Ellory laughed triumphantly and threw his head back again, and Veria watched in horror as Strelzar's face shifted instantly from anger to shock, and then shock to despair.
“What?” Veria asked, grabbing his elbows to steady him as he wavered.
“I missed it, I...” he trailed off and shook his head. “I didn't hear it.”
“What, Strelzar?” Veria questioned more urgently, panic crawling across her skin. “What does he want?”
Strelzar locked eyes with her, and she searched their onyx depths for the answer.
“He wants to die,” Strelzar said quietly. “He wants us to kill him.”
Veria's stomach plummeted downward, feeling like it would drop right out of her body. She gasped and her heart resumed the pounding it had just recovered from only moments earlier. “No...” she whispered.
“What better way to go then at the hands of the Twin Dragons?” Ellory cackled, a sound that sent an ice cold shiver up Veria's spine.
“Get a backbone, Ell,” Strelzar snapped, turning his attention back to the satisfied looking Mager, who looked quite like a golden statue in his shiny, silken ensemble. “Do it yourself.”
“And you've never thought of it? Could you do it?” Ellory snapped defensively.
“Of course I have!” Strelzar roared. “Fire! For decades after what I did...I deserved to die. And then Cadit found me, then Tanisca came along. And then Aslay, and I realized I still had a duty, and I was damn well going to do it as long as it was still needed.”
“You have a duty now, Strelzar,” Ellory commanded, finally standing from his cushion, jabbing an angry finger at him.
“I have no obligations or loyalty to you,” Strelzar spat at his feet, disgust curling the point of his lip.
“To her,” Ellory said, nodding toward Veria, who still stood in shock behind Strelzar. “To this position she got you into. To your precious King of Londess, that filthy kingdom you've always loved so much.”
Strelzar's fists clenched at his sides, Veria watching as his knuckles turned as white as Ellory's beard and hair.
“You see,” Ellory continued when Strelzar did not speak, “young Laurelgate, these Fire Magers, with their lust and desire and secrets, and those sweet little Water Magers, who only want to help and bring good, and even the Wind Magers, able to separate from the world and disappear into thin air...they don't know what we know. They won't be driven mad by the truth,” he sauntered past Strelzar toward her and she swallowed nervously as he approached. Strelzar tracked him carefully with watchful, warning eyes, and flinched when Ellory placed his hands on Veria's shoulders. “They will never feel the pain that we feel. The pain that will make you want to die, because you see the world for what it is. The truth.”
“Which is what?” Veria ventured, not sure she actually wanted to hear the answer.
“Everyone lies,” Ellory stated plainly, a hint of a smirk beneath his frame of white whiskers, but his hazel eyes filled with sadness. “Everyone in this world deceives everyone else. And you already know it.”
“Stop,” Strelzar growled.
“What he did to you...without your permission? And then hid it from you?” Ellory said softly, feigning sympathy. He clicked his tongue.
“I said stop it, Ellory,” Strelzar repeated his warning.
Veria's head spun as she tried to figure out who he was talking about...Andon? Or her father...?
“Do you want that memory back?” Ellory asked, cocking his head at her.
Strelzar's expression suddenly changed, from anger to interest. He had been studying returning memories for months to no avail. “You can do that?”
“Of course I can,” Ellory said over his shoulder in a condescending tone. “And now, as my parting gift, I'll give it back to you, if you promise to give me what I want.”
“Veria, don't,” Strelzar warned.
“What memory is it?” she asked.
“Don't you want to know why he did it?” Ellory questioned, cocking his head again. He was toying with her, she could feel it. Who did he mean?
“Veria, this isn't worth it,” Strelzar said behind him. “He isn't worth it. We should leave him with his misery. Don't buy a word this arrogant ass is saying.”
“Let her make her own decisions, Strel,” Ellory muttered over his shoulder again.
