Chapter Fourteen
‘You can’t be serious.’
Eliaz looks as though he wishes to tear his fingers through my skull – and not in a mental sense this time.
‘Unfortunately, I am unable to locate my sense of humour at this present moment. I am deadly serious.’ I press my forehead to the door, perhaps unwise to turn my back on the king considering the blood-thirst that simmers in his voice.
‘The door is welded shut. The Relic gifted my father the ability to manipulate any materials. He saw no need for a key.’
I steal a glance over my shoulder at Eliaz, who stands there, thumb and forefinger pressed into the dip of his nose’s bridge, lips tight and eyes sealed as shut as the door.
I stare back into the wood, which meets my eyes with tiny, needled splinters that come to a dangerous point at my pupils.
How could I be so stupid? Bringing the King of Umbra here, with no idea of how to actually access the information we might need for our kingdoms, or if such answers live behind the immovable door.
I should have remembered how inaccessible this place is, especially seeing as it always has been.
‘Move.’
Hearing the force in his voice, I make a quick movement to the side of the door. No way am I taking any chances of getting in his way, not when I am now aware of what he’s capable of making a person do should they not comply.
Eliaz slams his muscled shoulder into the door with enough force to make it shudder but not relent. I roll my eyes.
‘As if that would work. I’d expect a better plan of action from the King of minds himself. Seems like someone has spent too much time manipulating the brains of others, and not enough building up his own mental capacity.’
He throws a booted foot at the wood this time, resulting in nothing more than a vibrating laugh from the door.
‘I possess more than human strength. Although, it seems so does this absurdly stubborn door.’
‘I just told you it was fused shut by my father.’
He sighs deeply at the floor, a wave of red falling into his eyes. ‘Can’t you melt the metal with your weird fire powers?’
‘I doubt I’m capable of creating flame hot enough to melt steel.’
‘And there’s no other way in there? A window or a secret entrance even?’
I rub my arm. There’s only one option, but it with us being five stories up at the top of this turret, it is not that helpful.
‘There is one window. But unless you’re up for scaling an entire turret of stone, I suggest we come up with a better idea.’
Eliaz straightens and the tautness of the muscles in his face loosens as he looks to me. ‘I may know a way we can save ourselves the trouble of such a strenuous act.’
I raise a brow and shoot him a look of scepticism. I am not a fan of whatever idea it is that makes him smirk at me in such a maniacal way.
‘Let’s go, Princess. The window awaits.’
The king swivels on his heel and is thumping down the stairs before I can even process his initial movement.
‘Wait!’ I hurry after him, our footsteps battling for dominance in the narrow space of the spiralling staircase.
Every step only makes me grimace further – it is this kind of careless noise that will get us caught.
I stumble down a few steps and almost lose my footing on one blasted step that is especially eroded.
‘Eliaz, what do you think you’re doing?’ I whisper shout into the darkness ahead of me, with only the faint glow of the moon to guide me. ‘You’re making too much noise.’
The sound of his boots hurrying down upon the stone disappears from the air, indicating that he has reached the end of the staircase, and could be running with careless abandon to Relic-knows where. I quicken my pace, half-flying down the remaining five steps. ‘Eliaz, I swear if you don’t stop I—’
As my feet leave the last step and meet the marbled tiles of the corridor, my body crashes into a wall of softness and silk, a cloud of lavender and warmth.
‘Eira,’ the cloud’s voice is misted with reprimand. Mother.
Balled up, yellow light in her hand reveals a sourness in her expression, her face distorted as though battling through the bitter taste of lemon on her tongue.
‘Mother.’
Smoke pushes her golden hair from her shoulders to the white of her silken nightdress. Eliaz’s not-so-subtle way of letting me know he is watching. My mother remains oblivious to this fact.
‘What do you think you are playing at, Eira? You vanish from the castle with no warning, and then my guards rush in to inform me that you have been sighted with an Umbrian man not even half-an-hour ago.’ Any hint of worry in her voice is squandered with the weight of her disgust at the mention of the company I’ve been caught keeping.
Her eyes remain glassy and yet, are overrun with a lethal calmness that makes my stomach turn sour.
She’s bound to have heard me say his name.
But she does not mention it. The acid in my gut bubbles as she looks at me like I am her biggest disappointment.
