Chapter 6
Aziel hadn’t had the delight of visiting the dungeons underneath Thorn’s new palace, but now was as good a time as any to take a gander. Especially since Thorn was the one who sent him there.
He walked behind the guard to the large iron door that led into the bowels of the castle. Unlike the palace in Yaar, this dungeon was adequately lit and clean. It was not drowning with rats, nor the stench of fecal matter. In fact, it smelled of herbs and fresh linens.
Dignity.
The dungeons were not reserved for their most gruesome criminals, as Aziel preferred to handle those on his own.
No, these dungeons were for the petty criminals—the thieves that were still not acclimated to a life without struggle, the rowdy drunks that needed a night to sleep off their drinks, and the goddesses that enjoyed getting into fights at taverns in the late hours of the night.
The guard paused in front of the third cell, signaling to Aziel that they’d finally arrived. He dismissed the guard with a polite nod of his head and watched the guard leave before he finally turned to face the small white-haired woman who was glaring at him from her cot.
“What did you do?” He asked, desperately struggling not to laugh.
Nymiria’s lips went flat, her tone bland as she spoke. “I got arrested.”
“That’s stating the obvious. Perhaps I should ask why, instead.”
“Perhaps you should.”
Aziel glanced around the cell. Though he seemed stern and rather angry with her current circumstances, there was a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “As always, you never cease to amaze me. What did you get arrested for?”
“The guards should have told you by now. It was quite the spectacle.”
They had, in fact. They’d told him the entire hilarious story of a small woman pouncing on the back of a barkeep and punching him in the head.
Not just once, but three times. The third blow had knocked the old oaf unconscious.
His body hitting the ground made more of a mess than the tiny, wild-haired woman that was sitting in front of him now.
But he preferred to hear her side of the story, seeing that Nymiria did not throw punches for seemingly no reason.
“How are your knuckles?”
She looked down at them, frowned, and gave a slight shrug. “Swollen, but I think I’ll survive. What with being a goddess and all.”
“A lot of confidence coming from someone sitting in a cell.” Aziel muttered, doing his best to stifle his laugh.
Heaving a sigh, Nymiria pulled herself away from the stone wall.
“See it as me giving them a bit of a confidence boost. I could have broken these shackles the moment they put them on me. Or, better yet, I could have made a bigger show of myself and used my Grace in front of everyone. But what kind of citizen would I be if I did not abide by the laws of the land?”
Aziel observed her for a moment with a single raised brow, his mouth curling at one corner as he stepped closer to the bars separating them.
“If you were a law abiding citizen, moonflower, you wouldn’t be sitting there with swollen knuckles looking like you were tied to a tree in a wind storm.
You’d be in the palace, meeting me for your lesson. ”
“Would you rather I not defend myself?”
“Of course I want you to defend yourself,” he contested.
“Hell, I have half the mind to find the bastard and slit his fucking throat for what he said about you, but that is neither here, nor there.” She watched as he reached into his pocket and procured something with a dull metallic sheen.
“You came to me under the guise that you wanted to learn how to be a goddess and this is not how that should look. You also requested that the people here know you as Nymiria first, The Anam second. And if this is the Nymiria you wish to show them, well… they might not have much faith in you when you reveal to them your truth.”
And there it was. Exactly what she’d been waiting to hear.
It would be the same as before, wouldn’t it?
She may not have noticed the droop in her shoulders, nor the light that instantly left her eyes the moment those hateful words left his mouth, but Aziel did. And, fuck, if he didn’t regret it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—“
“You did,” she interjected. “You meant it and it’s fine.”
He drew in a breath. “Nymiria, this is not how I wanted this to go.”
“I feel the same.”
“Then why must you make this difficult? If this is not how you wished for this to go, why are you insistent upon fighting me at everything I say?” He wasn’t chastising her.
It wasn’t him lecturing her for the way she’d been acting, he was genuinely trying to understand.
Aziel didn’t have much pride left, but he was not above dropping to his knees and begging for her to speak to him.
So he did.
