Smoke ||Book Two||

Chapter Two

Deletrear smiled at him, his familiar teal eyes bringing a wave of comfort to Nix as he stepped aside to let the other inside.

The wizard glanced around, though none of the contents of the house really surprised him. Hardly anything had changed in the last few years and he had a feeling it never would. Nix wasn't the kind of person to care about his surroundings. "I wanted to speak with you is all."

Nix shut the door behind him, motioning around. "Make yourself comfortable then." He waited for the other man to sit at the table, but Deletrear surprised him. Instead of sitting, he stood in front of the window. He was stiffer than Nix remembered. Something was off, which was odd for Deletrear. Nix couldn't recall a time he had seen the older man shaken up. "Is everything alright?"

Silence.

Deletrear leaned his hip against the bottom of the window, crossing his arms over his chest. He took a deep breath and slowly looked over his shoulder at Nix, struggling to keep his face composed. He tried to smile, but Nix saw through it. "David isn't doing well. He's going to die in six months."

While it wasn't that surprising to here, Nix felt his heart throb. Time and time again, David had proved himself. Out of all the men in his life, David was the one that felt most fatherly towards him. WIth his kind eyes and his gentle spirit, he had raised Nix's lost love and ruled with a fierceness he had never seen before.

Royalty meant very little to Nix. They were just the people that had been born lucky. More often than not, they were awful people that didn't care about those beneath them. Had Roman not always been threatening Nix's life, he might have willingly bowed to him.

But David? David was different.

Nix would always bow before David.

To hear about his upcoming death was unnerving. Cassandra was dead, leaving him without an heir. Who would take the throne after he had passed? There was only one person that Nix could think of that would do just as good of a job as David had, but he couldn't imagine Deletrear accepting.

Despite Deletrear's weak smile as he spoke of David's eventual demise, Nix caught the glimpse of frustration. There was something else within the wizard that he had not yet explained. He wanted to press for more information, though felt it would be best to tread carefully. "In all the possibilities?"

"All of them, but one," Deletrear whispered, exhaling his breath slowly. He wiped his cheeks clean with his sleeves and cleared his throat, adjusting his position to lean his back against the window instead. His eyes hardly met Nix's, though it was easy to see why as the tears still glimmered off of them.

"Six months is a long time. Surely, a cure or something else could be done to save him?" Pieces began connecting in Nix's mind as he stared at the wizard, something he had yet to consider. The more he thought it over, the more he began to understand. He recognized the desperation in his voice and body language. Either Deletrear merely had a strong friendship with David, or something else beyond that was happening.

Yet, Deletrear only shook his head. The normally composed man began to let his walls fall. He allowed his back to sneak down until he was seated upon the ground. He dropped his head into his hand, the vision of the direct future overwhelming his head. The chances of each future were all evenly split, causing him to stress more than he had been before. Nix was his last chance. "Do you remember our conversation all those years ago? About Anjiila?"

How could he forget? The girl's name was beginning to haunt him alongside Cassandra. In the moments he could break himself away from his past and look to the future, he saw Samuel and Cela's faces as he took Anjiila away from them. It would be her own decision, as she would be an adult, but it would be nerve-racking for all involved. Anjiila would be taken straight to the source of the war itself. He nodded, trying to imagine where this conversation was going.