16. Chapter Sixteen
Chapter sixteen
We somehow reach the guest parlour without Eliaz drawing any attention to himself, to which I can only infer that he has blocked himself from the senses of any witnesses, or sent them away before they even reach us.
I can’t help but glance at his neck before I open the door, willing my eyes to catch another flash of gold, but the skin remains dull and colourless.
Eliaz pays me no notice, and barges through the door with an infuriating nonchalance that tells me he means to further tease – or torment. The duke, his next unsuspecting victim.
I half fall into the room behind him, and Ansel springs to his feet in surprise, the coffee cup in his hand splashing the brown liquid onto his cream trousers, surpassing his notice.
A timid looking chambermaid bows a trembling head to Eliaz and I from next to the coffee table in front of the sofas.
The duke shoots a questioning glance to me, face red and splotchy from shock. I give him a sheepish smile.
‘Your Grace, I—’ he stutters.
‘How embarrassingly formal of you,’ Eliaz mocks, crossing his arms over his puffed chest, surveying Ansel. ‘I would’ve thought you guys would be past all that haughty bullshit by now.’
‘That’s enough, Eliaz,’ I warn.
Ansel’s jaw slackens slightly, his eyes darting between the Umbrian bastard and me. ‘I’m afraid I do not follow.’
‘Well, allow me to get you up to speed,’ Eliaz walks to the round table by the window and pulls out a chair for himself. Ansel looks on with quiet puzzlement as the King of Umbra leans back in the wooden seat, arm resting atop the backrest of the neighbouring chair.
‘Our little princess here seems to believe that you know something that could help us in our shared goal.’
‘You mentioned something about the creation of the Divide,’ I say to Ansel. ‘You said you had theories surrounding why your father was so against how it was made.’
He moves towards me. ‘Be careful, Your Grace. This man is…’ he gestures towards Eliaz. ‘This man is dangerous.’
His brows are taught, his eyes pleading with me to heed his caution. There is a resentment I would not have thought possible from such delicate features as the duke’s.
‘I see why you might think that of him, but trust me, we need his help in protecting Reyhen from what cripples our people and threatens our collapse.’
Eliaz laughs. ‘Don’t ruin my dangerous image, Princess. I much prefer him all riled up with such anger. It’s cute on him, don’t you think?’
I glower at him. ‘Stop making everything worse, or we stand no chance at achieving what we’re after.’
Ansel is a few feet from me now, his back to Eliaz, who mutters something about how unsociable the act is. His voice is rougher – deeper – when he speaks this time.
‘You do not know what he has done, Your Grace. How can you trust that he will not betray you? It wouldn’t be too outrageous to believe it in his nature to.’
I glance over his shoulder to the king and his facade of arrogance.
Despite all the awful things he has done, I can be certain of one thing – he will do anything to protect his people and save them from the slow and starving deaths they are vulnerable to should the Divide remain.
He knows he cannot go on like this. It is not sustainable for him to take on the burden of this all on his own any longer.
I bring my eyes to Ansel, his now unnaturally dark and narrow for such a bright and awesome creature. He follows me as I walk past him, my back to the wall, allowing me to look between both men with ease.
‘You’re right in saying I do not know what he has done before, and I would be lying if I said it doesn’t frighten me to think about. But I do know what he is currently doing for our people regardless of his past, and that tells me there’s more to him than just smoke and mind-games.’
Eliaz’s arm slips from the back of the chair, and he leans forward, resting his hands on the table, looking down. Ansel shakes his head, wordlessly, fingers pinching his nose as people often do when trying to quell a building headache.
‘Please, Ansel.’ I walk to the table and pull out a chair. ‘Just talk with us, for a few moments.’
He stands there with his fingers still pressed, for a few moments, contemplating. I nibble the skin on my lip with the worry that he might deny us the answers, that he might confirm to my mother the Umbrian king’s presence to win her favour.
But he lets out a sigh, shoulders slumped in defeat, and makes his way over to the table.
He doesn’t accept the chair I pulled out for him next to Eliaz, but opts for a seat across from the king, eyes worriedly fixed on his established enemy.
Eliaz’s head is resting in his hands now, his face obstructed by his heavily bejewelled fingers.
