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Then he slipped from the bed and dressed silently.
He left the room in search of the guest wing. How he knew which door to knock upon, he really couldn’t say. Perhaps it was his magic leading him, also keeping the guards at bay, wishing him to complete his final task.
One way or another, luck or magic, he found the door and knocked.
The rough Malthenian dignitary opened the door.
Salas swallowed. “If we must leave for Suscon,” he said, “then we leave tonight.”
Chapter Eighteen
Salas wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but when the Malthenian stepped aside to allow him entrance into the room, the dally was unexpected, and unwelcome.
“We must leave,” Salas hissed quietly, his eyes darting down to each end of the hallway to see if a guard had spotted him. He hovered at the threshold, anxious for their departure.
“I know, little bird, and this is how,” the Malthenian explained in exasperation, his own notes of urgency leaking into voice, letting Salas know that the declaration for a hasty departure to Suscon was taken in full seriousness, which was a silent relief.
There was a red welt near his greasy hairline, but other than that, the Malthenian did not appear otherwise affected by the hit he’d taken in the corridor earlier during the party.
“How…?” Salas wondered, but before he could ask another question, the Malthenian was pulling him into the room by the arm and quietly but firmly shutting the door closed.
Salas immediately tensed, noting immediately the intimate proximity to the foreign man within the close quarters. “I’m not fucking you,” Salas said firmly.
The Malthenian openly sneered, leering at him brutishly in a way that made Salas’ skin crawl. “No, we have all the time in Suscon for that.” But before Salas could breathe another word of protest, the man was moving past him, moving about the room, and Salas was left to stand there, ignored. He pulled together the few belongings he’d brought with him to Diagor and hoisted them onto his person, leaving only a worn, full knapsack open on the bed. After digging through it, he pulled out a single corked bottle of a black, milky glass, lidded by a rock that looked like volcanic obsidian.
Salas measured the object with his eyes warily, confused.
“This, pet, is your golden chariot home,” the man explained, turning the black bottle over in his hand, as though introducing it to himself for the first time. “Fresh from the brews of your traitor witch, Victoria.”
“How?” Salas wondered openly, trembling slightly at the witch’s name, not moving from his spot near the door.
The Malthenian grinned at him. “Shall we find out together?” He gestured for Salas to come closer, which, after a beat, Salas did.
He saw no other choice at this point. He’d made his decision to move forward and not look back.
With his heart hanging like lead in his chest, he stepped forward.
The moment the two were close enough, the Malthenian reached to grab Salas’ waist and pulled him close, as though he were preparing for an earthquake and wanted them to be the sole survivors.
The man then, with the press of his thumb, uncorked the bottle.
Salas wanted to shut his eyes, not wanting to see what would happen next, yet at the last moment, held them open wide.
Instantly, the air in front of them, in a circular portion, morphed and melted, caving into itself. Colors stretched into the hole, light vanishing into an unseeable point within it.
It was a portal.
Salas supposed it was fitting. The same method of dark magic that had brought him here would send him back.
There was hesitancy now, within the Malthenian’s waiting stance, though it was only for a moment before, with a tight grip, he tugged Salas through the bizarre opening before them, and they were both swallowed up.
And then Salas was devoured by the light and colors, and the pain. So much pain that was much more than physical, but a new ache of a loss as he said goodbye to all that could have been, but now, never would be, perhaps.
For it was not he the one who received wishes.
Salas awoke slowly, sluggish to the realization that he had fallen under in the first place.
White. White sheets. White drapery. White marble statues that glowed with morning light, faces bright on one side.
