Chapter Twenty-One
There is an unexpected personality to the room, its smooth burgundy walls, meticulously decorated with paintings of storming seas and ships with dragons on their helms. Dotted in the organised spaces between the frames are various trinkets keeping in with the nautical theme.
Shells, snippets of netting, a rusted gold compass, and a giant hooked cutlass that hangs above it all, they tell the story of a boy who dreamed of adventure and collected the remnants of voyages he did not embark on himself.
The ocean of blue carpet springs back from the imprint of my boots as I wander past the hanging curtains of the bed to inspect the writing desk that sits beneath the window, a large arched glass portal to the forest that lines the road to the city.
Eliaz is a curiously neat creature. The pages of parchment piled up perfectly in line with the edges of the desk, his inkwell and quill in their designated places in the wooden holder next to them, a clean and uncluttered space.
I eye a brown leather book next to a long white candle in a brass holder, stroking the lettering as I read the title aloud.
‘Son of the Abyss.’ A cautionary tale to those who turn their back on divinity, those who grow a hatred that is not innate in man.
Those who choose a path of darkness over goodness and salvation.
Men who let their own selfish needs drive them.
Men like my father was. Not exactly light reading for a king burdened by a crumbling kingdom, but I am beginning to suspect that this may be a book read in research, by someone fearful of their own fate should they cross one boundary more.
I sober into the feeling that I should quicken my crossing of this particular boundary of personal space lest I get caught doing so.
Seeing as there are no loose keys lying about on the desk, I begin rummaging through drawers, rifling through letters and stray pieces of jewellery that clink and raise my hopes that they might be what I am in search of.
Each little compartment of the desk seems to be where Eliaz’s hidden messiness lies, where he seems to discard all the things that he does not have an obvious place for. Loose buttons, cufflinks, coins and even the odd thimble. But no keys.
I sigh, slamming the last drawer closed with defeat.
‘You’re looking for these I presume?’
With a gasp that comes out in the form of a frightened squeal – a humbling sound I admit – I pivot my attention to the door where I expect a displeased or angered Eliaz to be looming.
But much to my confusion, the doorway lies empty, no shadow of the Umbrian king infiltrating the sunshine that lights the room from the hall.
‘And here I was, beginning to think you were smarter than my initial impressions,’ his voice teases again, and I follow its traces in the air, snapping my head to its place of origin.
The bed, where the intricate tapestries of the curtains are drawn back to the posts, to reveal a smug Eliaz lying cross legged, propped up by a copious number of cushions, keys dangling from his fingers by the long chain that usually keeps them around his neck.
Even in my shock, I cannot resist the sight of his exposed chest, his shirt hanging unbuttoned from his shoulders, leaving his tattooed abdomen open for the viewing, the paleness of his skin an enchanting juxtaposition to the dark crescent moon that paints it.
His eyes follow the line of my gaze, and he smirks, amused at my blatant gawking.
I shake myself back into my right mind, blinking the image away. ‘I saw you leave with Cole.’ I gesture in the vague direction of the gates to the estate. ‘I didn’t think you would be here, obviously.’
He chuckles, the muscles in his chest tightening and loosening accordingly. ‘And that is the perfect excuse to ransack my bedchambers for your own personal gain?’
I stand my ground, crossing my arms over my chest and narrowing my eyes at him. ‘Any ransacking carried out on my part is definitely not for any personal benefits – but for the good of my kingdom. Seeing as my new ally continues to withhold secrets, thus weakening the bonds of our partnership.’
‘Ah but what is a secret if it is not to be withheld? Perhaps your father might have been the one to ask.’
Eliaz drops the keys on the bedsheets by his hips and crosses his own arms, scanning me head to toe, his eyes swimming with amusement.
I scowl at him. ‘Any dwelling on what untruths my father told and what information he did not disclose will get us nowhere. I do not condone the keeping of secrets, for it is just a weak form of lying disguised as self-preservation. Do not pretend we are helping one another if all your cards do not lie bare for all to see.’
‘Spoken like a future queen.’ A corner of his lips pulls upwards.
‘However, your father was a cruel and violent man – the keeping of secrets was by far the least immoral part of him. I will not play into your delusions about the kind of person he was when not seen solely through the eyes of his daughter. And I do not appreciate the comparisons of my integrity when held up into the light next to his.’
My cheeks burn crimson, and I seethe through the sting of my fingernails as they dig deep into my arm.
‘My father was not wicked, or aggressive, or violent. Yes, I am beginning to see that he was dishonest, and that he was overly passionate about the wellbeing of his kingdom. But he would not intentionally cause harm, and even suggesting so is an affront to his kind soul.’
Eliaz shakes his head, biting down on his bottom-lip as though clamping down on anger screaming to be unleashed. His words are eerily composed as he asks, ‘Are you neglecting to remember what your dear friend Mr Reyer told us?’
A lump forms in my throat. I had pushed the thought away, boxed it up, charred it shut with my mind’s fire and tucked it away in the darkness, out of my conscious sight.
I don’t wish to think of the version of my father that might commit such an atrocity, to taint the doting parent with the angered and scheming King of Reyhen.
‘You recall that his own father died—’ He pauses looking upwards in thought.
‘No – was killed in cold blood for his open disagreement towards your father’s ideas of progression.
Your father could be wicked, aggressive or violent if it served him better than kindness, and you are a fool not to see it. ’
‘I was a child,’ I retort. ‘When I have proof that it is so, then I will perhaps then believe it to be. But all I have is hearsay, rumours, people vocalising suspicious or personal opinions, but I have yet to see any physical evidence that my father was deceitful or violent at all.’ I take a few steps forward until I am standing at the bottom of the bed, Eliaz’s narrowed eyes tracking me the whole way.