“Don't bloody your hands for this, Birdie!” Strelzar's voice grew more urgent and panicked. “It's not worth it! If he can do it, we can figure out how to do it, too.”
“Ha! And I'm the arrogant one,” Ellory scoffed.
Veria couldn't handle the back and forth, both of them telling her what to do—their voices, the offer, the promise, not knowing if it was Andon or her father—and all of the information swarmed in her head, practically making her dizzy. She faltered and Ellory steadied her easily.
“Veria...” Strelzar started, trying to make his way to her, his face full of concern.
“The child will be fine,” Ellory said knowingly. “And she's going to choose the memory. And I’ve seen my death at her hands.”
Ice filled Veria's chest and the air around them suddenly felt thick and hard to breathe. It wasn't like the time that she had felt her mother plant a desire at the dinner table. It was just panic. Sheer panic at knowing her future, knowing there was no way around it, and knowing what she was going to do.
“To quote your beloved Master, it is 'quite poetic',” Ellory whispered.
Sobs formed like hot coals in her throat and she steeled herself against them with deep breaths and a rigid posture.
“Give me the memory,” Veria snapped. “I want to go home. And I want you to quit spreading this deplorable skill you've created across the world.”
“As you wish,” Ellory said with a smile.
He put the first two fingers of both his hands on either side of her head, at her temples, and closed his eyes in concentration.
With a sickening swirl and whoosh, the room before Veria's eyes was replaced by the ballroom of the Guyler Estate, and she saw herself, in a red dress, through someone else's eyes...the person was holding her, dancing with her in the full ballroom. The person who's memory it was...Andon. If it was her memory, why was she seeing it from his point of view? she wondered.
“And then, as always, that infuriating confidence vanishes,” Andon whispered in her ear in the memory. “All I have to do is touch you, and you are the trembling, uncertain girl I met in the kitchen.”
She gasped, in the memory and in the present, her breath catching in her throat as Andon lowered his lips to her ear.
“Andon...” the memory version of her whispered, clad in a scarlet dress.
“Why did you come here tonight? Tell me why you came, because I thought I made it fairly clear the last time I saw you that I cannot be around you.”
“I...I am not sure.”
“I thought I—if you knew how hard I have worked to move on...and I was sure I could do it. I am such an idiot.”
“Andon, stop.”
“I wish I could.”
Soon, he was leading her up the stairs, to a dark room, and whipping around to her quickly, filled with uncontrollable lust. Veria could feel it in the present, flooding her like it had overcome him as she lived through his memory.
“You have to let me go,” he whispered. “You have to let me live my life. You are just doing this to me because I have found someone else.”
“I am not doing anything to you,” she argued with him. “You are the one who brought me into a bedroom in the middle of your engagement ball.”
“Ha! No, the engagement ball will be in the winter.” He felt immediate guilt for the statement, and it sat hot in Veria's stomach as it must have for him.
She shoved Andon angrily and she felt the pain in the back of his legs as he stumbled back into a trunk, forcing him to take a seat on it.
“Temper, temper, Lady Veria. Was that you having a change of heart? Maybe you can do what I do not have the strength for and walk out
of this room right now, before we do something that will haunt our memories for years to come.”
She watched herself, silent and unable to respond.
“Leave! Go, now. Just leave,” Andon barked, and then in his head, an unspoken voice, but very clear words: If you don't leave now, I will never get over you.
She moved toward him in the memory.
“Do not come closer. Veria, stop. Leave. You have to leave, I beg you.” Pain filled Veria's chest, and it was his pain. It was a pain she was all too familiar with, the kind that felt like knives between her ribs, the ache with every inhale and exhale, the anguish of feeling like your heart didn't belong in your own chest because...it belonged to the other person.
It was love. Painful, desperate love, and he was trying his hardest to not feel it.
“I would stop,” she murmured in the scene that played out through Andon's eyes. “If you really wanted me to, I would.”
“This is a mistake,” he sighed.
