Chapter 12
He was doing everything he could not to focus on what was happening. He could feel hands on him, could smell the heavy stench of sweat and oils mixing in the air, but he did everything he could.
He did everything he could.
In the end, his body betrayed him. It didn’t matter how many tiles he counted on the ceiling or how many different birds flew past the window, his body was always his worst enemy. Camalia would win. She would draw it out of him in any way that she could.
Today was slightly different.
There were others. Friends of hers with the same sick lusts and wandering hands.
He did everything he could.
For four years, he’d endured it. Today was slightly different. He saw her.
Though it was just a glimpse of her hair, he saw her wandering around in the courtyard, a basket full of fresh flowers nestled carefully inside. Good, he thought. It was good. She was safe. He’d done everything he could.
“What are you looking at?” Camalia asked.
He could hear the rustling of her silks as she moved closer to him, crawling over the bodies of her friends to reach him.
The large bed was still not large enough to put as much distance between himself and the truth.
There were six hundred and twenty two ceiling tiles in that room and he still could not hide from the truth.
“Nothing, your majesty.” He mumbled, but his eyes stayed fixed on the window, on the girl that was now twirling around in a downpour of cold, spring rain.
Camalia followed his gaze, the runes on his back igniting with a ferocious heat that made him arch into her. “Do not look at her.” She growled. “Especially when you are with me.”
He wasn’t quite sure where his sudden defiance came from, as he’d usually been fairly compliant in what she’d asked of him, but Aziel refused to look away from the girl. She was still dancing, his back still burning with pain.
“Look at me.” She hissed. “Do not embarrass me in front of my friends. Look at me, Aziel.” Another wave of fire. A shuddered groan. His body still betrayed him as her friends stroked and pulled at him. But this…
This he could control.
He could look at her. He would look at her. No matter how many times Camalia burned him with the runes, no matter how many bodies were on top of him or how many hands ran along his skin, he could control this.
He did everything he could.
He did everything…
Later that night, as Aziel left the city, he noticed the first harsh, black line that cut across his chest. And with it came a sense of carelessness, a certain numbness, that started as a means of survival, but eventually became an addiction.
Aziel dragged his hand along his jaw, teeth grinding as he placed his glass back onto the counter. Gorford eyed him, both of them having already exchanged displeased looks the moment that the men entered the Twisted Willow roughly twenty minutes prior.
It was not uncommon for humans to find themselves here. There were many people that wandered through these forests, eventually stumbling upon a trap like this—one that Aziel had carefully curated and crafted himself.
When he’d heard of Dorid’s men lingering too close to the far side of the Gillian line, Aziel decided that the Twisted Willow would be his place of residence until he got this issue sorted.
As a god, Aziel could not kill anything that did not have an impending death. If their names graced his roster, he was allowed to do as he pleased with their worthless bodies. These men, in particular, had been names he’d waited on seeing for a very, very long time.
So he waited.
In full glamour, with his hair an odd shade of red and his eyes of gleaming green, Aziel waited. And listened.
Unfortunately for him, their conversations were almost of no value.
They didn’t talk about the war, about the Mystics they killed.
Instead, they talked about all of the women that were falling into their laps the moment they saw their gilded armor.
It was quite a shame, considering three or four of them had wives and children back at home.
A shame that their innocent families didn’t know what they were doing with their free time, a shame that they were laughing and practically spitting in the faces of the ones that loved them most.
He expected no less from them. He’d spent time with them when he served in Dorid’s army.
He remembered how they prodded and poked at him, shoved him around when he first arrived in The Beyond.
He’d just been sterilized and they considered him weak, given the fact that he could hardly walk after the procedure.
They forced him into armor. Forced him to kill someone.
Forced him to eat the testicles of an animal, since they’d all come to the seemingly laughable conclusion that he no longer had any.
They would have forced him to do much worse, had Oran not stepped in and threatened to have them all dismissed on account of treason.
He let those memories run their course in his mind, let them steep into his bones, settle into his muscles, and rouse the Death that was waiting rather impatiently to strike.
And then it faded.
The smell of warm vanilla and mint filled his nose, notes of fragrant blossoms sprinkling the air.
His stomach curled in on itself, his gloved hands curling around his whiskey glass.
Aziel glanced over his shoulder at the door as soon as it opened, teeth grinding when he saw white hair and a mint green dress stepping over the threshold. Gordford went still.
“What is she doing here?” Gorford hissed. “Her father will rip out your guts if anything—”
“Remain calm.” Aziel snapped quietly. “She will be fine.”
Gorford still looked uncertain, but tried pushing a smile onto his face when Nymiria raised her hand to him in greeting.
The men at the table were drawn to her presence, practically salivating as their eyes dragged over her form.
He couldn’t blame them for looking or for admiring, her presence was like a balm to a wounded soul.
But he could kill them for it.
“Wait!” One of the soldiers called out. Aziel heard him stumbling to his feet from the old wooden chair, stumbling over his own feet. “I know you!” The hair on the back of Aziel’s neck was standing on-end, his grip on his glass pushing small cracks into the sides.
“You must be mistaken. I’ve never seen you a day in my life.” Nymiria said simply.
Aziel nearly lurched from his chair the moment the soldier’s hand gripped Nymiria’s forearm. He could feel the pressure of it, the slow anger unfurling in Nymiria’s chest. “No, no, I never forget a face. I remember you. You’re Dorid’s Mystic.”
He heard Nymiria grunt, surely yanking her arm away from the bastard. “As I said, you are mistaken.”
“You and I both know that is a lie.” The soldier laughed.
