Immortal

by Nicole Conway

  “I haven’t much, to be honest. As a dragonrider, you were my supreme commanding officer. As a duke, the situation isn’t much different. In either case, thinking is generally not in my job description.”

  The sound of his laughter made me downright uncomfortable. It was a hacking, dry sound. “Well, I see you haven’t lost your frankness. My sources tell me you’re quite the big-talker. Apparently you were able to make yourself something of a ring-leader amongst your dragonrider peers, regardless of your social rank. They respect you. Some of them might even be more loyal to you than to me.”

  “Is that so? Checking up on me then?”

  I could hear a smile in his voice, even if I couldn’t see it past that creepy mask. “You could say that. And I was very surprised to hear that you were so closely associated with a halfbreed.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first.” I was beginning to wonder when he would get to the point. He’d obviously come here for a reason. He never tried to make small talk with me like this before. As far as I knew, he seldom said much to anyone at all. So there had to be a motive for him to be singling me out.

  “I despise rumors. They’re so inconsistent. As king, I want to be sure I always hear the truth.” He straightened in his seat, leaning forward with his gloved hands clasped and resting on the edge of my desk. “My sources told me something else—something I wanted to come and hear validated in person.”

  I frowned. “And what is that?”

  “This halfbreed dragonrider, Lieutenant Jaevid Broadfeather, is it true that you witnessed him heal people with some sort of magic?”

  I hesitated. This was obviously the question he’d come here to ask. I didn’t see how it mattered now, though. Jae was dead. What difference did it make what he had done before?

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “And what else do you know of him? His parentage? Did he ever mention anything about his mother? Her name, perhaps?” The king’s voice took on a much more serious tone. It was unsettling. This was beginning to feel a lot like an interrogation.

  I didn’t like it one bit.

  “You think he was a traitor? Or a spy?” I countered. “Is there some lowlife out there slandering my brother?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Because if that’s the case I can assure you that Jaevid was never anything but dedicated to our cause. He gave his life for it. And I won’t stand for anyone coming into my home and defaming his name.” I stood up suddenly. Behind me, I could hear the elite guards move like they might try to restrain me.

  The king sighed heavily.

  I’d overstepped my boundaries. I knew it. He undoubtedly knew it, too. So now the question was: how would he respond? Duke or not, I’d just mouthed off to the King of Maldobar. People had been killed for lesser crimes against the crown. But honestly, he could have sent me straight to the hangman’s noose and I wouldn’t have cared.

  “I suppose it was insensitive of me to ask such a thing on this particular day,” he said calmly, as he stood up as well. From across my desk, he offered one of his gloved hands to shake. “Perhaps we can discuss it further some other time. I wish you well, Duke Farrow.”

  I could feel the bones of his hand through the satin glove he wore. More importantly, however, I could feel a surprising amount of strength in his grip. It made me wonder if maybe he wasn’t as feeble as he wanted everyone to believe.

  Things started to become hazy after the funeral was over. Well, I suppose you could say that they took a quick downhill slide. That’s a little more accurate. I was losing myself, but I didn’t have the energy or the desire to do anything about it. I could see him in my reflection, a ghost of what was staring back at me. But beyond that, I couldn’t see much in myself that was still worth saving.

  The days were muddied, each passing without any marked significance. At first, I avoided leaving my family’s manor at all costs. I hated the way the citizens living in Solhelm looked at me. They stared like they suspected I was going mad—as though any sudden move from me might send them all scattering like rabbits.

  Then, I couldn’t even bring myself to go outside at all anymore. Every time I did, I inevitably found myself standing before Jae’s gravesite, staring up at the headstone. I never knew how long I’d stood there, waiting for some miracle to happen, before Miss Harriet or another one of the servants would eventually come out and ask me if I was all right.

  It was a stupid question.

  I quit leaving my own quarters altogether. I kept all the drapes drawn to block out the sun during the day. But at night, I would sit out on the balcony sipping the strongest liquor I could find until I fell asleep or the sun began to rise—whichever came first.

  Sleeping became its own version of torture. Whenever I tried, my dreams were invaded by visions of battlefields and the mutilated bodies of my comrades. And then there was Jae. A dream of him haunted me just about every night. Usually, it involved me finding him, wounded and dying, amidst the broken bodies of our dragonrider brothers. I’d reach out to help him, to try to take him away from there, but I was never able to reach him in time. I could only watch while his eyes grew distant and cold, his spirit slipping away right in front of me.

  “Perhaps you’d rest easier in your own bed again, Master Felix?” Miss Harriet suggested, as she took away yet another platter of uneaten dinner from the night before.

  I was propped up on the sofa in my private parlor, watching the flames crackle in the hearth. “No. I don’t like being in there anymore.”

  She didn’t push the issue. She’d already made that mistake a few times now. There were a few more dings in my walls to show for it. I’d yet to actually hit her or anyone else, but I’d come close enough times to get my point across.

  “What is that smell?” She wrinkled up her nose as she walked past, pausing and glancing at me.

