“It doesn’t matter because I have other people I care about,” Ruethwyn said gently, reaching out and laying a hand on one of Korima’s as it rested on the chair’s arm. “I may have put you off before, Korima, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking about it. My feelings are… murky and tangled at best. You and Sella have made a right mess out of my emotions, you know? But I know you both care about me, and I don’t want to hurt either of you. Regardless of how things turn out with Anara at first, I’m still going to need some time to figure things out.”
Ruethwyn hesitated for a moment, but then she leaned over toward the kitsune. Korima blinked in surprise, but didn’t dodge as Ruethwyn gently kissed her cheek, blushing as she did so. It was only a brief kiss, but as Ruethwyn pulled away the kitsune smiled back at her, teeth flashing in the dim light and tension in her shoulders visibly easing.
“That was a bit of a surprise, Rue,” Korima said, her tone teasing. “I was beginning to think that I was going to have to chase you down with a stick or something. It seems like every time someone flirts with you, you turn tail and run. Which is really impressive, since you don’t have a tail.”
Ruethwyn blushed more, turning her head away as she cleared her throat, then replied quietly. “I… I’m not used to this sort of thing, Korima. Remember, I was always an average girl, aside from my talent with magic, and that wasn’t popular in Mellesyn. Then I got injured, and any attention I might have gotten… well, it wasn’t something I had to deal with anymore. Not until you and Sella decided to focus on me, anyway. Now… now I have to hide a lot because of my rebirth, but it’s still new to me. I’m trying to adjust, mind you, but being forceful… it doesn’t help me. Can you live with that, Korima?”
“Of course I can. Knowing there’s hope for you does wonders all on its own,” Korima said warmly, giggling softly as well as she patted Ruethwyn’s hand. “I just guess I should’ve said something early on, and then waited for you to work things out. You always have been the type to overthink things, I guess.”
“Well, Zaria did point out that I was doing that with my magic the other day,” Ruethwyn admitted, frowning. “I suppose that applies to my emotions, too. I’m not sure what I’m feeling, but… I think I can untangle my emotions eventually. Gods know that I’ve had enough changes in the past year that it makes things difficult.”
“True! Anyway, that does put my mind at ease, Rue. And since we’re likely to have a long day tomorrow, I suppose I’d best try to get a bit more sleep,” Korima said, standing up.
“That’s probably a good idea,” Ruethwyn agreed, relaxing still more.
Korima took a few steps, then paused and looked back at Ruethwyn, her smile brilliant as she spoke again, her tail swishing slightly as she spoke flirtatiously. “You could always join me, Rue. The bed’s big enough.”
Ruethwyn blushed again, then glared at the kitsune as she said, “What part of me needing time was unclear, Korima? Really, I just…”
Korima laughed and grinned as she replied. “It was worth a try! Good night, Rue.”
And with that, the kitsune darted off to her bedroom, leaving Ruethwyn alone to mull over their conversation.
Chapter 32
Essryl stopped suddenly as she noticed that Minerva had entered the west wing. The spells designed to watch for the elven woman weren’t perfect, but they were more than enough to let Essryl know about the intrusion within a couple of minutes.
The intruder was downstairs, and that puzzled Essryl, since there were mostly storerooms, dungeons, and crafting rooms downstairs. Aside from the laundry, of course, but none of those were in use, and Essryl would’ve known if Minerva had someone else with her.
“That’s odd…” Essryl murmured, her curiosity piqued, though she was still wary. Minerva had been markedly absent for the last few days, ever since Essryl had firmly rejected her. That was somewhat concerning, especially since she entered the wing now, after they’d learned that the cult of Larimos and Hekara had launched a full-scale attack on the Lightweaver Enclave and been defeated. Since that meant Ruethwyn was approaching, Essryl was feeling slightly more at ease, at least before this.
