AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She and Maggie had bombarded a servant with questions about the location of the king or Relian. The poor elf—wringing his hands in the face of so much human emotion—had led them to the door where two sentries stood. As the guards and the servant discussed the new, pressing human problem, she and Maggie nodded at each other before lunging at the handle of the door.
They tumbled into the room, evading the sentries who sprang after them. Both froze when they saw half a dozen gazes or so glued on them. Oops. Definitely in a meeting. Guess neither of them had heard or understood that part.
Cal’s face flooded with warmth, and she couldn’t glance too long at any of the elves watching her. She was faintly aware that the king dismissed the lurking sentries, who apparently hadn’t wanted to grab either her or Maggie in the royal presence of father and son.
Relian stood up and strode toward her. “Lady Calantha, is something wrong?”
Cal gazed dumbly at him as his worry slammed into her. What’d she come in here for again? She must’ve looked dazed because he led her over to a trio of chairs that rested in one corner of the room. Maggie followed, accompanied not by Kenhel as she supposed but by Lord Ennin—that nice elf from the garden.
Aware she should respond to Relian and the other elves as they voiced similar inquiries, she looked at Relian as he stood above her. Words floundered in her mind, but none of them seemed right. “I...I’m fine. It’s just that Maggie and I... Well, we wanted to ask about the time.”
Relian’s concerned expression gave way to one of skepticism. “You’re fine, yet you ran in here to ask about the time?” he asked slowly as if he were speaking to a recalcitrant child.
Which was what she probably was to him right now—nothing but a child in his eyes. How could she have deluded herself into thinking a relationship between them was possible? Cal twisted her hands in her lap, threatening to mangle the appendages until he knelt before her and grasped them.
“My lady, what’s wrong?” Concern colored his voice.
She closed her eyes, trying to steady her emotions. So what if she’d crashed a meeting of royal advisors? “I’m sorry for the interruption.”
“Same here,” Maggie added.
Once Cal settled her nerves, she took note of the other elves in the room. Kenhel and Sardon were there, along with an elf Cal didn’t remember meeting, though she may have in the great hall on that morning so long ago.
“My lady, you haven’t informed me of your reason for your extreme behavior.”
Relian’s soft voice drew a shiver from her. Now she felt nothing from him.
The underlying steel in his tone warned her that he wouldn’t brook any verbal evasion. Though she tried not to show the jolt his words caused, she was taken aback. She’d forgotten this Relian—the Relian of her earlier days. His iciness drove home the fact she didn’t know him, not really. This reminder served to renew that sense of foreignness—so inhuman in its quality—that radiated off these people in direct contrast to her humanity. She thought she’d been making peace with this indelible fact, but had she only been sweeping it under the cover of her subconscious?
Cal fought the urge to look at Maggie, knowing she wouldn’t get much help on that front. The only one Maggie tussled with verbally was the king, and he’d been known to make Maggie fidget in her slippers until hotheadedness overcame common sense.
Relian knelt before her, but his presence loomed, not soothed. She squirmed. An answer was expected. That meant talking. Talking. Cal grasped onto that as the natural sequence of things. Unless she spoke, they wouldn’t know why she and Maggie were there.
“Time.” Her Elvish started to fail her. “That’s what we came about.”
Seeing Relian’s brow furrow, she elaborated, and the words flowed easier now. “We’re concerned about how time passes in this realm as compared to back home. We both have families who’ll worry, that are worrying right now.” She looked at the faces surrounding her with beseeching eyes. “We weren’t exactly planning for this trip, so everyone will think we’ve vanished. For them, we’ve been missing for over six months.”
Relian sighed, and a bit of his rigid posture deserted him. “We’ve indeed been lax in considering the worry to both you and your families. It wasn’t our intention to have you suffer in silence. Please don’t think you have to keep doubts such as these private until you can no longer contain them. We don’t always have the forethought to bring up pertinent subjects before they become a concern. On this matter, we can assure you there’s no cause for worry. It’s not that time flows differently between the two realms but rather that traveling through the veil can distort time, alter it if you will. While we don’t know the exact mechanics, when you go back—as you likely will at some point—it’ll take you to the time in which you need to be.”
What! She shook her head furiously, anger kindling in her gut. “No one ever mentioned this before. Why didn’t you tell me this? I’ve talked about missing home and my family. About missing my life there. You promised honesty, and I feel as if I’ve gotten so little of it.”
Relian shifted uneasily. “We believed that only the barest of facts would serve you well at the beginning. We didn’t know how you’d react.”
Cal glowered. He left the “and us” unsaid, for it was blatantly obvious it’d been for the elves’ benefit. “How can I even trust you? Have you lied about everything? About us being free to go after a year?”
A flare of panic and guilt not her own launched itself into her chest. “You lied?”
“I needed you to stay. It’s true that the effects of the binding become worse if not fulfilled, but there is no traditional period of a year.”
Betrayal punched her hard. “So it was merely a ruse to get us to stay for that long? What about the veil? Did you even try to summon it?”
The shame on his face—and the one echoed through the bond—told her all she needed to know. “You didn’t. You bastard!”
With all her might, she pushed him as she shot off her seat. He toppled back onto his butt.
She narrowed her eyes at him as the implications of his words sunk in. “So you could have sent us home this entire time?” Cal asked lowly.
She clenched her hands, dreaming it was his neck instead.