Aziel glanced back again, watching as two more soldiers stood. “We know it’s a lie, too. Especially since King Dorid has your face posted all over Yaar. There’s a pretty hefty bounty on your head, Nymiria.”
The moment her name left their lips, Aziel turned around.
The stool he’d been sitting upon kicked out from underneath him, toppling to the ground slower than his Death could be unleashed.
Within a fraction of a second, his Death ripped through the room, turning each of those soldiers’ bodies to a fine, red mist.
Nymiria let out a squeal, attempting to jump out of the way from the spray, but with no luck. She was covered in tiny red beads of dead soldiers. Gorford took one look at the mess, heaving a sigh as he slammed his mixing bowl and his spoon onto the counter.
“You’re cleaning that one up.” He grumbled, his human glamour shifting back to the version of himself that looked like a tree.
Nymiria turned to Aziel, her mouth still hanging open, her shoulders still raised, frozen in a flinch. “Was that necessary?” She asked, breathless.
Aziel merely smirked, letting his glamour fall as he approached her with Gorford’s drying cloth. “They deserved much worse. I would have loved to do much worse, but…” He clicked his tongue, choosing not to finish the sentence.
She took the cloth from him, grimacing as she wiped the gore from her skin. It didn’t help much. She sighed and shook her head. “I had an odd feeling that I would have been interrupting something. I should have just stayed away.”
“Don’t worry about that.” He muttered. “I’d rather you seek me out when needed than for you to wait.”
Finally, she peeled her eyes away from her skin and looked at him. “I wanted to apologize to you. I know it must be hard to be around me, given everything that has happened. It was entirely inappropriate. I shouldn’t have touched you.”
Was that what this was about? Aziel’s brow twitched together, his jaw going rigid as he looked down at the strip of skin clinging to his boot. “Nymiria, there is no need for you to blame yourself for anything. I didn’t run because of you, I ran because of me.”
She looked just as perplexed as he felt, her face scrunched up at him. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand the fact that she couldn’t see the truth, that she refused to see it. “Why do you always feel the need to protect me?” She asked.
Aziel sighed, glancing around the tavern. “This is hardly the place for this discussion, Nymiria. You are absolutely covered in blood and viscera. You should go and wash off.” He prepared to turn on her, jaw ticking with regret when her hand closed around his arm.
“I would rather hear it now than to sit and ruminate over this extremely vague conversation while you continue to ignore me for three more days.”
He grunted and faced her. “Alright,” he said sharply.
“I left because you didn’t want it. I left because I knew that if I took things any further, you would have hated yourself in the morning.
You were emotional and you were hurting and I refused to take advantage of that to satisfy my own selfish desires.
” He stepped closer to her, until barely an inch was left between their bodies.
“I told you before, do not be mistaken by my aversion, because there has not been a single night that I have not longed to have you. I just simply cannot be with you when you refuse to acknowledge that I do not see you as anyone other than who you are.”
Nymiria stared up at him with an impassive expression.
He could not place the emotions on her face, but he could feel them.
She was stunned and confused, trying to decipher exactly what he meant, as if she hadn’t likened herself to her monster of a mother for the last six months.
When the realization finally settled, he watched as that confusion shifted to anger.
“The guilt you have is not one that you should carry.” He continued. “You can do with that what you wish, but I am not going to continue this conversation until you forgive yourself. And, in my eyes, I believe that you should. Because none of what happened ever had anything to do with you.”
It was a lie.
It was the biggest lie he could have ever told.
Because the truth was that he’d done everything for her.
He’d endured ten years of torment for her safety—and when he’d learned that all of it was for naught, he continued to endure it.
He went back to his tormentor time and time again because he feared that if he stopped, Nymiria’s treatment would have become far worse.
He feared that the things that’d been done to his body would have been done to hers, that they would have tortured her and placed her back in the very same situation that he’d found her in.
It was all for her. And he regretted none of it.
The only thing he regretted was having ever told her the truth to begin with.
This time, when he prepared to turn away, she released him.
“I know that I’m not her, Aziel.” She whispered.
“But children carry the sins of their parents with them. We are the ones that have to navigate what we do with the legacy they leave behind and I’m not so sure that my legacy is any less detestable than hers.
I killed people. I seduced them and lured them to their deaths.
Nothing about what I did makes me any better than she is.
And I fear that, in loving me, it will bring nothing but death to you, too.
Perhaps not a physical death, but the death of your soul. ”
His thumb traced over the silver button on the side of his glove, hands aching. Nymiria shuffled at his silence. He could sense her worry, the deep sadness that was clawing its way to the surface.
“What do you want from me?” She asked, her voice barely audible.
He’d hurt her feelings. Though necessary, from his own perspective, he had caused this.
And he hated it. “At this very moment? Nothing.” He wanted to hold her.
He wanted to clean the mess off of her skin and kiss every inch of it until she forgot who they were and where they came from.
He wanted so much, but to ask anything of her beyond what she was ready to accept would be selfish.
When the silence between them became too much to bear, he cleared his throat.
“I’m the one that has been chasing you, Nymiria.
And I will chase you even after you tell me to stop—I will chase you through every universe, through every lifetime.
But that doesn’t mean that I won’t get tired sometimes. And, right now, I am exhausted.”
Gorford was now returning from the supply closet with a cleaning bucket and other various supplies in hand, his face still scowling at the mess Aziel made.
Refusing to face her, to see the damage his words caused, Aziel stepped forward. “You should go to the palace and get cleaned up. Dieve will be serving dinner soon.”
“And our lessons?”
He stilled. “We will resume them in a few more days. In the meantime, meet with Trio for further instructions in regards to the prince.”