“You’re awake.” He said voice roughened with sleep. I nodded, not trusting my own voice to remain steady and curled my fingers in his hair. He drew me slightly closer and laid his head on my chest, listening to my heart. He sighed and relaxed for a moment, and I must confess I enjoyed the warmth of him. My stomach made a sound of protest and he sat up sharply, moving away and I cursed my body’s small betrayal.
“I will bring you something to eat; you haven’t eaten in several days by now. I should have been more thoughtful.” He walked to his Armoire and pulled out a clean, simple robe, lifting it over his head. I sat up and folded my hands in my lap to disguise their shaking and nodded my head. He considered me for several moments and finally nodded his head, expression guarded yet troubled, slipping gracefully out the door. I closed my eyes and quickly wiped away the tears.
He returned, tray on his arm, a bowl perched on top with steam rising over the brim. He gently set the tray in my lap and walked around the bed to take a place beside me on the soft mattress.
“It is not much, but Evensong told me not to overdo it for your first meal.” His expression was guarded and I hated it, but his thoughts and emotions had always been his own and I respected his privacy, for the most part, a thousand years ago and I would do so now. I smiled weakly and fingers, belaying my orders to remain steady, shook fiercely as I tore a piece of bread to soak in the broth. I concentrated on eating, and tried to remain neat and was, surprisingly, successful.
While I ate quietly Elethor sat at his desk, and shuffled through papers, I watched him and tried to think of something to say. He spoke first.
“Evensong has done what she could for your legs, the flesh is intact, but I am sorry, scarred.” He looked angry, jaw line hard and shoulders set, crystalline blue eyes lost beneath a red glow. I smiled at him.
“They are just scars, and scars heal too among our kind, a few hundred or maybe a thousand years and you would never know anything had happened.” He looked at me then, sharply critical and I bit my lip.
“Physical scars heal, yes.” He set down his quill and rubbed the back of his neck with a sigh. “Your bones will take longer to set, there was not much she could do for that, her healing abilities are limited as a Chantress, I am afraid it will be some time still before you are able to put your weight on them.”
I ate my soup, and after a time when the bowl was empty and the bread gone I looked at him, carefully considering his face as he watched me back.
“What now, Elethor?” I asked him. “I cannot stay here forever, I know that I place you and Evensong and even Haji in a horrible peril, I am sure this is considered treason harboring an Elyos on Asmodian soil. I know it would be in Elysea, if our positions were reversed and I am no fool… I know the consequences…” He snorted, an indelicate sound a pounded a closed fist on his desk, something in the wood groaned in protest before releasing an audible crack. He pursed his lips, and squared his shoulders.
“You know nothing of the consequence!” He shouted, biting off the rest of his sentence and rounding the desk, his power crackling around him like an impending storm, his fury apparent, but I sensed it was not at me. He stood in the center of his chamber and seethed, unwilling to say more but still, so many emotions played across his face, tumbling and cascading through his eyes one after the other, and his perfect arrogant mask was cracked for the first time that I had ever seen. So many of his thoughts were clearly displayed, and shockingly mirrored my own. Loss, regret and sorrow, hope, a small bit of joy, triumph deep friendship and I think maybe even love played in an endless war before he turned away from me.
I closed my eyes for several moments and when I opened them he knelt beside me. I stared into his face, and saw my own deep sapphire eyes reflected in his own.
“I can not speak of this now Sirona, I cannot. Just know that I will protect you, I will get you safely to your people of Elysea, beyond that I don’t know.” I nodded slowly, and placed my hands in his. We sat silent, lost in our own thoughts before he stood carefully pulling his robe over his head and discarding it at the foot of the bed, picking me up in his arms. I swallowed hard and tried not to enjoy myself, my thoughts returning to Elysea and my beloved Aalairius.
“Where are we going Elethor?” I asked him as he eased me out the door and into the hall.
“In order to protect them; and you, I sent my Legion on a campaign to upper Reshanta to capture the Fortress at the Ruins of Roah, they left early this morning.” I chewed my lip thoughtfully, completely missing that he had not answered my question with this new revelation.
“How long have you been a Brigade General?” I asked.