Nymiria had all but turned herself away from him, but the moment he began lowering himself into the dirt outside of her cell, her head snapped in his direction and her eyes went wide, her mouth fell open in shock.
“What the hell are you doing?” She jolted to her feet and rushed to the bars, gripping the collar of his tunic. She tried lifting him back to his feet, but to no avail. He was stubbornly rooted in place. “Get up, this isn’t funny.”
Aziel looked up at her, hands folding in his lap as she continued tugging at his clothes. “You could rip all my clothes from my body trying to get me to move, but I will not until you tell me why you are doing this to yourself.”
Oh, the gall. This man had breezed into her life and practically commanded her to reveal every pitiful and pathetic piece of her existence and he still had the nerve to request that of her? She let out the most obscene word in her vocabulary before jerking her body away from his.
“I’m not doing anything to myself. The only thing I am trying to do is learn who I am.
I don’t know who Nymiria is outside of what everyone requested her to be, Aziel.
” She couldn’t look at him. She wanted to drive her fist into a wall and looking at him would only soften her.
But she wanted to be angry. She wanted to feel her anger and let it take over instead of pretending and forcing a smile. “I want to know who I really am.”
Silence filled the dungeon when she fell to the center of her cell, legs drawn to her chest and her head nestled against both knees.
Aziel’s chest ached. It was not his pain to bear, but he understood what she meant.
He could feel her heartbreak as if it was his own.
And, gods, he wished he could take it away.
He wished he could tell her just how beautiful she was, how brilliant she was—he wanted to tell her all of those wonderful things about who he saw sitting in front of him, but he knew what she’d do.
As always, Nymiria would run.
“Is this who you think you are?” He whispered.
Nymiria’s eyes burned with tears. She was so close to snapping at him and telling him to leave her alone, knowing that he would do anything she asked.
She knew she had that control over him and it was a dangerous thing, really.
Having that much power. But just as she held power over him, his abilities were just the same.
One look could ruin her. One touch would be catastrophic.
She shook her head against her knees before lifting it just enough to press the palms of her hands against her eyes. “No,” she confessed quietly. “No, this is not who I think I am.”
The turn of a lock made her lift her head, eyes meeting his as she watched him open the cell door. “Come on, then.” He sighed. “Your father wants to see you.”
“Is he angry with me?”
Aziel shook his head, following each of her steps as she walked out of the cell and towards the stairs. “No, but I am not surprised. He seems to believe that you can do no wrong.”
Nymiria laughed at that, giving a small roll of her eyes. “He was like that when I was a child, as well. Mother would–”
The moment the words left her mouth, Nymiria felt the blood drain from her face. Her jaw worked back and forth, her head swimming with thoughts and memories and… terror.
A warm hand fell to the small of her back. “Come,” He said gently. “It can be a story for another time. Let’s go.”
She allowed him to guide her out of the dungeon, which was astonishingly nice, and up into a large, domed hall that was similar to Aziel’s foyer.
The ceiling was but a gaping hole that gave a clear view of the brilliant blue sky and pillowy clouds overhead.
The cream-colored pillars leading up to the opening were crawling with vines bearing blooms that actually sparkled.
Nymiria smiled fondly while noting each small detail as she passed through the place that her father now called home.
It was not too dissimilar to the palace from her childhood, but the thing that she found to be most opposite of her mother’s palace was the fact that it was filled with laughter.
Even from where they were, she could hear echoes of children laughing and screaming, the patter of footsteps against the stone flooring as they ran through the halls.
There was a child, not much older than her own brother, hugging the banister and using it as a slide.
Aziel led her up those stairs and turned to the left, both of them dodging and weaving around children, until they reached the only closed door on that level.
Her father’s study was simple and refined with no decorations, save for a vase full of flowers sitting in front of the arched window on the far side of the room.
Thorn sat behind a simple oak desk, his booted feet propped on the top of it, with a book in his hand.
He ran his thick fingers over the long beard that adorned his face, smoothing it down with each gentle stroke.
His hair, just as she remembered, was pulled away from his face in braids.
Just like Aziel, the man’s ears were decorated in silver hoops, all the way to the pointed tip.