Essryl had been writing up a list of the current duties of the girls, since things were changing just a bit more than she liked in the palace over the last few weeks. Fortunately, Resvarygrath hadn’t been insisting on her speeding up the training of the women from Mellesyn, but it was irritating at best. Things had been running smoothly for years, then Minerva and Sinera had appeared and changed everything. There were more workers coming in to renovate the east wing and main body of the palace, and that made security something of a nightmare, especially with Ruethwyn likely to show up relatively soon.
“Six to seven days… that’s my guess,” Essryl murmured, considering the amount of time it would take the young woman to get to the palace. She hated to have that good of an idea of when Ruethwyn would arrive, but there wasn’t much she could do about the others actively wanting to capture her. It might take a little longer if Ruethwyn stopped to gather information, but Essryl was fairly confident in her guess.
That didn’t explain why Minerva was in the basement, though. Essryl frowned as she realized that the woman was heading for her sculpting room, and after a moment of hesitation she stood. There was no reason for Minerva to go there, unless… perhaps she was taking a statue as a mystic focus? They wouldn’t be perfect, but the statue of Ruethwyn might work as a decent link for a spell. It didn’t explain why she was going down there on her own without asking, though.
“I’d better check,” Essryl decided at last, draining her ink pen and stoppering the inkwell, then setting things down. She’d have to clean the ink pen properly later, but that could wait. “The statues are mine, not Resvarygrath’s.”
Essryl pushed back the thought that the statues were also important to her, since that wouldn’t be a good thing to admit to anyone. If something was important, it was a weakness other people could, and would, exploit.
The Illisyr left her room and descended the nearby stairs at a brisk pace, frowning as she realized that Minerva was lingering in the sculpting room. It was odd, since she didn’t see any reason for that. Perhaps if the woman was looking for a sculpture that wasn’t of Ruethwyn, since there were a great many more of those. Ruethwyn’s were on their own, both of them.
Essryl caught a glimpse of Leticia down one of the halls, the elven servant leading a pair of young women with her as they carried new sheets toward their rooms, but then she was out of sight. A tiny part of Essryl was tempted to warn the young women of when Ruethwyn might arrive, but she hadn’t decided yet. That might be giving Ruethwyn just a bit too much of an opportunity.
A faint crash in the distance suddenly drew Essryl’s attention away from the other women, and the dark elf stiffened, for an instant unwilling to believe what she’d heard. It was the sound of stone hitting stone, and it was coming from her sculpting room. For just a moment, she felt her lips twitch, but she forced herself to maintain her composure. The sound could have been something else. It could have been one of her spare blocks of marble hitting the floor, or a statue having been accidentally knocked over. Considering the sturdiness of stone, she could repair a few chips, or a broken arm or something like that without worry.
Even so, Essryl found her pace quickening as she strode toward her workroom, and she felt mana rippling down the hallway, like the aftershocks of spells. After a moment, Essryl found herself breaking into a run, and she quickly closed the distance between her and the sculpting room, then opened the door and stopped.
Normally her sculpting room was meticulously organized, with all the statues on benches to the left and right, save for the two versions of Ruethwyn which she’d been keeping on the tool bench in back. There was a heavily reinforced rack for the blocks of marble which she used to carve the statues, and the dozens of tools… but her room didn’t look like that.
To the left and right were thousands upon thousands of s
hards of marble scattered across the benches and floor. Some pieces could be identified, with an elbow here, a finger there, or a piece of a dress or face, but no shard Essryl saw was larger than the tip of her pinkie finger, as each statue looked almost like it had exploded from the inside.
Minerva was by the bench in the back, and the elf had a cruel smile on her face as she held the statue of Ruethwyn after she’d been reborn, the other statue already shattered on the floor. The one she held was scarred, like it’d been cut by hundreds of incredibly sharp blades all over the surface. Seeing Essryl, Minerva’s smile widened as she looked over at her… and dropped the statue, taking a step away. The statue hit the floor and shattered into hundreds of pieces, and Essryl’s heart almost felt like it had stopped.
“Oops. I dropped it,” Minerva said, grinning broadly at Essryl.
Essryl’s shock vanished, and it was replaced by something she hadn’t felt in a very long time. The sensation was hot, and she could practically taste copper in her mouth as she looked up, rage burning bright and hot.
