s bad at ‘b’.”
“She’ll get it. Sometimes it takes time.”
My eyes shot open, hand grasping at my chest. “You knew!” I heaved. “You both knew about me, and you left me there!”
“I was a child.”
My eyes burned with tears. “So was I.”
He must have sent fewer dreams as we got older, as most nights I only dreamt of darkness. It must have been nice for him to have some lord teach him how to control whatever was causing the dreams. He certainly never sent me that information.
Whether or not he spoke the truth, I was not fit to help rule a kingdom, or to be known by anyone, especially a ruler.
That was all he was. This show of him pretending to care was painful, as if I would be stupid enough to believe it. If he knew everything about me, then he knew how badly I’d hurt inside for years, wanting to know my family. He and Clarke had each other, but they never had me.
I pointed my finger like a weapon. “You are no brother of mine. You left me to rot, and I hate you for it.”
I waited for him to yell or hurt me, as men do when a woman dares to face them with a painful truth. Maybe he would simply walk away and not bother with a last word.
Xavian’s features narrowed. “You cannot hate me, because we are the same. Bound in blood and mind, whether you acknowledge it or not.”
I laughed, the thunder rolling along with me.
“Then you are wrong to believe you understand me. I hate myself more than people like you could fathom, and it has been that way for many years!” I screamed.
“I wonder every day if the reasons I cannot love myself are the same reasons that no one else can love me! So hate me too, if you wish, for not helping you. It won’t even scratch the surface! ”
It was the truest thing I had ever said, and the hardest to admit. My legs felt like pudding, and my head spun. My own darkness ate at me, feeding on the pain.
His eyes softened.
“It will torment me for the rest of my life that I did not send for you sooner.
Our family's actions haunt me. Our separation at birth has plagued me, Elora, and there is nothing you can ever say to me, good or bad, that will remove the stain. Hate me if you must, but I refuse to let you succumb to this drought in your mind as long as I have the hands to carry water to you. You are my sister.”
I stared at the ground, focusing on the rain pelting into puddles in a poor attempt to hold back tears.
Xavian sighed. “Don’t make me do this alone. We’re the only family we have left.”
The famed warrior and Keeper of Castivian, Xavian Steele, stood before me, but all he sounded like now was a brother who had failed his sister and was terrified to do the same to his kingdom.
“You have Clarke,” I croaked. They had grown up together. They were a true family.
His throat bobbed. “No, I don’t.”
My stomach knotted. I didn’t want to ask.
“He’s dead, Elora, and word will travel fast.”
I did not expect to care, but as I lifted my head to the sky, it cried with me.
Eyes closed, throat tight, poison rolling down my face.
Xavian and I were the last of the Lyonaire bloodline, aside from little Clayvarie, if she ever woke again.
Queen Delaina would now rule Drakington, and Fate only knew what she had planned for the people living in the Waywards. Time had run out.
“Enough of this mourning. There are things that have to be done at home.” All evidence of Xavian’s sorrow was gone, and returned was the face of an unyielding ruler.
“Are you going to drag me through the streets?” The effects of the tea hit again as the sky twirled like mud in a bucket of water.
“You’re going to walk.”
My knees wobbled, eyelids heavy as stone. I couldn’t argue anymore, or do anything for that matter. Existing was exhausting enough.
“I can’t.”
Darkness flashed in and out like the lightning striking in the distance. When my eyes fluttered open again, I was slumped over Xavian’s shoulder as he hiked up the hill to the Silver Circle. The rest of the city had avoided the storm, while I’d crashed with it.
I closed my eyes once more. I was so tired.