14. Chapter Fourteen #2
It’s not the tower either. The room is warm in temperature and colors. The walls are pink with red rose patterns throughout. A pink rug, on the dark wooden floors, matches the bedding over me.
The blankets are luxurious, as though someone found the softest fur in the realm to create them with. Never would I have imagined that such an exquisite room could exist. Even the three large paintings in my line of sight look large and expensive enough to purchase a few cottages with.
The tiny snores divert my attention back to my bed, and I fly forward, immediately regretting the headache it causes. The baby typhon is curled up next to me, and three of the little snakes on his shoulders are snoring, which is causing their forked tongues to flutter out each time they exhale.
I scoop him into my arms and hug him. “You’re okay.” My tears fall into his white fur, and the guilt of selling him and killing his father ebbs a little.
He yawns and snuggles close to me as his six little snakes coil back into sleep. Everything that happened slowly seeps back into my thoughts, and I realize something unsettling. When Lazzus shows up about an hour later, I confront him about it.
“You’re the madness. You cause it,” I say.
His hood is back to fully covering him. “Yes, it’s not intentional.”
“You went to my village and gave everyone I care about the madness. Why?”
He clears his throat and says nothing for several seconds. “When I wake up, I’m disoriented, and I wander aimlessly around searching for whoever found the rose. For whoever will finally break my curse, and I don’t remember at first that they can’t see who I am.”
I run my hand over the blanket and shake my head. “That doesn’t make sense because right after I found the rose, you pulled me from the rapids with your hood fully on. You knew I found the rose.”
“Yes, I wake up with the hood on, and my clarity comes and goes. Almost as though I suffer from madness myself. Until the curse is in full swing, I go in and out of sanity, and I sometimes take the hood off.”
I stroke the baby typhon's head to soothe my rising rage. “My best friend is dead because of you. Was that pain I felt what my family went through?”
“Yes and no. They would have changed rapidly. You stayed in pain longer because King Zyon was keeping you from changing. I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t know monsters were capable of saying sorry.” There’s more bite in my voice than needed, but I want to spew venom at him. “What are you?”
“Something humans don’t understand. Their minds can’t comprehend what I am, so they go insane from trying to sort it. There’s no name for what I am. Not anything humans could grasp. It’s my true form, and not one even Evelia ever saw. It’s something I’ve tapered even when showing you my past.”
“Do you regret that your existence is pain? Pain to everyone you come close to! Is that your regret? That you exist and spread agony and death with a single look! If not, it should be.” I lash out, furious that I ever met him.
His smoky fingers whip in and out of the sleeves of his robe. “No, it wasn’t a regret until just now. Until you explained it that way.”
“For being such a powerful creature, you are either stupid or heartless!” I roll onto my side, so my back is facing him, as I tuck my little pet to my side. “I want to be alone.”
“Okay. Neera?”
“Yeah?”
“I am so sorry,” he says, and the whoosh of air on my neck tells me he’s left the room.
I nap and sulk for an undetermined amount of time. The typhon remains with me, and he needs a name soon. That is if Zyon hasn’t named him yet. He gives me the opportunity to ask him when he enters my room.
“I will let you out of breakfast for today,” he says.
“So generous of you to give me time to recover from one of the most traumatic ordeals of my life.”
“Do you like your present?”
“Which, the room or the baby typhon?” I lift the blanket for him to see.
“It’s an apology for sending you to my zoo without warning you.”
“You didn’t send me. I chose to go all on my own.”
“But I knew you would eventually go there looking for the little beast since you seemed so motivated to find him.” He answers the knock at the door and brings over a breakfast tray with two bowls of strawberries, eggs, a flat piece of meat, and some tea.
He sets it in front of me and takes a second tray from the servant in the doorway.
I pop a strawberry into my mouth and savor eating it. “I thought you said I got to skip breakfast.”
“You don’t have to eat with me in the hall is what I should have said, because not eating isn’t a genuine option. You need to keep up your strength.”
“So everyone can use me to break an ancient curse I had nothing to do with.”
“It’s a consequence of stepping into the forbidden.”
“Novels always portray forbidden things as fun.” I butter a piece of toast and add strawberry jam.
“Is that why you did it? You romanticized doing something you shouldn’t have?”
“I did it because I was being chased by several men who wanted to beat and possibly kill me.”
He stiffens in his chair, and the biscuit he was about to add honey to crumbles in his grip. “What are their names and where do they live?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. Tell me the entire story.”
I tell him how everything started, and he maybe listens as he won’t meet my eyes at any point during the tale. He doesn’t say anything after I finish, and our breakfast returns to its usual awkwardness.
Zyon brings breakfast to me over the next several days, and we don’t talk a lot. He always brings me two bowls of strawberries, and I finish them both each time. Lazzus hasn’t returned, and I figure my outburst cost me hearing the rest of his story and my potential prize.
He most likely won’t speak to me again until I make it to the top of the mountain, or maybe he’ll leave us in an eternal winter.
The wound of what he did to those I love is too raw for me to want to see him.
It's possible it really was an accident, and it is my fault too for starting the whole thing, but I can't move past his involvement yet.
Servants bring the typhon food, and when he’s not eating, he’s cuddled next to me or on my lap. The closeness he clearly needs returns my guilt over him and how I left him in a cage alone at first.
Zyon finishes a bite of egg during our fifth breakfast in my new room. “Why do you keep sighing? “
“Why did you buy the typhon from me? How did you even find me, or was it just a coincidence?”
“When the curse finally snaps fully into place, everyone involved in trying to fix it is attached in a certain way, and I followed that attachment to find you. I solved a problem for you out of impulsiveness. Don’t mistake it for benevolence.”
“Never would I.” I pick up small pieces of my meat and toss it to the little monster. “He needs a name.”
“Gulzar is what I named him.”
“For any particular reason?”
“It suited him.” He sends me slight smile and returns to his breakfast.