“We have made them before.”
He grabbed her by the arm, pulling her down to his face and into his lap, and Veria's chest erupted with desire and passion. She could hardly breathe in the present as the hunger and need and heat that had filled Andon in that moment filled her, too.
Needing her right that moment, he flipped her onto her back on the bed. “Veria...”
And silently, I love you.
His hands fumbled for the skirt of her red dress and then his own pants.
“That's enough,” Veria said.
“Are you sure you don't want to hear why he took it from you?” Ellory's voice came and it sounded like it was in another room, echoing and hardly discernible as Veria watched the agony of pleasure spread across her own lips in the memory.
“I know why he did it,” she snapped. “Just stop.”
With another sickening, dizzying sensation, she was pulled out of the scene and brought back to the room of the tower, with its lofty ceiling and tall bookshelves. It reminded her of the observatory at the castle in Londess, she realized as she came out of the memory, except that this one lacked any windows.
“Veria, are you okay?” Strelzar asked nervously.
She nodded, her chest still aching from the rush of feelings, both hers and Andon's.
“That feeling never lasts,” Ellory shook his head, his eyes cold, but seeming to take sick pleasure in her pain. “Our element, our earth, the ground, the metal, the stone, the precious rocks...that's all that lasts. Not feelings. Not love. Not trust.”
Veria's eyes filled with hate, and the pain in her chest turned back to rage.
“Good...” Ellory murmured, a malicious and triumphant grin parting his ashen lips. “Good... that will make this easier for you.”
“Veria, you don't have to do this,” Strelzar said urgently, reaching out for her arm.
“She made a bargain,” Ellory stopped him with his hand.
Veria shuddered as her body went cold at the thought of what she had to do next.
“Remember, Miss Laurelgate,” Ellory said, a twinkle in his eye as he merrily tapped her on the nose, “poetic.”
He turned from her and walked back to his gold silk cushion and sat back down in the cross-legged position they had found him in. He looked like a statue again, and her stomach flipped when she realized what he wanted...
“Veria...” Strelzar sighed, lightly holding her forearm in one of his smooth, large hands. He must have heard the desire. “At least let me help—”
“It won't be you, Strelzar,” Ellory snapped at his old colleague, and Veria felt Strelzar go completely rigid next to her, his hand tensing around her arm.
She snapped her head to look at him, and she felt as if someone had doused her with freezing water as she took in the dread and terror that filled his coal-black eyes. “What is he talking about?” Veria asked.
“Nothing you need to worry about, Veria,” he said plainly, his voice strained and cold.
Her body started to shake as it filled with anxiety and worry. “You never call me Veria,” she whispered.
“Do what we came here to do,” Strelzar declared curtly, pulling his hand from her arm and turning away from her and Ellory, apparently unable to watch what would happen next.
Sobs formed in Veria's throat. No matter how much she hated the man in front of her, the man she just met, she didn't want to do what he wanted her to do. Even knowing he was miserable and tormented and ancient and wanted out of this life, she couldn't...but she had to now. He would expose them. And they would be killed by whichever members of the Elemental Guard could rival their strength and stomach the deed.
She took a deep breath to steel her nerves, and a shudder shook her entire body as she searched the room for gold. Any gold. And when she found a piece of it, she locked on and combined it with the energy from the fire that roared in the fireplace to her left, melting it into a ribbon of liquid metal. She snaked it all together, the many melted pieces from treasures and trinkets she had found throughout the tower, like many metallic streams meeting up to form a river, then the river fell in a sheet over him, like a waterfall of gold.
She cringed as he grunted against the pain of the burning hot metal against his skin, but didn't squirm. He held his pose. It's how he wanted to be remembered. Strelzar placed a hand on her shoulder and she jumped at his touch.