‘Shall I bring the coffee over?’ The chambermaid's voice, however faint, makes the three of us flinch, forgetting we had company. She has picked up the tray of coffee, the lid of the coffee pot clattering with the tremor of her nervous hands.
‘Please, let me.’ I make my way over to her and take the tray from her hands. She doesn’t meet my eye, averting her gaze to my feet instead.
‘T-thank you, Your Grace.’
‘It is quite alright,’ I offer her my kindest voice. ‘I’m sure you have plenty of other duties to attend to, please do not let us keep you from them. We are quite busy ourselves.’
The young girl nods in a bow, arms rigid by her side. Her feet barely make a sound on the floor as she shuffles out the room without a backwards glance.
I set the tray of coffee down on the table before sitting myself down in the seat next to Eliaz. He straightens himself up, nose scrunching up at the aroma.
‘You’re not going to make me drink that stuff, are you? It smells vile.’
‘No,’ I narrow my eyes on him. ‘You’re bitter enough without it.’
Eliaz childishly sticks out his tongue, and I glare at him, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of it.
Ansel clears his throat, eyes flitting between us. ‘What is it you think I might have knowledge on? I would much like for this to be over quite soon.’
‘Why did your father protest the initiation of the Divide so much? You told me you had theories surrounding it all.’
He nods tentatively at me.
‘Well, we’re all ears.’
Ansel rests his intertwined fingers on the table and stares at them; lips parted in anticipation of the words he seems to search deep for.
Eliaz taps his fingers with impatience. I kick his shin under the table.
‘I can’t be sure you want to hear what I have to say, Your Grace.’
‘I need you to tell us anything you might know. We’re desperate,’ I say, with the force of certainty drenching my voice.
‘My father was notified that the King of Reyhen had plans to split Valtayre, to separate Umbra from Reyhen in order to protect the Relic.’
My senses tingle with the sudden tension emitted from Eliaz’s direction as he straightens himself in his chair.
My attention remains on Ansel, whose beautiful face is twisted into a grimace, indicating the intense turmoil within him as he thinks over his next words.
His eyes shakily meet mine, swimming with sorrow, dark with guilt.
‘Your father was working together with someone from Attanae, my father never imparted a name. But their initial plans were hindered by the Relic’s refusal to provide enough power to create more than a mere forcefield, a ward that can be penetrated with enough intention – and your father needed something more, something reliable against all outsiders.
So he turned to another source for power, a force against which even the Relic would struggle to defend.
’ He tightens his lips together as though holding back a mouthful of vomit.
Without giving much thought to the action, I reach over and place a hand on his arm, perhaps an inappropriate move, but I couldn’t bear seeing how distraught he is just talking about it.
A part of me wanted the act of touch to quell the bile rising in my own throat at the mention of my father turning to something other than the Relic for magic, an act of sacrilege that no doubt was the real cause of his death.
The people of Reyhen do not take too kindly to any disrespect to the Virtuae Gods.
Ansel regards the touch with a watery smile, and despite the comfort the contact brings me, something makes me retract my hand to my lap. I avoid the duke, keeping my eyes fixed downward, guilt heating my body.
‘What is this other source her father apparently sought out?’ Eliaz questions, an edge of irritation cutting through his voice.
‘I do not know for certain. But whatever it was, my father must’ve outwardly shown his revulsion towards it, for his life was taken for what the king said was a traitorous act towards the Reyheni royals.’
‘You have an idea of what it might be though, don’t you?’ My voice comes out quieter than I had expected it to.
‘I searched high and low for any tomes that detailed the existence of any other known sources of power within history and apart from mention of demi-gods and clairvoyancy – I came across nothing of real substance.’
‘But?’ Eliaz presses.
‘But.’ Ansel swallows. ‘I went to the Cathedral – feeling lost and looking to the gods for guidance – and it was there, on my knees by the shrine to the Virtuae, I noticed the images painted at the feet of the gods.’
I lean forward, fearful I might miss his revelation with the heavy sound of my own breathing.
‘Blood. Restless souls. Hellfire. I had seen those images a thousand times before, in many different religious buildings, and had never once thought them more than just a mere display of what the Virtuae have conquered, what they protect us all from. But it wasn’t until that day with all the desperation in my eyes, I saw the paintings for what they were.
