“I don’t know anything about an oracle, I’m afraid.”
That was answered by a sudden, brutal blow to the left side of Nelson’s head that made his ears ring and threatened to pull him under. Nelson wished it would. They couldn’t get anything out of him if he was unconscious and it might buy him more time.
“Was it Oglethorpe or MacIlwraith who created the halfling?”
Nelson knew that picking a name or saying both would confirm that Everly had been “created” and that some form of necromancy had occurred.
“Who created a what now? What’s a halfling?” he said, then choked on a gasp as the pressure on his chest increased, making it impossible for Nelson to inhale or exhale. He started to see sparks and flashes of color and his skin prickled. “Keep going. I’m almost there,” he managed and the overwhelming weight lifted immediately and Nelson was able to pull in a deep breath.
“Perhaps you’ll be more cooperative if you can hear your lover’s screams,” the creature mused.
For a moment, Nelson panicked. What if they already had Nox and he was being hurt? Nelson scrambled to calculate the likelihood and how he’d negotiate before his common sense kicked in and he chuckled wryly.
“You wouldn’t be wasting your time with me if you had bigger fish on the line. Nice try, though.”
“He’s stubborn too.”
That got a sincere laugh out of Nelson. The pain in his ribs and abdomen would have blinded Nelson if he could see anything but complete darkness, yet he didn’t care. He was enjoying himself at the moment and could not wait for them to get what they were asking for and finally meet Nox.
“Thank you for that,” he said once he got himself under control. He was stunned by another blow to the head. Nelson waited through the ringing and dizziness. “Sorry. Where were we? Want to ask me about unicorns and flying monkeys?”
“Enough,” a voice whispered from Nelson’s right. It was faint but gravelly and deeper than the creature’s petulant hisses.
“Is that you, Dùbhghlas?” Nelson called and listened.
There was no answer as Nelson’s chair was quickly lifted and set upright and his interrogator stomped away. It sounded like it required several paces before Nelson heard a door open and close. He let out the slowest, softest sigh of relief, in case he was still being observed. The room was a lot larger than a closet or a small cell.
Nelson also noted that he wasn’t healing rapidly outside of his Noxspace. After Niall’s broken leg had healed in a matter of moments, Nelson did a secret experiment on himself to see if his proximity to Nox was having a similar effect. It was hard to know if he’d slowed or stopped aging after only a few years with Nox but Nelson could test it out by injuring himself. He used theblade on his Leatherman to slice the side of his calf in the shower and watched in horror as the wound slowly closed and faded.
He was healing at a normal rate at the moment. For Nelson, that was ahugerelief. It meant that Nox wasn’t nearby and that Nelson was still just a man. If he survived Dùbhghlas’s latest scheme, Nelson could have as much time with Nox as he wanted without losing his humanity.
If.
Faced with another long stretch of black silence, Nelson searched his memories and his childhood. Those years had seemed inconsequential and uneventful, the same cycles of seasons and customs that stacked into an unremarkable life before Nox recruited Nelson for their trip to New Castle. Now, Nelson was finding Easter eggs from his childhood that he’d buried in his psyche.
“It’s good that you’re more like your grandfather.”
His mother gave Nelson’s hair a quick pet to smooth it and picked a bit of lint off of his coat. They were headed into church for Mass and she looked pleased as each of her gloves received a tug. He wished she would hold his hand or put her arm around him but she never did. Nelson had been trained to follow closely at her side and speak only when spoken to.
“Yes, ma’am.”
What else could Nelson say? He did his best to be just like his father, who was just like his grandfather. At ten-years-old, Nelson could already see his father and grandfather staring back at him in the mirror. To him, they looked like three stages of the same man.
“Too much ambition makes a man worthless. It makes him boring.”
She smiled serenely as they sat in their usual pew, tilting her head back proudly. Her mouth barely moved as shequietly admonished and gossiped about their neighbors and the congregation around them.
“Your father’s too busy to worry about his soul, but your grandfather has always been humble and he isn’t afraid to pick up the Bible or a book now and then.”
Nelson’s father could read but the only things he made time for were files, reports, and court briefings. He was either at work, or working in his study. It was Nelson’s mother who had influenced his love of reading and curiosity. She rarely discussed her own interests or seemed all that curious but she had sparked an intense desire to read andlearnwhen she told Nelson he could teach himself anything if he simply found the right books.
She died when Nelson was sixteen and his grandfather died when he was twenty, leaving him with just his father. He had no other family on his mother’s side and Nelson had never been good at making friends. Like the other Nelsons, he was too serious and too devoted to his work and his only appetite was tolearn more. Not because Nelson wanted to be superior to others, but because he had so many questions and he felt poorer when he didn’t have an answer.
“I never had to tell you to stand up straight and mind your posture. You were born with integrity while men like your father spend their lives grasping at it. That’s why he’s so hard on you, dear.”
His mother didn’t cuddle with him or coddle him with cozy affirmations but now and then, she would inform Nelson that she was proud of how he had turned out and that he had her approval. As much as she was capable of providing, between appointments and social obligations. He wouldn’t understand until much later that he was asexual and queer but Nelson suspected that his mother would have accepted him in her own dry and disinterested way.
“Some men are born knights and heroes, others are simply borne.”
