Blood & Shadows

Seven

I don't go downstairs to the common room and instead drift back asleep. Birds chirp outside of the window, as someone shakes my shoulder. I blink my eyes open to find Faeriel smiling at me, her golden hair pulled over her shoulder in a thick glossy plait. Those blue eyes of hers are painfully kind as she hands me a bowl of porridge. The very sight of it makes my bile rise but I smile weakly all the same in feigned gratitude.

"You need to eat," she says as I sit up and she takes a spot beside me, the same one Vrythien occupied the night before. I breath through that twisting in my gut and sit up.

"I...I'm sorry." I shake my head and she smiles, touching my shoulder.

"We all do things we're not proud of. That power you have is..." she trails off her voice falling to nothing as she takes a slow breath. "Great. Such power is a gift, and the histories of Nathlan are littered with accounts of people who did wonderous things with great power and horrific things as well." She rubs that graying fabric of her kirtle on her knees.

Pushing at the porridge with the spoon I let out a sigh. On the table sits a pair of gloves too large for my hands and in the corner is a pack. Reminders of Vrythien and his absence.

"Are we staying here for a while?" That's what I ask when in truth what I mean is when in all of the hells above and below can we leave.

Faeriel nods a little. "There's a temple here to Cerys, and she came to me in a dream. She'll restore my favor if I repent and sacrifice a new." Somehow, she seems strangely happy with the outcome, but I can't help to wonder what Cerys will demand from her now that she's given her body.

"After all of this do you see yourself with Geraent?"

She smiles thoughtfully and picks at the bottom of her braid twirling those strands around milk pale fingers. "Do you see yourself with Vrythien?" She counters, raising her slim curved brows.

"We're nothing to each other." I shrug. Some how it tastes like a lie, leaving a sour tang behind at the back of my tongue that refuses to leave. She glances around those blue sapphires narrowed in sharp glimmering scrutiny.

"He was curious quick to share this room with you, given your... state." The smile she wears is no longer pleasant and genuine. As though she's accusing me of something.

"Curious it may have been, but I believe our pale noble friend spent the night in another's bed." At my words she flinches as though she's been struck a blow and perhaps in a way she has.

"Oh, hmm..." she purses her lips, golden brows knit in thought. "I had a theory but I suppose it's wrong then."

It's hard to hold back my laughter as I smirk at her. It must be so easy to have lived such a simple life. "Oh this is certainly something I need to hear," I purr, my voice a pale echo of Vrythien's intonation, as I turn the gray mushy porridge over with the spoon waiting for her brilliant explanation.

"Well," she begins glancing at her hands as though the words are written on her clean pink nailbeds. "All the gods have duality, male and female, dark and light. Geraent and I serve Cerys and Decerys, the male and female gods of sunlight--warmth and righteous vengeance. Their counterparts across the wheel are... Xeresk and Azaraska--cruelty and wrath. Do you keep any gods?" There it is, that judging tone as if she is ready to smite me with words alone.

I shrug. "If I do, I don't remember. We're almost the Draken Tetrad too. If you want to go the effigy route. Warrior, Priest, Shadow Sorcerer, but I do believe we're shy a necromancer unless Vrythien is hiding a massive secret."

She nods a little, eyes still fixed on her hands as she picks at her nails. "I suppose you're right; it all sounds silly the longer I think of it but it's something. All this unknown..." She lets out a soft sigh as though she can breath it all away. "I like to say I trust in Cerys's will, but the light does not touch all things." Is that despair in her voice? Surely we've not yet reached the part where we abandon hope. I keep my initial thoughts to myself and think of something more productive to say.