“You will have to kill him first, or he'll suffocate slowly in the encasement,” he advised in a somber tone. “A stream of gold down his throat should...” He trailed off and Veria thought she might be sick, the urge to vomit filling her own throat. He didn't have to finish. She knew what would happen. It would drown him, choke him, strangle him from the inside, and scald his lungs. It wouldn't take very long...
She closed her eyes, unable to watch, and Strelzar grabbed her arm and squeezed it tightly, not able to watch either, his back still turned to the scene. She couldn't open them again until the brief moment of gurgling stopped and she could feel that the gold had covered him evenly.
“I thought I was vain,” Strelzar murmured sardonically as he finally turned around, apparently sensing that she had let the gold cool and harden around the Diamond Mager.
“Let's go home,” Veria said, her eyes fixated on the golden statue she had just created around the ancient man.
“You did what he wanted,” Strelzar whispered, stroking her arm comfortingly. “He died happy.”
“No,” Veria shook her head at him, hardly able to speak, “he died miserable and tormented and convinced that everyone in the world is terrible.”
“That's not going to happen to you,” Strelzar rebutted, grabbing her hands in his and squeezing them reassuringly. “Alright? I won't let it. Even if it's you and I until the end of time, I promise you, the world is better than he says it is and you can be happy, Birdie.”
A lie snapped and twirled in her head, but she was so exhausted and drained of energy that she didn't know what part of his statement had set off the alarms...
He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly, rubbing her back to soothe her.
“I'm sorry, my dear,” he murmured in her hair, “but we have to go back down the stairs again.”
She felt the sobs disperse in her throat and turn to laughs, laughs that shook her entire tired body, and he joined her in the laughter.
It was all she could do not to let the sadness consume her in that moment, and possibly never let her go. She suddenly realized that Ellory Mielyr must have felt this way, many times, to get to where he had begged for and welcomed death. But he never had people who loved him enough to bring him out of it.
She squeezed Strelzar tightly in her arms, extremely grateful in that moment that she had made every choice she did that had brought them together.
-IV-
The trip back was somber, quiet, cold, as Veria remembered their trip back from the border had been half a year earlier. She knew Strelzar wanted to talk to her about it, and she didn't want to talk. She did, however, ask h
im every night before they slept, on their thin cot mats on the ground, which made her already sore back throb and ache, if he wanted to tell her what Ellory had meant in his final statement to him.
Every night, he said what he had said in the tower at Kortamant. “Nothing you need to worry about, Birdie.” At least he had switched back to the pet name. When he used her real name, it immediately unsettled her, always lending an extra handful of severity and seriousness to whatever situation they were in at the time. She likened it to when her mother used her full name, shouting it across the house in a stern tone—it made her feel like she was in trouble, or something was wrong...
In this case, something was wrong. She knew it, and he had chosen his words carefully and chosen to repeat them, knowing they would not set off any alarms of dishonesty.
On their last night of their trip, in a thick forest about two hours from the city of Dranspor, his birth place, she stared up at the stars against the silky ebony backdrop of night sky, deciding if she should press him on the topic before they made it back to the castle and the topic disappeared in the shuffle of their daily lives. If she asked yes or no questions it was easier to get answers from people who knew about her powers...they had to answer truthfully, and sometimes no answer was just as telling as a truthful answer.
“What did he mean, Strelzar?” she asked quietly, not taking her eyes off the crystalline stars and creamy, glowing moon.
“Not this again,” he groaned, his voice as gravelly and tired as she thought she had ever heard it. Its smooth coacoa richness was gone. The sound sent a cold dread down her spine. Whatever Ellory meant had affected him more deeply than she had realized.
“Yes, this again, Strelzar. I'm worried.”
“I told you, it's not for you to worry about. Not now.”
“Not now?” Veria asked, finally turning to look at him, but he had his back to her, curled on his side, which was not typically how he slept. “Then when?”
“I don't know. Maybe never. Let's not talk about this. I'm tired,” he muttered.
Daughter of the Diamond: Book IV of the Elementals Series Page 3
