True Silk, Book I | 18+ (Completed)

chapter xv | The Shock of It All

CHAPTER XV
THE SHOCK OF IT ALL

᥏ I WAS SO SHOCKED I COULDN'T SPEAK – and I didn't know what there was to be surprised by. The very image of Othello of which I'd conjured from Shakespearean novels was standing before me, watching me – actually, he was quite eager to glower at Carinus – naked beneath the blue water. Carinus was just as intent on glowering back, his eyes only a million times sturdier than the one glaring back.

This was more than tension, I assumed. It was up and coming death on the way. Again, my mind wondered back to Azrael, but I almost immediately dispersed of the thought. He just kept making his way into my thoughts.

But I was still stuck on the brown-haired woman. He had called her 'Mother'. His mother. It shouldn't have really been a surprise, or have caused any shock whatsoever. It was only normal to have two parents, most consisting of a male and a female.

Still, who would ever consider that this male had a family? There was nothing about him that denoted the sensitive subject of family. It was hard to take in that he actually had one, besides an insane, murderous sister. That shade of blue in the eyes, however, wasn't him.

I remained glimpsing hastily from him to her. Him to her. Him to her. No resemblance.

Anon, sensing my overwhelmed bewilderment, King Salkamenos decided to speak. "Mávena, this is Valerisa's mother, Camil."

Oh . . . "Oh," I breathed, watching her motherly look fall onto me, hardly softening. It was not easy to assume she had children, if I didn't already know. "Uh . . . Nice to meet you," I said with some nervousness.

"Nice to meet you, too, sweetheart." I wasn't positive if the narrowing of her eyes was judgemental or not. Which the rubbing of my bite justified, I only presumed it to be. Howbeit my thoughts were uncertain, she did come off as a critic. Of course, I didn't believe she had a reason to be. Maybe it was just in her nature. "Carinus!" she upbraided, and – though she wasn't chastising me – even I flinched at her motherly tone.

In a way I felt nostalgic by it. The way my mother used to chew me out . . .

She berated him quickly after catching his eyes. Her frown and stern glower was enough to make me hide behind him. "How dare you feed on the poor female here? And in the bath, no less?"

"And how dare you bring this pathetic recreant lout of a man into my home?" he snarled out. I could see his hands had made over fists below the surface of blue. Veins like streams of night-water swelled in his arms. He was more than livid, long past ballistic, even. I only even mention the two rueful adjectives being I stood in need of the proper word to describe his rather emotional state.

Beholding him in this mood proved to be on top of disheartening. My imagination got the best of me, forming the conception that his eyes were darker than before. Only, that just wasn't possible.

The obvious factor for it was the ebony male adjacent Camil. Something had, with little to no doubt, happened between them though what was rather faint.

"M-My K – "

"Get out." Carinus' growled words instilled silence in all three of us, engraving into my ears the dubious but noiseless vexation. He had no reason to be bothered now. He needed his space, as we all do in times of absolute aggro. Mutely nodding, though somewhat embarrassed that I would be getting out with things others shouldn't have sight of, I intended to walk past him. "Not you," he exhaled, yanking me back by my wrist. With his dominant hand, he shooed them off.

Gasping exasperatedly, on no account could she believe this. "The great King has guests, and he is meaning to just blow them off! We must speak! Now – "