Well, my sentiments exactly, Mother.
‘What am I playing at?’ I say, with a little too much emotion.
‘I’ve been whisked away in a hurricane of earth-shattering revelations about my own kingdom that you have neglected to tell me.
I’m back here in search of answers that might help me fix what you cannot bring yourself to admit is a problem. ’
Her stone face falters momentarily but she narrows her eyes as she regains her composure.
‘I do not know what you are talking about, Eira. Our kingdom prospers. I cannot begin to imagine what kind of lies have been spat into your head but that is all they are – untruths. Poison in your ears.’
I ball my skirts into my fists until my hands feel like they could explode with heat.
‘So, our people are not losing immortality then? They do not have to choose between being treated into human health or dying with their powers? Because that is not what I have seen happening in shelters across the Divide. Shelters where Umbrian’s are treating the people of Reyhen as they would their own, all because the Queen of Reyhen chooses to turn a blind eye to it all. ’
My mother stares behind me, empty and emotionless, but with an expectance that makes me feel like my father stands there on the stairs I just came down. I turn in curious confusion but meet the vacant air with an exhale.
‘You don’t understand, dear.’
My rage spins me back round to her. ‘I am sick of people telling me that I don’t understand and then belittling me when I make any attempts to!’
‘It’s all for your own good, Eira, I—’
‘That is not for you to decide now, Mother. I am perfectly capable of coming to my own conclusions on what is best for me and my kingdom.’
My mother clutches at her waist, chest heaving with distressed breaths, panic appears in the creases of her forehead. ‘It’s him, isn’t it? It’s him. Oh, Eira.’
She reaches out for my shoulder with her free hand, but I dip my body away from her touch. ‘Please, tell me he is not here.’
‘The King of Umbra brought me back here,’ I lean into her, our faces inches apart. ‘And he is watching. A spectator to the Queen of Reyhen’s inability to take action, to give her daughter – the heir – the answers we all deserve to put our kingdoms to right.’
‘Eira, you can’t trust anything he tells you. He is a beast hungering for revenge. He won’t cease torment until he is satiated.’ A disloyal tear betrays her emotions and leaves a silver trail down her cheek. It does not do anything to shift my anger any closer to sympathy.
‘He has barely told me anything. I get information and I have to decide for myself whether to believe or disregard it. But I sure as hell burns will believe the people who are actually willing to help me find answers, over the people who think it’s in my best interests to remain in the dark.
He is healing our people. You are protecting the mere concept of your daughter from knowledge that could kill her. ’
‘Please—’ she croaks.
‘No, I won’t listen to another word. If you will excuse me, I have to find Eliaz so that we might stand a chance at saving our people.’
I shove my way past her, my shoulder hitting hers with such a force that I, for a brief second, fear that I may have shattered her very bones. She snatches at my wrist as I push past, hindering my movement mid-step. The orb of light dims into oblivion. She meets me eye to eye.
‘Be careful, Eira. You can’t know what he is capable of, your father was right to try and put a stop to this all those years ago. The king won’t have forgotten. You don’t know what he will do to you.’
The hearth in the pit of my stomach bursts into flames that shoot through my veins and pushes unbearable heat to my skin. I grit my teeth at the beautiful agony of it.
My mother’s hand begins to smoke, and she recoils it, eyes wide with sheer horror and pain, the skin on her hand already blistering with pus. Her breathing trembles throughout her body, mouth agape and quivering.
‘No, Mother. It would seem the problem here is that you don’t know what I am capable of.’
She simmers in the silence I leave in my wake, and I do not stop walking, even when I hear the soft whimpering of my mother’s distress.
The firelight of dawn floods the entrance hall, and Eliaz Daegon is still nowhere to be seen. The insufferable bastard he is.
I fall to onto the bench that lines the western wall in defeat, blowing the unruly strand of hair that falls into my eyes with a pointed puff of exhaustion.
I’ve searched the entire castle for what feels like hours without finding so much as a single trace of the Umbrian king’s lingering smoke.
There will be hell to pay if he has upped and left me here.
Perhaps this whole returning to Reyhen for answers thing was just a genius ploy to get me out of his way again.
Even if that is the case, Eliaz needs me just as much as I do him. As unbelievably shit as that might be.