“Well, I think that’s that, so—” Minerva began, but in that moment Essryl moved.
Mana exploded into the latent spells constantly coursing through Essryl’s body, and she struck as fast and hard as she was able to, though at the same time she didn’t quite lose her sense of reason. Resvarygrath would be angry beyond measure if she killed Minerva, so she had to stop short of that. Not much short, though.
Essryl’s foot hit Minerva in the side like a battering ram, and she felt the elf’s lower ribs shatter as she was launched into the wall between the two sets of benches. There was a dull shriek of pain from Minerva as she bounced off the wall, but Essryl didn’t give her time to recover. Before Minerva could even start to fall or regain her balance, Essryl had caught up and she pinned the woman to the wall by her throat, her left hand hammering into Minerva’s stomach mercilessly.
“Fortunately for you, My Lord would be extremely upset if I killed you,” Essryl said, her voice flat. She drew her dagger as she continued, seeing shock turn to panic in Minerva’s eyes. “Unfortunately for you, living is something you can achieve without all sorts of things. Like your venomous tongue.”
Twisting her magic within her hand, Essryl murmured words and shifted Minerva’s body slightly, twisting her vocal cords so the woman couldn’t scream. That would allow others to interrupt far too soon.
“Scalerot, what did you think you were doing, Essryl?” Resvarygrath bellowed angrily, his voice shaking the room. “You utterly destroyed Minerva’s body, and rebuilding her is going to take weeks at best! That’s assuming that you undo some of your changes to her body and allow it to be done!”
“She destroyed my statues as a deliberate attempt to slight me. She succeeded in angering me,” Essryl replied simply, smiling thinly. “I don’t believe that she thought things through.”
The palace healers were with Minerva, Essryl knew, but they had their work cut out for them, assuming they could even repair her body. Essryl had taken Minerva’s sight, speech, and even her limbs from her before she’d decided that she’d vented enough of her frustration, and the looks of horror in the eyes of the healers when she’d dropped what was left on a bed in front of them had been strangely gratifying.
“Of course she didn’t! Minerva has never been one to think before she acted, and why would this be any different? The problem is you,” Resvarygrath growled, the dragon’s eyes narrowing as he stared at her. “You should have known better than to ever do something like that to an honored guest, and—”
“There are certain lines that I will not allow to be crossed, My Lord, and Minerva well and truly crossed them,” Essryl interrupted, anger surging within her again, this time hotter than it had been for some time, and her hands were on her daggers, her tail deathly still.
“Is that so? What, exactly, did my sister do to suffer such a fate?” Sinera’s voice was cold, and Essryl looked over to see the woman by the door, her eyes dark with anger.
“Dear, I—” Resvarygrath began, only to have Sinera interrupt.
“No, Resvarygrath. I want to hear from Essryl why she did this,” Sinera said, her gaze fixed on Essryl. “I’ve rarely seen such savagery before.”
“I had mercy on her. If I’d been savage, there would be nothing left of Minerva save a bloody mist across the floor and walls. If it weren’t for Lord Resvarygrath, I would have killed her at the end of what I did. Instead, I merely maimed her, and not in a manner that is irrecoverable,” Essryl replied flatly. “As for what she did? Do you recognize this?”
Essryl reached into her dimensional pouch and pulled out the largest piece she’d been able to find of a statue, one of the ones of Ruethwyn, as it happened. It was part of the statue’s hair, the eye, and part of the cheek, and she held it up. Sinera paused, then approached to look more closely.
“It appears to be part of one of your statues,” Sinera said after a few moments, not sounding very impressed. “What of it? Did she destroy one of them? That’s hardly reason to do such horrible things to her.”
“She didn’t destroy one statue. She destroyed every last one of them. This is the largest piece I found, of the statue I made of Ruethwyn… which she destroyed in front of me, then she had the temerity to say oops,” Essryl said, her voice taut. She carefully put the shard back into her pouch, but she thought she saw Sinera finally looking more uncertain.