His posture stiffens a little when I raise my chin at him, his right cheek twitches, exposing his uncertainty.
‘So, unless you unearth anything that might sway me to believe such opinions, I suggest you keep any thoughts on the matter to yourself. Which I suspect you will have no issue with seeing as you are the expert at secret keeping after all.’
‘I can show you exactly what your father was capable of, but I do not think you are in the right state to receive it,’ his voice is solid, unwavering. Yet – unconvincing. There is no way I am leaving this room without knowing exactly the kind of man everyone seems to know my father as.
‘I will decide for myself if the state I am in will affect my ability to be presented with evidence, thank you very much. And I say, show me the fucking proof.’
Eliaz sighs. ‘You are too fickle to survive the agony of your whole world view shattering before you. But who am I to deny the Princess of Reyhen what she so desperately whines for.’
My breath catches in my chest, but not at the sharpness of his words as they cut though my own.
No, it’s the suddenness with which Eliaz appears before me, sending me stumbling back in my heels, his honey eyes dark and clouded over with a vagueness of emotion, his metallic breath leaking iron into my tastebuds with the abrupt proximity we now stand within.
It’s the heaving of his own chest, as he hunches over me, head tipped so that the redness of his hair falls over his brows.
It’s the earthy smell of smoke that drifts into my nostrils, hot and enduring.
It’s the scar. The scar is a dry river of crimson across his throat, a cavernous indent that stretches the entirety of the visible skin on his neck – and as he clenches the muscles in his jaw and hangs his head in what seems to be indignity, I see all the proof I need that this was my own fathers doing.
A slithery line of gold glints in the centre of the scar as his muscles tense.
My father had tried endlessly to use his gifted powers to create things that he might use to defend or protect, shields and chainmail armour, weaponry.
The shields remained intact, the armour proved useful in the days before the Divide, to keep our knights and guards safe from threat to the kingdom and Relic alike.
But the swords, the maces and the flails he had forged from the finest metals, all had one thing in common; they refused to remain in the form they were moulded into.
The swords would grow limp and puddle like quicksilver in the forge, the maces into rivers in the gaps of the cobblestones, the flails melting into a fate much the same.
It was as though the Relic repelled the idea of causing direct harm, whilst glorifying the concept of self-protection as paramount over offence, for the armour, shields and the heavy castle gates all remained intact as my father had willed them.
There is only one weapon I know of that did not liquefy immediately after creation.
Only one solidary weapon that has the power of the Relic flowing through the heat of its own jagged edge.
A dagger.
The dagger he called Sirnet, named after the barrier between the heavens and the earth.
The dagger that would only activate to his touch. An apologetic gift from the Relic for denying him the arsenal of munitions.
The toothed cut of Eliaz’s scar makes me wince, and I avert my eyes to the floor, tears welling and threatening to spill. My breathing accelerates in the vivid horror burning in my chest. ‘He would never,’ I sob, knowing all too well that I have just seen the proof that indicates otherwise.
‘He did,’ he says softly, closer to me, as though he feels some remorse for giving me exactly what I had ordered him to.
‘I don’t even know why I have removed it from your senses this whole time.
I guess I did not wish to be perceived as weak, like my guard is ever down long enough to get close enough to kill. ’
He brings his arm up towards me, the ghost-like touch of his hand entangling itself with the hair that hangs loose down my back, as he strokes it gently, the heavy silence alerting me of his sudden plunge into deep thought.
Is this his attempt at soothing me? At easing me into the idea that my father was not who I knew him to be?
Because it feels more like an attempt to distract me from the real questions I might have in his offering of evidence.
I shake him away, the muscles in my face twisting with the hurricane of thoughts in my mind.
His brows knit together as I feel myself turn red all over.
‘Why did he do it? What reason did you give my father to try and make an attempt at your life?’
His hands ball into fists at his side as he clenches his jaw, a glint of golden pain in his eyes that flashes simultaneously with his scarred throat.
‘You think I did something that drove him to this? What could I possibly have done to be deserving of his dagger slashing at my throat?’ his voice grows thin and cracks, his eyes welling with tears that threaten to fall.
‘There is no reason for your father to have tried to kill me other than who I was when he saw me that day.’
‘I don’t understand.’ I cool slightly with the sadness in him, the vulnerability of the man who keeps his secrets under lock and key under the library floor.
‘I was just another pawn that fell into his hands, Eira. I was the heir to the throne, in his territory, and he only had one weapon to attack with.’
‘My father died when I was in late adolescence. That would mean you would have been—’
‘I was but a boy,’ he cuts me off. ‘And I first crossed the Divide as I do now. My age did not seem to deter his dagger from my flesh.’
‘I did not believe my father capable of such an atrocity.’ I wince before correcting myself. ‘I did not want to believe him capable of it.’
He dares to take his hand again to the loose tendrils of hair that have escaped from behind my ear, and I don’t do anything to prevent it, even as every emotion boiling up within me screams at me to.
‘Your father tried to take my life.’ His eyes fall over my face, scanning every inch, searching for something in the way I look up to him, lines creasing in his forehead as he takes it in, his hand paralysed near my face with hesitance.
He must not find in me what he sought out, because he lets loose one long shaking breath from his nose.
There is a shift in his gaze now, a tenderness that glows faint with the reflection of the sun in his pupils.
He finally coils the hanging strand of my hair and tucks it gently behind my ear, his skin warm as it brushes mine.
He stares deep into my eyes, until I swear I can feel the molten honey pooling into the icy ocean of mine.
The warmth of life in the winter’s sea.
‘I am beginning to think, however, that you won’t.’