Chapter Twelve
The parlour seems to be one of the more taken care of rooms in Daegon manor, like the Lillienne’s temporary bedchamber-turned-infirmary.
The room is a stark-white, cut short by the oak wainscotting that panels the lower half of the walls and made cosy by the low ceiling and the ambient light flickering from the hearth.
I turn my head, rested against my palm from a propped-up elbow, yearning to feel that fire burning from within. I had only had a taste of my power after it manifested – it had barely shown me its true strength before it was ripped from my fingertips in crossing the Divide.
The heat radiating from that mortal flame creates a mockery of what I was newly capable of on my skin. A falsehood of the Relic’s gift, leading me to wonder how strong I might be in this very moment if I had never left Reyhen.
‘Well, Eira?’
I dart my eyes across the round mahogany table to Calli who blinks back at me, an expectant eyebrow raised.
Cole and Eliaz sit either side of her, the raven-haired man slumped in the chair to her right gives a grunt of annoyance. ‘I told you she won’t talk. She’s too busy thinking of ways to gut us with the iron fire-poker and run back to her castle in triumph.’
I scrunch my nose at him, eyes narrowed. ‘Forgive me for blocking out all your incessant arguing, with thoughts of my own vulnerability and how my people are being debilitated by a mysterious affliction.’ A half-truth.
‘She doesn’t want to hurt us, Cole. She knows we need her, and she us,’ Calli defends. The Umbrian king sits forward in his seat, his hands coming to a rest on the table, fingers intertwined.
‘Besides.’ He locks his eyes on mine, clouded by forceful apathy. I blink slowly back at him, my heart thumping against my ribs. ‘She needs me if she ever wants to cross that pesky Divide of hers.’
Realisation hits me like a stray dagger to the heart. No matter how much I resist, no matter how horribly we treat each other, and as long as the Divide remains – he will always have this abhorrent power over me. I will forever need him.
‘You’re right,’ I lift my chin. ‘I do require your help, with the afflicted, with my desperation to return home. But you sure as hell need me. For my trade, and my wealth – my alliance.’
Eliaz’s eyelid twitches, the muscles in his face tensing.
‘Did you know that in Reyhen we have specialised hot houses for growing produce of the hotter climates? We grow coffee-beans, sugar, exotic fruits, anything you could possibly imagine. We use the energy of the Relic to generate the perfect temperatures.’
‘She’s lying to you, Eliaz. There’s no way that they could possibly have—’
The king raises a hand to Cole, quieting him. He shifts his body in my direction, with subtle interest.
‘Continue, Princess. I am curious to know what you think you could possibly give me in return for my co-operation. Coffee?’ His face screws up as though he’s caught a whiff of a bad smell. ‘I’ve never much cared for the stuff.’
‘I saw the streets of the city,’ I start.
‘Lessom,’ he offers with a flat voice.
‘I saw Lessom, and I couldn’t help but notice how lifeless it was, how empty of people and trade the streets were. Umbra may have nursed its people back to health, but the whole kingdom itself is dying.’
He studies me, with a blank expression save for the giveaway tug at the corner of his mouth.
‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you keep only the rooms you use in this manor in good condition, the cheap fabric in the very dress I wear. You are penniless, weak, and running out of options.’
I have his attention, and he gives it willingly, his kingdom paramount. However, I must retain caution, for his pride comes at a close second. He traces a circle into the mahogany table, amused eyes flitting back to mine.
‘And how do you suggest we bring such life back into Umbra? There’s only so much I’m willing to haul across from kingdom to kingdom, and it’s not like I have an abundance of time to be wasted.’
I swallow down the lump forming in my throat. There’s only one way I can think of that could give us both what we want. I want his help with the afflicted and my people back where they belong, and he wants to save his kingdom from collapse. There is only one way. And it won’t be easy.
‘We have to tear down the Divide.’
A flash of surprise flares across his face before being cut through by the sound of Cole’s fist meeting wood.
‘That is outrageous!’ he shouts, jumping to his feet.