  I shot her a scalding glare. We both knew what it was. I stank. I hadn’t bathed or changed out of my bedclothes in a week or longer.

  “Your mother has asked about having dinner with you,” she rambled on. “I think she misses you.”

  “If you’re going to lie, do a better job.” I grumbled and pulled my wool blanket up around my head. I stretched out on my side facing the back of the sofa, so I didn’t have to see any more of the pitying looks she kept giving me.

  “Sir, how much longer are you going to torture yourself this way? Is this what your friend would have wanted? For you to waste away to nothing in this room?”

  I clenched my teeth.

  “Come now, at least eat something,” she pleaded.

  I was about to shout at her again. I wasn’t in the mood for any more of this insistent, pointless nagging.

  Then I heard my chamber doors open. Another servant called to us from the doorway. “A Lieutenant Darion Prax has arrived. He requests an audience.”

  I sat up immediately.

  Prax was here?

  “What does he want?” I demanded.

  The servant girl shook her head nervously. “H-he didn’t say, sir. He only asked to speak with you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Downstairs. Waiting in the front foyer,” she answered shakily. She kept looking at Miss Harriet, as though she hoped the head housekeeper would save her in the event I lost my cool again.

  I threw off the blanket and stood up. It made both of them jump. “Tell him I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Miss Harriet was obviously stunned. She followed me into my bedroom while I pulled on a housecoat. I didn’t bother with anything else.

  Leaving the familiar dreariness of my room behind, I squinted into the sunlight pouring through the windows of the manor. It was early morning, so everything looked bright and pleasant outside my chamber doors.

  I found Prax lounging on a sofa in the downstairs study, dressed from head-to-toe in his dragonrider’s battle armor. Apparently, he’d asked for somewhere private that we could talk. The servants had br
ought in trays of breakfast with tea, coffee, and sweet-smelling pastries. Prax was helping himself. Typical. I’d never seen him pass up a meal.

  He stood and gave a formal salute when I entered, which really caught me off guard. It made me feel awkward. Then I remembered that not only was I no longer a dragonrider—I was a high noble. Social custom required him to salute me.

  “Knock that off, please.” I waved a hand dismissively and went to sit down in a chair across from him.

  Tension rose in the air as I watched him study me from head to toe, soaking in every detail. I knew I probably looked like death warmed-over. I definitely smelled like it. So I was just waiting for another one of those infuriating, pitying looks like all the servants and staff gave me.

  I didn’t get that from him, though. More like the opposite. As Prax looked me over, his eyes grew colder and colder. His brow hardened and he frowned disapprovingly, like he was repulsed by what he saw.

  “Are you sick?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Dying?”

  I frowned back at him. “What kind of a question is that?”

  “Well I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt, rather than just assuming you’re lying around this place, moping in your own filth by choice.”

  I smirked darkly. “Sorry to disappoint you yet again.”

  He gave an annoyed sigh and started pouring himself a cup of coffee. My eyes were instinctively drawn to his riding gauntlets and helmet sitting on the table. Just the sight of them brought back memories, stirring a part of me that had been lying dormant. It was like gravity, a pull on my soul I couldn’t control.

  I missed being in the saddle.

  “I didn’t come here to squabble over your lifestyle choices,” he said sharply, after taking a long swig of coffee. “I came to invite you to come back.”

  His words hit me like a swift kick to the gut. “Come back?”

  Prax nodded. “Mind you, I didn’t come here to beg for it. Consider it a modest, hopeful invitation from your former brother-at-arms.”

  “But … why? Why now?” I was confused.

  He drained his coffee cup and took his time refilling it again before he answered, “Because something is coming. Orders have just come down from the throne—orders that are going to change the face of this world. And the rest of Emerald Flight and I want you with us. We’d all feel a lot better with you watching our wing.”

  I could tell he was being intentionally cryptic. He was trying to make me curious. It was annoying—but also effective. Now I was interested. “What are you talking about? What’s coming?”

  Prax carefully put his cup down on the table between us. “The end.”

  The force of those words made my insides wrench up painfully. I wasn’t even sure what he meant, exactly. But it terrified me.

  “The king has ordered a final strike. All the remaining forces of Maldobar are mustering, moving towards the northern border. He means to burn every last trace of the gray elves from the earth, down to the last infant,” he explained. “This will end the war, once and for all. His vengeance will be complete.”

  Horror choked the breath out of my lungs. “That’s insanity,” I managed to rasp.

  Prax gave a small shrug. “Call it what you will. We are all tired, Felix. Tired of fighting. Tired of blood and flames. We’re ready for this to be over, and if this will finally appease the king’s wrath, then so be it.”

  “You can’t be serious!” I stood up and shook a fist at him. “It’s madness! He’s completely lost his mind; surely you can see that? What right do we have to wipe out an entire race of people? What about their women? Their children? Their elderly? You’d burn them to ash, too?”

  Prax looked up at me as though he were on the brink of losing his temper. His eyes were smoldering and his teeth were clenched. “I follow orders, just as you once did. I didn’t choose my king. But I swore to obey his commands—even the ones I despise. This is war.”