The weaknesses of the gods, the evil to balance out the good. The deathly counterpart to life.’
My mouth dries. ‘The source of power just as strong as the Relic.’
Ansel gives me a pained nod. ‘The magic of blood. Neyktar.’
A coldness washes over me, my body twitches, rejecting the idea of such magic – wholly against the idea that my own father could partake in such an affront to the Relic, to the Virtuae Gods.
I wave the thought away, shaking my head.
‘No, no, no. My father devoted himself to the gods, to the protection of the Relic. He would not have turned to something so…wicked.’
Eliaz is surprisingly quiet, and I turn to him to see if he shares in my disbelief, but his features are eerily calm, his mouth tight and his eyes neutral. He catches me looking and sighs before looking to Ansel with a dismissive roll of the eyes.
‘I’m with the princess on this one. There’s no way the most pious king would do anything to anger his precious gods and go against the very thing he is trying to protect. I’m not buying it.’
The duke raises his hands in defence. ‘Believe what you wish, I am only telling you what you asked of me.’
The question from earlier pours back into my mind.
‘You also said that my father was working with someone from Attanae to initiate the Divide, but at that point the whole place had been destroyed for years already. Surely, we are not expected to believe that someone from the most power-hungry continent would help seal the Relic inside the borders of Reyhen?’
Both men regard me with wide, quizzical eyes, like I’d just turned into a horned Ingvort before them. I look between them. ‘What? Why are you both looking at me like that?’
Ansel’s face melts into softness. ‘Well, it is only that you seem to believe that… well, you appear to think it impossible that—’
‘The mainland is perfectly intact,’ Eliaz interjects. ‘Who led you to believe that Attanae had been wiped out?’
My mouth dries in an instant and my brows near tangle on my forehead.
‘M-my father, he said that—’
A squeezing sensation pulls my throat tight, a swelling of dread that I am barely able to breathe past, my chest also constricted by embarrassment.
‘He told me that the Relic did not reward greed and that the Virtuae Gods punished those whose hunger could not be satiated. I thought the land – the people – died with the absence of the power, when the gods turned their back on the ungrateful.’
The King of Umbra looks at me dumbfounded; his head carved with more lines of confusion than I have ever seen on him.
He is animated in a way that indicates he is overcome by an emotion that I cannot name, all his features displaying conflicting thoughts.
His amber eyes meet mine, their unexpected warmth sparking an unease in my gut.
‘The mainland is inhabited by humans. Just like Umbra. Only the Relic was never theirs’
Two sentences that tell me everything I need to know. The absence of the Relic in Umbra created humans out of immortals, wiping out masses of the population before Eliaz found an intervention. Attanae did not die in the absence of the Relic’s power. Because it never had it.
My stomach twists with the thought, that everything I believed so steadfastly, was a lie. Everything my father had taught me.
I push myself up from the table, the chair scratching a horrible shriek from the floor. Lightheaded, I close my eyes for a second, gathering myself. Ansel rises, a hesitant hand hovering behind my back.
‘Your Grace, are you well?’
I flinch away from him, half nodding, half shaking my head. ‘Thank you for this, but I have to go.’
Eliaz blocks my exit, something close to concern ruffling his eyebrows. He places a hand under my elbow as though to steady me. ‘Stay, I think we should talk some more.’
‘No, I need to – I need to get out of here.’ I yank my elbow back from his grasp and push past him.
The world spins and tilts around me as I clamber my way through the door and towards the back exit of the castle.
Maids and footmen jump back from my path, narrowly avoiding my body colliding with theirs.
I barely make it down the stone steps before falling to the ground, knees crashing into the gravel.
My father used Neyktar, against the will of the Virtuae Gods, whom he lived by, whom he served above all else. I understand his desperation to protect the Relic, but why turn to the very thing we need to protect it from?
My world comes crashing down around me with every sob and revelation that hits me, until I feel I am burrowed under the rubble of it all. Trapped under the weight of the lies.
How hard it is to breathe when the air around you is tainted by deceit. Despite the way my body calls on me to stay home, to remain in the territories the Relic will reach, I want something so contradictory – so confusing.
I want to go back to Umbra.