“And? They’re just statues. You could create more, or have them repaired,” Resvarygrath rumbled, sounding more confused than anything else, now. “It isn’t a good reason to do what you did.”
“You misunderstand, My Lord,” Essryl replied, looking at the dragon levelly. “There were about seventy statues in total, and aside from the two of Ruethwyn, each were of the women you’ve left me in charge of. Some of them I made nearly a century ago, to ensure I could remember what the girl looked like. Remaking them isn’t a minor task, and you assume that I could remember all of them perfectly to do so. As for repairing them, that’s impossible for any mage in the Dominion, and I do not possess the skill with earth magic to do so, nor do any of my clan.”
“They’re still just statues,” Resvarygrath stated, and Essryl took a deep breath, keeping hold of her temper, if only just.
“Only statues?” Essryl asked after a moment, then smiled thinly, dangerously, at him. “I think I need to explain something, My Lord. There are exactly five things I truly value in life. My word is first of them, and is the entire reason I serve you, so you should value it as well. Second is my faith, and my holy symbol in specific. Third is my clan. While I’m somewhat loathe to admit it, I also am quite fond and protective of the girls you’ve put under my charge, which I expect to be kept between the three of us. But fifth are the statues which Minerva just destroyed. To put this clearly in perspective, it would be quite similar to if Minerva had destroyed a large portion of your hoard, My Lord. She was fortunate to live at all.”
Sinera visibly flinched at the description, and Essryl saw even Resvarygrath recoil slightly in response. For a long moment, the room was quiet.
“You do not object to us healing her, despite that?” Sinera asked, keeping her voice as calm as before, though there was an unsteady note to it.
“Not objecting is a strong term. I didn’t kill her, and I’ll remove my changes, but I will not help in restoring her. She has well and truly enraged me, and any offense after this will result in her death,” Essryl replied, smiling back at Sinera, not even trying to hide the anger in her eyes. “There are some things that I will not abide, even if I serve Resvarygrath.”
“I will ensure that she understands that, and will do what I can to convince her to apologize. I don’t expect she’ll be in a hurry to offend you after this, either,” Sinera said, letting out a breath. “As long as you aren’t going to go out of your way to make trouble, I’ll drop the matter here.”
“That’s my plan, yes. In fact, I intend to avoid and ignore her as much as possible,” Es
sryl confirmed, her gaze flitting between Resvarygrath and Sinera.
“That is appreciated,” Resvarygrath said, his voice somewhat reluctant. “I did not realize just how valuable you found the statues, and your comparison is rather… pointed. I see why you were so angry about what happened. In fact…”
The dragon hesitated, obviously seeming to be struggling with himself, then looked away and continued. “As my guest destroyed part of your hoard, it is only appropriate that I give proper recompense. I will grant you an amount of gold and silver from my hoard equal to the weight of the items which you lost.”
Essryl’s eyebrows rose at the dragon’s offer, then smiled. She’d forgotten about that minor aspect of draconic law, but it certainly made her think better of the dragon. Essryl considered for a long moment, then nodded. “Thank you, My Lord. That will aid greatly should I find a mage who might be able to restore the statues in the future.”
“It had better. I hate giving away part of my hoard, but you were wronged,” Resvarygrath said unhappily.
“Agreed. I’ll see about getting my sister back to normal, but that is going to take time,” Sinera said, and frowned. “This is going to make preparing for Ruethwyn’s visit a bit more difficult.”
“Yes, it will. However, we should be able to prepare well enough,” Essryl said, feeling a tiny bit of her anger relax still more. She wasn’t happy about the situation, but at least she had something to look forward to.
“Indeed. Orders have gone out, so they shouldn’t run into too many difficulties in getting to the palace,” Resvarygrath confirmed. “Now, I need to check on the status of the gold mines, if you please. I want the coming dent in my hoard restored as soon as possible.”
Essryl nodded and turned to leave without a word.
Maybe she would warn the girls that Ruethwyn was coming.
The Obsidian Palace (Through the Fire Book 3) Page 29