CHAPTER 28 #3
“I suppose not,” he says, flicking a spec of invisible dust off his uniform. “Why exactly are you here?”
“I came to check in on Siserie.” Not a lie.
I’m not sure how it’s possible but his frown deepens. “Xeyvian did mention he’d put the female’s sentence in the hands of a La’tarian.”
“Tread lightly, Toren,” Riah says, and I startle at the tone she takes with her superior. “Feyn’leij ajna.”
The male’s eyes widen, and I begin to wonder if I should have asked the sisters to teach me to speak feyn as well as sprite.
I’m sure they are fluent in the tongue. Whatever she said to Toren has the male reaching for a key and leading us deeper into the bowels of the barracks without another pointed word about where I came from.
Beyond the officers’ quarters the halls quickly grow dark, the natural moisture from the earth penetrates the walls of carved stone and dankens the air with a musty aroma.
A twinge of guilt settles in my gut as I consider the life Siserie will live if I leave her here, even if only a few days have passed since she began serving her sentence.
That little spark of regret fades the moment Toren opens the door to her cell.
The lovely feyn sits in a small wooden chair in the corner of her room, a modest but comfortable looking cot across from her.
Lamplight flickers on the wall where I feel the absence of a window, and a half-eaten tray of fresh fruit and cheese sits on a sturdy table beside her.
They might call it a prison, but it is every bit the room I was raised in.
“Not much of a prison,” I whisper to Riah under my breath.
“Maybe not by La’tari standards,” Toren says behind me, “but in A’kori we believe that not everyone deserving of a cell should be punished as if they’ve committed a war crime.”
Fair enough.
Siserie startles when she sees me standing in the doorway, but recovers quickly, her posture straightening. She raises her chin to look down her nose at me when she says, “Come to gloat?”
I can hardly blame her for the assumption, and perhaps it would be crueler to admit to the female that she has hardly crossed my mind since I’d last seen her.
“I came to end your sentence,” I say.
A quick glance at Riah tells me that the lieutenant might have preferred if I’d decided to let the female serve out her sentence a little longer. I suppose to an immortal, a few days in a comfortable cell hardly qualifies as punishment.
“Why would you?” Siserie asks.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I reply.
Is she really going to argue with me about this?
She scoffs, lifting herself from the chair in one elegant motion. I’m struck painfully by the practiced grace of many lifetimes, as she saunters toward me, a seductive sway to her hips.
“I know what you are to him, and while the very idea of an ungifted mortal sharing his bed sickens me, that is all you will ever be. Durah. Mortal. Fleeting.” She stands so close I can feel the heat radiating off her body.
“In two hundred years, you will be nothing but a distant memory. The sound of your voice, the feeling of your touch, your beauty, all too difficult for him to recall.” Her lips peel back in something resembling a grin, or perhaps a snarl.
“But I will remain, unblemished by the iron will of time, still beautiful, still—”
“Full of yourself?” I quip, and Riah chokes on a laugh beside me. “Pining after a male that will never want you regardless of the millennia that pass.”
Her lips peel back further, and she bares her fangs. I know I don’t need to say another word. She has already lost the battle between us. The general made his mind up about the female long before I ever entered his life.
Maybe it’s the sting of the truth of what she said that makes me press on.
“Tell me how it feels to know that the male you’ve spent so many years of your long life pursuing, would rather spend his days, and nights, in the company of a woman who is, as you say, ungifted and will be ravaged by time?”
She levels me with a fearsome glare and burning embers spark to life in her eyes.
I should back away. I know I should. And I might, if it weren’t for the officers bracketing me on either side.
Their presence emboldens me to impart one last petty jab at the female who lied to me, who tried to keep me from what is mine.
“How little you must think of yourself, to grasp at him with such desperation.”
Siserie bares her fangs at me, loosing a growl that raises the hair on my arms. Though I have no fear of the female, ice spirals down my spine as those embers burst into flame.
This is not mere rage that flickers in her eyes, but true fire that ignites, licking across her irises.
Every bare patch of her flesh is licked by a white heated blaze that threatens to burn.
My heart races when I hear the woosh of fire, and my eyes flick down to the churning ball of flame that appears in her palm.
To my surprise, Toren is the first to act, putting out the confrontation before it truly begins.
He spears out an icy hand, grasping Siserie by the throat, his frigid embrace leeching the heat from her skin, squelching her fire with a hissing steam.
The intense rage I am accustomed to seeing now burns in Toren’s eyes as he looks down at the wide-eyed female and growls, “Vey’ah?”
“Yes, I dare,” the female spits angrily, pointing a slender finger at me as she tears at the hand the male has latched around her neck. “She is nothing but a mistake.”
“The fates do not make mistakes.” His voice is deadly calm.
“They made one,” she growls through clenched teeth, thrusting her finger toward my chest, “when they bound that to my king!”
“Treason,” Toren rumbles, his grip tightening around her throat.
White veins of ice spread across her face, popping as they engulf what little remains of her fire.
“Toren,” Riah’s voice comes in warning, “leave justice to the king.”
Siserie exhales a misty breath as the ice thaws from her skin, the male leaning forward to whisper a deadly promise into her ear.
“You’ll wish I ended you when he hears of this. Trust that he will have questions of his own, about how exactly it is you have come to know of the lady’s bond to my liege.”
I’m hardly sure what he means, but it’s a threat the female takes to heart. The blood drains from her face. Toren pins her with a stare as he asks, “Do you still intend to release her?”
I almost forgot. It is the reason I came, in part, but I don’t have to think about it. As far as I’m concerned there is only one answer to give him.
“Keep her here until I’m dead. When that time comes, I pass her sentence on to you, Toren.”
So, the male does smile.
Siserie raises her chin defiantly, but there is no mistaking the fear in her eyes or the quiver of her lip. Like Riah, Toren is obviously no friend to the female. The look on her face tells me he will be happy to let her rot for a term no mortal can fathom.
The wretched wail of her anger floods the halls when we make our way back to the light of the higher barracks. I push down thoughts of the strange exchange I witnessed below and focus on why I came.
“Does everyone under your command have a room like Siserie’s?” I ask.
Despite his clear feelings on the La’tari, the male doesn’t seem concerned by my inquiry when he replies, “We build homes for our officers and help provide for their families.
The small village you saw above is made up of those families, for the most part.
Only the young recruits live in the small rooms of the barracks, but their rooms are far more comfortable than the cells below.
As if he can see the unspoken question lingering on my tongue he says, “How could I ask them to risk their lives for A’kori and house them like criminals?”
I remain thoughtful, considering each of Toren’s replies.
He does not balk at my questions and in fact seems comfortable to disclose more than what I inquire about.
I try to make sense of the world I’ve only just begun to know, unable to make it fit with the story I’ve been told all my life about the feyn.
When we depart late in the afternoon, Toren assures me that I’m welcome any time. I can’t help but think the gift of Siserie’s confinement went a long way with the male when some of the lines adorning his face smooth and he dips his head in parting.