Strange Aeons [Book 1]

21. That ship has sailed [part III]

«This is outrageous! Worse! It's embarrassing, it's disgraceful, and worst of all is mostly and completely unprofessional!»

He was standing behind his desk, a large stain of ink spreading all over it, his hands behind his back, his eyes fiery with rage. He had started screaming that the portal hadn't even properly closed and had soon unhooked his hands to start gesticulating.

She had been screamed against so many times she lost count, but never like this. It was like he was taking out something buried so deep in his soul, that his roars made the walls themselves tremble. And she, who usually proudly defended herself with the same amount of screaming, this time could only fold on herself under the hail.

«Don't you imagine for a second that I hadn't heard the rumors going around about your supposed crush on me. But dignifying them with any kind of serious acknowledgment would have meant making them worthy of anyone's attention! The pesky pastime of a mass of lazy rats with nothing better to do than stain good people's reputation for some cheap laughs at our expenses!» after the first five minutes, she had started to worry he could go on without breathing for even more time. There was a vein, on the side of his head, that had swelled up so much she could see it pulsating. His face was as red as her hair, his pupils small like pinpricks. «But this! This legitimates the rumors and gossips going around! It will hurt you, it will hurt me, and it will hurt innocent people like Francesca! Because if you truly thought that River would have ever kept something like that under silence, you're even more short-sighted than I have always thought!»

She didn't interrupt. She just felt her whole body cringing and felt something burning in the depth of her stomach but fought to keep it down.

«Sleeping with the Enforcer of our worst enemies! A disgrace! An utter and complete disgrace! I would have expected such a blatant irregular behavior from any other woman, or man, in this goddamned Order but not from you! Never from you!»

He took a deep breath. Finally. He looked directly at her. And she beat herself up, again, for the umpteenth time that very morning, for ever having mistaken his eyes for River's imitation. Their depth, their expressivity, they were nothing like River's copy.

They were strange, though. Where she was sure to find only contempt and disdain, there was something else seeping through the layers of disappointment.

Hurt.

«I trusted you.» his voice was down a notch. «I trusted you to be the only one I knew not to fall in the arms of that deprived sorry excuse for a mage. That you could be the first person, the first...» his voice raised again, briefly «... that could see through his debonair act of general self-indulgence and complete selfishness. I...» he sighed, massaging the root of his nose with his fingers. «I'm tired. Banshee. This was quite the last straw.»

She was biting her lip, fighting back the urge to say something, to explain everything, to finally come clean, after all those years of silence, now that, at last, she had nothing left to lose. Really nothing. It was now or never. So she stopped fighting back. She tried to steady her voice.

«I only slept with him because he's the only person who could turn into a perfect copy o' ye.» she wetted her dry lips with her even drier tongue. He was as still as a marble statue. «And so... and so I could think... it was ye, there, with me and-»

He raised an open hand, just to order her to shut up, letting her words hang in the air between them, in the cracks of something that felt broken.

She shut up.

Maybe it was already never.

«Dismissed.» he muttered.

She opened her mouth, trying to find the words to save the situation, or at least stall it until the right words would come along. Sure as hell she didn't want to leave everything as it was. She didn't want to go away with those eyes as a last memory.