  “No, this is genocide,” I shouted back at him. “The people you’d be butchering are innocent civilians. You should have known better than to come here and ask me to take part in that. I won’t. I refuse.”

  “Then what will you do?” Prax shouted back. He snapped up out of his seat with his eyes ablaze with anger. If not for the coffee table between us, it might have come to blows. “Keep cowering in your castle like a frightened child? You think hiding here, doing nothing, makes you any less guilty than the ones who will burn those elven cities to the ground? No. Your soul will be marked with the same blame as if you’d murdered them all yourself, because you sat here on your rear and did nothing.”

  I froze. “What are you saying? You’re not going to join the fight?”

  Prax’s expression became ominous. “I said I would fight. But I never said whose side I’d be fighting for.”

  “Then why make it sound like—”

  He cut me off, “I had to be sure you that you’d agree; this is indeed madness. It’s not war. It’s murder. But I don’t have to tell you what could happen to someone plotting conspiracy against a king willing to commit an act like this. So will you help us? Things are progressing quickly and there isn’t much time. Our hope is to give the elves some measure of warning. Perhaps buy them some time so they can at least evacuate their women and children before the hammer falls.”

  I was seething. I didn’t like being toyed with like some bratty kid. “You don’t need my help.”

  “But we’d like to have it, regardless,” he insisted.

  I shook my head. “No, Prax. I’m done. I’ve already spelled this out for you. Do I have to do it again?”

  Prax scowled darkly. “Then you’re right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “You have disappointed me.” He bent down and picked up his gauntlets and helmet. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye as he saluted me again, probably just to piss me off, and started to leave the parlor.

  He’d almost made it to the door when it suddenly burst open in front of him. I heard my mom’s voice calling my name from outside. I could tell by her tone that she was already worked up—upset or angry about something that was more than likely my fault.

  The very second she flung the parlor door open and saw Prax standing on the other side of it, neither of them moved an inch. They stood stock-still, like they were frozen in time, staring at one another with the strangest expressions on their faces. Mom started to get pale. Her eyes widened and she seemed to shrink, drawing back as though in fear.

  She knew him.

  And judging by Prax’s strained, almost wounded expression, he knew her, too.

  “Hello again, Maria,” he said quietly. He gave her the same formal salute he’d given to me, clasping a fist across his chest and bowing slightly.

  My mom didn’t reciprocate. She didn’t even speak. Her face was pasty and her mouth hung open as though she might scream at any moment.

  When he stood up straight again, he shot me one last meaningful glance. “I suppose I understand now, although I’m not sure I can ever forgive you for denying me that right to which I was undoubtedly entitled. You robbed me. You robbed both of us.”

  Was he talking to me? I thought so. He was looking right at me, after all. But what he said didn’t make any sense. Not right then, anyways.

  Seeing Prax didn’t put my mom in a very sharing mood, not that either of us had ever been very good at communicating our feelings to one another. But there was definitely something wrong with her now. Something had brought emotions to the surface of her usually apathetic face I’d never witnessed before. I’d seen her get angry—usually with me—plenty of times.

  But she was absolutely hysterical now.

  I followed her out of the parlor as she practically ran back to her wing of the manor, shoving servants out of her way as she went. I finally caught up to her right before her chamber doors. By then, she was gasping back frantic sobs.

  �
��Mom! Stop! What the heck is going on?” I demanded. “How do you know him?”

  “Leave me alone! Just go away,” she screamed, and tried to slam the door.

  I stuck my foot in the way to stop her. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  Mom glared at me through her tears. Makeup was running all down her face and she kept trying desperately to shut the door. “Get away from me!”

  “What was he talking about?” I started pushing the door open further and further, muscling my way into the room. “I’m serious, Mom. What did you take from him?”

  Until that moment, I assumed it was literal robbery. Maybe she’d actually stolen something from him. Or maybe she’d been party to some kind of embezzlement that had left him out to dry. I wasn’t considering anything like …

  Then it hit me.

  All the teasing from my peers at the citadel, the weird looks Prax had given me sometimes when he thought I wasn’t paying attention, and the uncomfortable knot that formed in my gut every time he gave me that disapproving glare. Man, I really hated it when he did that.

  I felt like a total idiot.

  Stepping into her private chambers, I shut the door behind us and locked it to keep anyone else from interrupting. “It’s true, isn’t it? What everyone’s been saying about him. They weren’t just teasing me.”

  Mom was sobbing frenziedly. She backed away from me with her hands raised like she thought I was going to attack her. “F-Felix! Please!”

  “Just answer the question,” I ordered. “Is Prax my father?”

  She stood before me with her lips trembling, streaks of mascara running down her cheeks, looking more small and fragile than I’d ever seen her before. She didn’t have to answer out loud. I could read the truth in her eyes. But that wasn’t enough, not for me. I wanted to hear the truth finally leave her lying, deceitful lips.

  “Say it!” I roared.

  She cringed away. “Yes!”

  I didn’t expect hearing it to hurt so much, but it did. It hurt like hell. It made my eyes water like I’d been smacked upside the head.