Chapter Fifty-Two #2
‘That is where you are very, very wrong, my friend.’ He cocks his head to the side, regarding Eliaz with a devilish grin. ‘I am not Cole.’
Through rippling vision, I watch as the man who is not Cole, lowers his daggered hand, turning to face me.
Only, I blink and he is no longer the raven-haired man, but the timid, animal obsessed stable-manager, again and he is the smiling Umbrian guard Bem.
I barely have time to comprehend what it means before the image of Bem flickers, sputtering into the form of the linen-clad Finch, the guard who took the red book from me, a member of Truman’s crew.
And then all these people flash in turn before melting into the man’s final form – a man with pallid skin, dark onyx eyes, his hair a starker white than Eliaz’s.
It is not the sight of him that I recognise first, it is that stale, earthy aroma that infiltrates my senses. Salt and iron. Grass and soil. Servaytor Peckati.
Ori.
My mother meets the ground with a decisive thud. Unconscious.
I feel as though the ground is turning to quicksand below me, the air turning to smoke in my lungs. It can’t be. He wouldn’t.
He holds his hands up in the air, as though to let me see him in all his horrifying glory. ‘Your boyfriend isn’t the only one with a handy little book of Neyktar.’
‘Ori,’ my voice croaks out. I have waited decades to see him again, to ask my brother what happened that day. To see his rounded, rosy cheeks again, to see him look at me again, like I am more valuable than any crown he could wear on his head.
But this man is skeletal, his cheekbones spiking from his face, his smile, all broken teeth and sinister intent. In his eyes, I see that there is no crown he wouldn’t trade me for. I am not a treasure, but a useless piece of steel to him now.
His thirst for power is evident in the way he licks his lips, turning the dagger over in his hand.
‘What have you done with Cole?’ Eliaz demands, clutching his fist.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ori laughs. ‘That miserable idiot is still moping around Attanae. Probably pissed that his supposed friends left him stranded there.’
I didn’t think I’d ever feel bad for Cole, but I can’t help but think of him, dragging his feet around his father’s palace, feeling the weight of our abandonment as heavy as his father’s rejection.
I cannot even be sure that anything that Cole did to me, was every really him at all. My own brother seems the more likely perpetrator of my torment. And to think, I even blamed Eliaz at one point.
You picked the wrong side, and now you must face the consequences.
It wasn’t a warning about Umbra and Reyhen, of my working with Eliaz. It was about the fact that I simply believed my mother when she told me, my father’s death was my brother’s doing. I chose the wrong side.
And I have an odd feeling I’m about to be met with the consequences.
‘You have become an abhorrent excuse for a man,’ I spit at him, pushing myself up from the floor, the room spinning around me. ‘Don’t you remember how happy we used to be? You don’t have to be like this.’
He sighs, looking briefly at Eliaz as he edges toward me. ‘I am much changed, Sister. I became as horrible as the life I had. Born from horrible people, and horrible circumstances.’
Ori turns his attention to our mother as she rouses from her fainting spell, weeping, shaking her head. ‘I had to. I had to. I had to.’
Eliaz’s hand finds my waist, pushing me behind him, creating a barrier between me and what’s left of my family. ‘We have to get the dagger back.’
I nod despite the fact that he cannot see me. I peer around him, seeing as Ori kicks my mother in the side. She screams.
‘Get up and tell your beloved daughter how you killed our father in cold blood and let your own son take the blame for it.’
Her face wetted by tears, her eyes immediately find mine, wide and panicked. She clambers to her feet, making for me. ‘I had to, Eira! You have to understand.’
Ori grabs her by the forearm before she can take another step and yanks her backwards, twisting her arm and bringing his head down to her ear and forcing her still.
‘I had to flee Reyhen and live my life on the run. My reputation ruined. My future stolen from me with one stab of a blade.’ He leans down further, speaking directly into her ear.
She stops resisting him like she knows exactly what he is about to spit into her ear.
‘Tell me, Mother, was your lover worth destroying everything for? Worth losing your son over?’
‘I did it for you,’ she sobs. ’I did it for both of you. You have to believe me.’
His face distorted with the twisting of disgust, Ori walks her forward and throws our mother to the ground at mine and Eliaz’s feet.
But before either of us can even think to move, to protect her, the very ground on which we stand on begins to shake, and a low, rattling groan erupts from outside.
Ori laughs, looking to Eliaz. ‘Sounds like Miss Daegon is finally proving herself useful after all.’
‘What have you done with her?’ Eliaz takes a lunge at him, but again, Ori is much too quick to disappear from our senses, and Eliaz meets dead air.
‘You know, you really shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss her feelings,’ my brother says from the window behind us now, peering out to the darkened, flashing sky outside. ‘It makes her vulnerable to anyone who tells her they understand, that they can help her make a change.’
‘What have you done?’ Eliaz asks, his voice cracking as tears well, his fists clenched tight by his sides.
‘Exactly what you refused to do. I gave her a chance to make herself useful when it comes to that pesky Divide.’
No. He can’t have. It’s too soon. We’re not ready. Reyhen will die if we take the Divide down now. Gods, why didn’t I pocket that fucking urn when I had the chance?
Eliaz looks to my sobbing mother on the floor, to Ori and then lastly, his eyes land on mine.
‘Go find her, she needs you more,’ I tell him, thinking of how desperate Calli must have felt to resort to something as catastrophic as this.
A single tear falls over his cheek. ‘I can’t leave you.’
‘You can’t leave Calli, I’d never forgive you if you did.’
When he does not move, still paralysed by the decision of who to stay with or leave. I make the choice for him.
‘Go.’ I feel for the energy of the Relic in the air, and I give one, forceful shove, sending Eliaz stumbling towards the door. Then I pull out that wretched inner fire and draw a line between us. Separating us with a divide once again.
The King of Umbra on one side of the barrier and the Princess of Reyhen on the other. As it was before.
Only, he is no longer the prowling, dangerous monster as he was once depicted. He is simply a man torn in two, a beautiful example of the complexities and contradictions of life.
He is relentless, he is unfearing and tortured.
But he is emotional, selfless, and passionate.
And for that, he is a beautiful mystery.
One I hope I will get the chance to solve.
‘Go,’ I plead again.
The air above the flame warps and ripples, distorting the image of him as glances back at me, agonised.
‘Be careful, Princess.’
‘Never,’ I mouth back to him.
Then he is gone. Vanishing into thin air as though he did not stand there at all.
As though he didn’t exist at all.