Calli wipes his spit from her brow, her face screwed up at him towering above her.
‘She means to make us vulnerable. She means to deceive, and we simply cannot trust her.’
He sizes me up, face reddened, a blue vein protruding from his forehead with the heat of his rage.
A blade appears in his hand as though he has plucked it from thin air, and he spins it with a terrifying precision, hand raised, and fingers flexed with sinister intent.
He dips his head, as though in deep focus.
Calli screams as she realises what I do. He is ready to throw. His dagger, primed to kill. In the speed of a blink, it happens. He releases it.
I clamp my eyes shut and shield the target of my head with my arms. I will happily let go of a limb if it means I get to keep hold of my life. I am only immortal in the sense of being blessed with time – but that time can still be severed short by one vicious stab of a blade to my skull.
I am vulnerable to sheer hatred like Cole’s, and my heart skips at least ten beats as that hatred hurtles towards me in an eternity of a second.
But it doesn’t strike.
My arms fall from my face, my entire body trembling with the shaky breaths of my quivering lungs and my mouth wide and twitching with the aftermath of fear. A single tear falls down my cheek and onto my lips, a salty reminder that I still possess my life.
Cole’s frigid blue eyes are vacant, his face relaxed with the ease of unconsciousness. He sways where he stands, hand still hanging in the air in the gesture of a throw – his dagger vanished as quick as it had appeared.
As a pained moaning sound falls from his parted lips, it becomes apparent that, although in a dreamlike state, his body is beginning to react to damage of some sort. A knife wound, perhaps.
I scan my almost-assassin for the weapon that threatened my demise, and find it there, embedded into his foot, right through the tough leather of his boots, hilt pointing a finger to the gods.
Eliaz now stands opposite him, chest heaving with panicked breaths, eyes wide and frantic at his friend’s sudden outburst. He grits his teeth.
‘I told you not to include him in this discussion, Brother,’ Calli says, seemingly unfazed if not for the anxious licking of her bottom lip. ‘He has made his opinions very clear since she arrived. We cannot trust him not to kill her.’
‘I realise my mistake now.’ He falls back into his seat, with an exaggerated exhale. Cole dreams on in the air, still pinned to the floor by his own dagger.
‘It appears I may have to engage in a discussion regarding the pathetic concept of trust after all.’
With my hands now clenched into the wooden arms of my chair, I pacify the shock by taking in large amounts of air into my chest, the sting of my inflamed lungs keeping me grounded to reality.
‘Even if we cannot trust each other fully, we can at least have faith that we will act in the best interests of both our kingdoms,’ my voice comes out unstable. ‘I can look past Cole, and your past aggressions, Eliaz. If you are willing to believe in the sincerity of my intentions.’
The king’s expression is stiff and unreadable. Calli scratches on the table, a sign of displacement.
A heaviness floods into the atmosphere around them, that stale, smoky musk of antipathy that assaulted my senses the first time he spoke to me in the oratory.
Until this point, I haven’t given enough thought to the fact that there has been more than just surface level resentment to his torment, something greater than the rivalry of two kingdoms. Something deeper rooted.
I break into their thick silence. ‘It is not just the fact that I am the Princess of Reyhen that holds you back here.’
Calli swallows, giving away the answer, her brother a statue.
‘What makes you suggest tearing down the Divide?’ Eliaz asks, shifting the subject in avoidance. But I won’t relent. I straighten my back.
‘Is it because my father was the one to erect the Divide? You blame me for the separation of Valtayre, is that it? You hold me accountable for my father’s efforts to protect the Relic from insatiable hands. A pathetic excuse for loathing.’
‘Eira, it’s more than that.’ Calli’s red eyes are watery, her lips trembling. And it’s genuine to me.
‘I’ve said before, I don’t owe you an explanation,’ Eliaz says without any intention of elaboration.
He arches a brow at me, an unruly piece of his red-tipped hair falling into his eye like the trickling of blood.
‘And you know how to rid the Isle of the Divide? I am intrigued to find out where you have found that kind of information, seeing as I have never come close to the right kind of answers in my decades of research.’
