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I nodded, “Yes.”
I understood everything.
“Good. Then prove it. You will be part of the caravan of the Walk of the Maiden as Aeinya takes her first pilgrimage to the Temple of the Sister as the future Queen. You will attend my wedding, as you wish, but one foot out of line and we will have to find another arrangement for you.” I nodded again, and his smile finally made a return, although it was almost a ghost of what it once was.
“Elara, my most precious sister.” Whatever harshness had been in him faded away as he closed the gap between us. “I will do anything to keep you safe. Please know that. All of this, it is only because I love you. Please trust that I know what is best for you.”
He spoke calmly, but the tone was all wrong. He was all wrong. He may be smiling, but it wasn’t his usual sunny grin, it didn’t touch those eyes that didn’t look like his at all.
“I understand.” I was barely able to choke the words out.
“Good, now stay here. I need to have a word with your Boy.”
He pressed his hand to the top of my head, the weight seeping through my bones, before he turned, his high boots clacking on the floor as he strode out. I only caught a glance of the shrouded figure in the hall before Batian closed the door, the latch bouncing against the lock as it failed to close all the way.
“What in the seven hells were you thinking, Boy!” Batian immediately went into the same tirade as he had on me and I stiffened.
“She could have died in that pit. She could have died a hundred times over this week, yet you follow along like some dog. I did not train you to be her lap dog. I trained you to keep her in line. I trained you to protect her and fight her if needed, but you only follow. You only bow and preen. What good are you if you cannot do what I ask? You let her into that pit! You put her in danger!”
Jumping up, I raced to the door, I couldn’t let the Boy take the brunt of this. He had trained me, sure, but he was not the one who had the idea to put me into the Pankreatin. He was not the one who had strode into the arena. If anything, he had tried to keep me out of it.
“What do you have to say for this… this… recklessness!” Batian’s voice snapped over stone, the fire in the sconces flicking both in and out of the hall. Silence dripped through the hallway for less than a breath before Batian roared in a low hiss that was closer to a growl.
“Speak!”
My feet froze at the word, my hand on the cold knob as I prepared to fling the door open and yell at Batian to leave the Boy alone. Instead, I might as well have been plunged in ice water.
“I do not simply follow, my Prince. I am doing as you have trained me.”
The air was sucked out of the room as I stared at the door, my world upending at the voice that had seeped through it.
By the Goddess. He could talk. He was talking. I knew he wasn’t allowed to, but for some reason I had always assumed he couldn’t. That it wasn’t possible.
But now… to hear him.
His voice was deep and clear and calm. More than that, I had heard it before, in the arena moments before. He was the one who had yelled. I couldn’t move as I stood there, listening to the voice I had dreamed my whole life to hear.
“I will always do as I have been trained. She is headstrong, she is–”
“Silence,” the word was mixed with the sound of a slap against leather. Through the crack of the door I could just make out the Boy, Batian flexing his hand over his curled body after the impact of a hit.
“I don’t want excuses, Boy. I want you to do your job, or I will replace you. Do you want that? Do you want to be removed from this post? To fail in your task and the Queen to bestow that promise on you that she made so long ago?”
“N-no. I will always be her servant, I will always do what she wants.” He hissed with a low moan of compliance, my own heart skipping a beat as the stuttered handwriting in his journal flitted through my mind.
I am doing what she wants.
My hand tightened around the knob.
I had assumed then he was writing of my mother, but to hear him say it. It was more than just him doing what she wants. He was her servant. My mother’s servant, Queen Dalyah. He was not my friend at all and was simply reporting everything right back to her. My body felt as though it was being encased in lead.
“Good. I don’t want any more mishaps, Boy. This will earn you twenty lashings. I would hate for you to make it more. I know how it affects your work.” Batian smiled at the Boy, but the face was nothing like the brother I knew. It wasn’t even the twisted anger I had seen in my room minutes before. This Batian was different altogether. This Batian was harsh and vicious. In fact, I didn’t see my brother in the man, there was only the icy grin of my mother.
My brother wasn’t there at all.
I flinched away from the door, backing into my room as my mind spun from what I had seen, and what I had heard. A monstrous version of my brother, and the Boy…
The Boy could talk.