“Long enough,” he chuckled. “long enough.” He continued to walk down a long hall and down a flight of rough hewn servant stairs. “What of you Sirona? How long have you been in, well whatever your legion is called…”
“Such a short time yet I saw a Centurion stripe on your Legion cloak.” He continued down another shorter hall taking a bend and proceeded down another stair.
“Something happened to me. I… I lost all memory of who I had been as a Daeva, I thought I was still human for a while. It was only two years ago that I found I was a Daeva and my training began to come back to me. It was barely two months ago that I remembered all of my friends, and my life before the Cataclysm.” I felt shamed in that moment, that I could have forgotten anything about them.
“Aion blessed you to give you such a reprieve, even for a short two years.” His response surprised me.
“Why would you say such a thing Elethor?” I asked, aghast.
“Because I never once had the luxury of forgetting my…”he had been about to say something, something he rarely let forth… I did not want to speculate as to what his final word on the matter would be, before he changed what he was about to say, simply ending with “Well forgetting, in the last millennium.”
We must have gone down four or more floors. Finally he came to a heavy wood door with a relief of a spirit master’s water pet carved into the front. He opened this door and steam billowed forth warm and inviting and I was acutely aware of how unclean I felt, sweat covered and stagnant as I had been.
He went down a scant four steps, carved from natural rock and into a cavern, I blinked surprised. The bath house for his Legion was a natural hot spring, worked by craftsmen to add steps into and benches into the three pools of mineral rich water. Elethor indicated with a nod of his head.
“That one is hot, hotter and that one hottest. Which do you prefer?” I pointed at his direction and he set me carefully beside the pool. I smiled shyly and appreciatively as he began picking at the knots in my bandages.
“Thank you.” I said as he began unwinding the first.
He let out a choked laugh. “If it is one thing about women, Elyos or Asmodian, you like to be clean.” I watched him work biting my lip, unsure of what lay beneath the rough bandage. It was not good, but it would heal with enough time, the scars crawled up my legs from feet to knees, shiny pink and new, the skin melted and pitted in places, crisscrossed by thin lines of blade cuts in a morbid macramé.
Elethor’s jaw set into a hard line, his eyes crackling with energy and glowing fierce red in the dim light of the cavern. I reached out and touched the side of his face, making him stop and look at me.
“You got me out. I could not ask for more.” I drew a shuddering breath. “You got me out.” I wrapped my arms around the underside of my thighs and hugged myself, placing my chin on my knees. Finally he lifted me once more and set me in the water, shirt and all. I blinked at him in surprise, at that but he just smiled a little sadly.
“I will return soon, rest and enjoy your bath Lady Sirona.” I nodded and watched as he picked up a towel to dry his arms and chest, leaving me in quiet and solace. I pulled the soaked shirt over my head and set it on the edge of the pool to drip back into the water. Settling myself more securely on the low slung stone bench beneath the water I let my legs float a bit and sank gratefully up to my neck.
It was soothing listening to the water trickle and flow around me, and I prayed lightly to Aion, thanking Him and at the same time wishing to understand why it had to be this way. Finally I took a breath and submerged my head raising myself back up out of the water gasping and blinking, my hair clinging to my neck in thick dark strands. I reached for the fragrant bar of soap Elethor had presumably left out for me and lathered my hands, pausing a memory coming back to me swimming up behind my eyes so vivid and intense.
“I brought you something.” He dug through the satchel at his hip. He had been gone this last week on a scholarly pilgrimage to the jungle to learn a different form of earth magic. I had missed him terribly, and raced from shield practice the moment I had heard of his return, eager to see him.
He brought forth a small crystal vile and unstopped the top. The most delicate fragrance perfumed the air, sweet and floral and surprisingly strong for such a little vial. I looked at him a little stunned.
“It’s beautiful.” I said, “What is it?” He smiled at me and stopped the bottle, pressing it into the palm of my hand.
“It’s distilled from Moonflower sap, and it reminded me of you,” he put an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s find Claire and Evensong, I picked up a little something for them too. I have to keep my girls happy.” The last he said in a mocking tone, a glitter of mirth in his eyes. His gift to me was lovely and I wore it sparingly, when the lot of us had moments away from the academy…
I blinked water from my eyes that had dripped from my hair and sat there, the familiar scent from the soap in my hands wafting around me. It seemed that he had forgotten nothing, nothing at all…
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