‘You cannot destroy the Divide?’ My face tightens with confusion. ‘I had assumed that if you had the power to cross it that you’d be capable of—’
‘Tearing it down?’ He tilts his head backward in a cackle, having found an unsettling deal of hilarity in the notion. ‘If I had the skills required to break that thing apart, why would you think I’d leave it standing all this time? With Umbra crumbling as a result?’
‘You were biding your time,’ I say, hearing the ridiculousness of it out loud.
‘Contrary to what you’ve been led to believe, I do not waste my energy on villainous scheming and plots for revenge. My powers only allow me to cross and take whatever I wish along with me.’
I look to Cole, still a statue of sleep. Here put not present, forced into unconsciousness by his so-called friend.
That’s how he does it. My eyes flare at the King.
‘You can manipulate the Divide,’ I whisper, dazed. ‘Just like you can somehow alter our minds – you can influence the power of the Divide itself.’
Eliaz’s face contorts with a grin. ‘See, I don’t need to tell you anything. Look what’s possible if you just open those observational facilities of yours for once.’
I look up at the ceiling, defeated.
‘Do we know anything of how the Divide works?’ I ask.
Calli inhales with a shaking breath. ‘We were kind of banking on you knowing.’ Her gaze flits to her brother.
‘It seems that we have severely overestimated you, which is shocking considering how very little I think you capable of,’ he says, with a hint of disappointment.
They were under the impression that I knew more about the Divide than they did, a borderline hilarious thought to me, because my lack of knowledge has always been my downfall.
I burn up with the mortification of my stupidity, mixed with the stinging prickle of shame that I am capable of very little despite the fact that I want for a whole lot.
‘My parents sent me away,’ I hang my head. A pathetic excuse.
Eliaz’s cheeks relax slightly, his pale skin awash with a red tint that makes him look more alive than I have ever seen. A familiar flush of life. A sign of being human. ‘I know.’
‘So, then you’ll know that I have only just returned to court after having spent the majority of my life shut out from all important matters, left in the dark.’
‘Your father put up the Divide,’ Calli says, more a question than a statement. I nod in confirmation.
‘He died for it.’
The room falls silent, save for the crackling of fire in the hearth.
When the Relic proved too much of a temptation, when the Umbrian Guard had held a blade to my mother’s neck, my father initiated his plans for the Divide.
I was but a child then, terrified of the sudden disruption to the dream of childhood.
Just to keep the nightmares away, Father’s voice echoes in my mind.
He did not die straightaway after the Divide was put up, but decades later, when he had grown too comfortable in its protection, made vulnerable by the ease it gave him.
‘Well, there’s our answer.’ Eliaz gets to his feet, looking at me. ‘Your father had a study, I’m guessing.’
I shudder at the violent crack of a memory slamming itself into my vision. Blood on the floor, pooled around my father’s split head. The way it swelled, engulfing the legs of his desk.
‘Yes,' I whisper, the warmth of tears rolling down my cheeks.
‘Then there’s where our answers will be.’ If he notices the emotion in my face, he chooses to ignore it turning to his sister. ‘I will take her to Reyhen.’
‘I’m coming too,’ she rises from her chair. He shakes his head in dismissal.
‘You stay here and keep the Lillienne girl company. She will start to feel restless soon, and if anyone can help calm her, it will be you.’
Calli huffs, crossing her arms across her chest. ‘I never get to do anything exciting.’
Hot panic surges upwards from my stomach, and I leap from my chair, eyes darting to the Umbrian king. I need make sure that I see everything. I have to know.
‘I will go with you only if you promise not to mess with my mind again. I cross the Divide awake. I have to see it happen, to have a better idea of how it works.’
He grunts. ‘I’m not going to pinky-promise if that’s what you’re after. You will just have to take the chance. It’s up to you whether you choose to trust me or not.’
A wailing sound erupts from the unconscious Cole.
A warning that I do not heed.
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘We cross the Divide. Tonight.’