Hey Everyone!
I’ve had a busy week running about again like a head with my chook cut off but hurray I finally got my final edits of this novella done and shipped off to my editor for even more edits!
All sarcasm aside, I’m actually really happy to be preparing something to publish after *checks calendar* eighteen months. Oof.
I have a cover that I’m happy with so fingers crossed I can get a proper preorder etc up soon.
In the meantime, here’s the next chapter! (Get a comforting snack before you begin.)
***
Chapter Nineteen
Down in the cells, Arslan had laid a pallet of clean wool against the inner wall and set a small table beside it with a jug of water, a basin for washing in, and a stone cup.
A clean linen tunic hung from a peg, so when Con woke, he would be in a place that had been prepared with respect rather than thrown together with cruelty in mind.
Alexis doubted that Con would appreciate the effort.
They carried him through the iron door and laid him on the pallet. Phaidros crouched down and helped take off Con’s breastplate, gauntlets, and the mailed underjerkin.
They left him in the linen quilted gambeson he wore beneath, and Alexis arranged the armor beside the pallet in the order Con liked. He brushed Con’s dark curls back from his face before finally stepping out of the cell.
Arslan spoke the sigil-names in a low voice, and the walls answered him. The sigils on the dark stone took on the faintest gold along their etched lines before they settled once more.
Arslan handed the key to Phaidros, and he clipped it to a chain inside his coat.
“He should wake up soon,” Alexis said, looking through the bars of the door at the figure on the cot.
“I have left a draught for the headache on the table if he will take it,” Arslan replied.
“Grazie, amico.“
“You should try to get some rest. I’ll be in the courtyard if you need me,” Arslan told them before disappearing back up the stairs.
Phaidros and Alexis sat down on the stone bench across the corridor from the cell door. Phaidros offered him a flask, and Alexis took it. He took a large mouthful, then another. Phaidros didn’t mention the tears still tracking through the grime on Alexis’s face, or ask if he was okay.
After a long time, the shape on the pallet stirred and sat up.
Con looked around him, his confusion slipping away as he saw Alexis’s face on the other side of the door.
“Alecto, what the fuck have you done?” he said, his whole body starting to tremble. “You have put me in a cage.”
“Yes.”
“While my city is burning!”
“Yes.”
Con stood up and stumbled to the iron bars of the door. He gripped them so hard his knuckles turned white.
“You’ll let me out, Alecto, or I will start saying things that can’t be unsaid.”
“Say them,” Alexis replied, standing out of arm’s reach. “I’m not letting you out of there so you can go kill yourself.”
Con looked at him for a long second before he stepped back from the door, and outrage poured out of him.
He began in Latin because that was where he kept the words that hurt the most.
Proditor. Perfidus. Indignus. Traitor. Faithless. Unworthy.
Alexis said nothing.
Con changed to Greek. He used Greek slowly, and he used it well as he spat out that Alexis had always thought himself wiser than the men whose lives he made decisions about. He said that Alexis had used the word protect his whole life to mean control. That the word protect was the favorite word of every man who had ever taken something from someone else under the guise of it being for their own good.
He said Aelia had told him the magicians of Atlantis loved their magic more than the people they were meant to serve, which is why they all died. He had defended Alexis at the time, and he shouldn’t have.
Alexis didn’t look away.
Con changed languages again. The Veneto was for the small cruelties, the ones a man uses against a friend, because only a friend will know what to do with them.
He called Phaidros a coward and Alexis a worse one; the only difference was that Phaidros had the honesty to be a coward, while Alexis always wrapped his cowardice in false nobility.
Zo, he said, would never speak to Alexis again after learning what he had done, and Aelia would sing a curse that would make him claw his own ears off.
Alexis still didn’t move.
Con changed languages one last time. He dropped into the Atlantean Alexis had taught him over the centuries, using it in every way he could to make the language’s beauty cut straight into Alexis’s soul and shred it to pieces.
Phaidros snarled and tried to step forward, his magic flaring around him, about to do something to Con’s emotions that Alexis couldn’t allow. Alexis caught his wrist and tugged him back, his power snuffing out whatever Phaidros was getting ready to do.
Con finally stopped. He hadn’t raised his voice. He hadn’t paced. He had stood three paces back from the iron door, his hands loose at his sides, and his eyes directly on Alexis so he would know he meant every word.
“I will never forgive you for this,” Con said, his voice cracking just a little. “Not in this life. Not in any life that follows.”
“I know,” Alexis whispered.
“Get out,” Con said between his clenched teeth. “I can’t stand the sight of you anymore.”
Alexis bit his tongue to stop saying, I’m sorry. I loved you too much to let you die.
Instead, he took one last look at the hurt in Con’s eyes, letting it do more damage than his words ever could, before finally walking away.
***
Yeah…I’m sorry about this one, guys. If it makes you feel better, it was a kick in the guts for me writing it too. I swear I set out to write a fun adventure story with this novella and ended up hurting my own feelings. The magicians always have their own plans and their stories never quite end up the way I think they are going to.
Despite the big feels, I hope you enjoyed this weeks installment.
I’ll be back with the final ones next week!
Ames xx