Ruler [Blood Magic, Book 3]

Chapter 14: A Plea in the Night (revised)

"Boras, wait," I said as he shoved me into the royal chambers. "Please. Stop for a second. Can you do that much?" 

"You shouldn't be here and I want no more part in this travesty than I have to have." He was already pulling the door shut behind him, leaving me to my fate.

"That's why you need to hear me out," I said, grabbing the door and preventing it from closing. He could have easily torn it loose or slammed it shut on my fingers, but he didn't. I took that as a halfway decent sign. "I know I shouldn't be here. But I swear I'm not trying to make things worse. I just don't know what to do to make them better."

"Give him whatever he wants." Like a lot of things Boras said to me, it came out gruff and dismissive, like I was an idiot for not falling in line sooner.

"And if I can't?"

"Don't you mean won't?"

Good god, not this again. 

"You know what? Forget it. Where's Arthos? I want to talk to him." Invoking the name of Keel's personal adviser wouldn't win me any points, but this conversation was going nowhere. Boras hated me too much, hated this situation too much.

"I can't help you."

"Don't you mean won't?" I said, spitting his own words back at him. I may have to put up with Keel's shit, but I didn't have to put up with his, at least not until His Majesty added "respecting Boras" to his ever-growing list of demands.

"Can't. Our king has him corralled with the rest of the traitors."

"What?" The news threw me so off-balance I reached out and grabbed the sleeve of Boras' Nosferatu-issue military fatigues without thinking. He shook off my hand and then brushed at the fabric of his shirt as if I'd left filth on it.

"Your arrival didn't make the right impression, and His Majesty holds him accountable."

"But that wasn't Arthos' fault." While I hadn't exactly been on Team Arthos the last few days, discovering that he had been forced to bear the brunt of Keel's anger at me did a lot to win me back. 

"Good luck convincing His Majesty of that. Arthos had one job to do in regards to your retrieval and intake, and he failed."

"No, I failed," I said. Didn't His Majesty realize that losing Arthos meant losing the most valuable asset he had? "Can you try to talk to him? Try to make him see reason?" 

Boras gave me a disgusted look. "I don't take orders from you, or any sorcerer."

"It wasn't an order, and it isn't even about me. If you care about His Majesty's reign or his life, you need to do this."

"Is that a threat?"

"Do I look like I'm in any position to make threats?" I asked, gesturing at the room behind me. 

Boras huffed. "Have you ever considered that perhaps things are running smoother without Arthos and his progressive ideas?" The way his mouth curled around "progressive," it sounded as if the word had a sour, putrid taste.

"But the world is changing, and fast," I said, switching tactics. If I couldn't appeal to his missing sense of decency, how about his survival instinct? "That means at some point your precious Nosferatu society will have to change too. Or would you prefer to become relics, living so apart from humanity and-" I thought about Keel's secret surveillance room "-21st-century technology that sooner or later some of you will go topside and the blending in just won't work anymore. If you continue on as you have been, pretending it's still the industrial age and not the digital one, humans are going to find out about you, Extinction Day will come, I promise you that. And that's not a threat, it's an inevitability. That's why you need Arthos, he understands that and he can help His Majesty make the necessary changes."

"Extinction Day" was a heady phrase to throw into that very grown-up speech, but if anything were to get through to Boras it was that. However, he just laughed, though it didn't boast his usual unwavering confidence. Something I'd said had made him think, and I was willing to bet he'd keep thinking about whatever it was after he left here too. And maybe it would inspire him to do something, maybe he'd even confront Keel. 

He closed the door on me and the rest was out of my hands.  

"Please do the right thing, Boras," I said to the empty room. "For all of us."