Chapter 108: Blood (2)
Talia struggled to pull the last piece of the Prince's ripped tunic out from under him, and then tossed the bloody rag on the floor.
At least she'd gotten the filthy shirt off of him. His pants however...
She heaved a sigh while considering whether it was even worth trying to get them off. His only wounds were on his back, but the blood had run down and saturated his trousers as well, and even the bedsheets were a mess.
He needed to be bathed, have his wounds disinfected and coated in honey salve and then the bedsheets needed to be burned.
She was not strong enough to move him to the bath, and the realization that he would need a male attendant to assist him hit at that moment and froze her with horror.
A servant would see the marks! Even if it was Ilya- there would be other times- when he was dressing, when he was injured, when he was with a woman... at some point, someone would see them!
Talia turned away from his marked back and took several deep breaths, willing herself not to panic.
She had already broken the law. There was no undoing it now. Besides, the law was meant to protect her family and the future generations of House Eosin. She no longer had a family to protect, and future generations were very unlikely.
Also, she reminded herself, the law hadn't protected them in the end. Perhaps if they'd done the opposite from the very beginning-- Perhaps if they'd used the blood the way her ancestors had, to make Vezda strong, to win allies, to give them advantages... perhaps then...
It was not worth dwelling on. It should not matter. The most dangerous beings in the Empire- Emperor Grigori and the ancient ones- knew the secret anyhow. That didn't mean that she should flaunt it, but she should no longer hesitate to use it to her benefit. As the last of House Eosin- she could make her own laws.
"You can keep your pants for now, I suppose," she said to the unconscious man on the bed. "Ilya will return soon, and I suppose we'll deal with the mess then. I'll have to burn the sheets, you know."
Talia lifted the bowl of water and set it beside him on the bed. She climbed up next to him, with the tray of cloths and medicine, and opened one of the bottles. She sniffed it gingerly and made a face.
"I haven't a clue what any of these are for," she admitted. "I've known since I was a child and I saw you close a wound with hot iron that Unarian medicine was woefully behind our Vezdan healing, but this is shocking. This medicine smells like soured milk. You'd think they'd at least have thought to send a disinfectant of some type."
She dipped a clean rag into the water and wrung it out. Gently, she began to clean the dried blood and sweat from his back.
"You always seem to be the one saving me, but now... well, maybe now, you might consider my usefulness instead of simply packing me off to Frem," she muttered, rinsing the rag in the water.
"You probably won't though," she scoffed, wincing at how quickly the water went red. "This is ridiculous! Do you know that in the temple at Vezda, we boil the water for cleaning wounds, and we cover the boiling pots with large glass domes, and there are tubes that run from them into the surgey. You always have a steady drip of fresh clean water that way. They probably scooped this water right out of the city river! It is astonishing how we could lose a war to so backwards a society!"
Talia shook her head and dropped the rag into the bloodied water. It was then that she recalled the shelves behind the tapestry and the assortment of bottles of there.
She quickly sorted through them, and found the strongest alcohol by scent. With a pile of fresh rags, she returned.
"This will sting," she warned him, though she knew he would not hear, and then, began to carefully clean the wounds themselves.
The room was entirely silent but for the brush of the cloth against his skin, and his heavy, even breaths. When she finished, she covered his exposed skin with a light blanket to keep him warm. She would need Ilya's help to secure the bandaging.
There was no way to know how long he would sleep, but he had not moved or even flinched while she tended to him. Her eyes wandered back to the painting leaning against the wall.
If she were to be honest, from almost the moment she saw it, her instinct was to destroy it. Even Ilya had been quick to realize that the painting depicted Julia of Yevin.
There was no way to know what Grieta's intent had been for certain, but Talia thought it quite likely to be a sort of threat. The woman was clearly saying that she knew about Julia of Yevin.
However, anyone who made a threat generally did so because they wanted something. What did that woman want from her?
The legend of Princess Alulia... she had mentioned it not only in her letter but again in person. There was a clue in that.
Of course the legend that most people knew was quite different than what was written in the history hidden deep within the temple on the Holy Island.
The tale told to children in Vezda was of King Eosin's only daughter Alula, the great warrior who rode at the head of her troops to the far north to fight the monsters who had come down from the mountains. She and her army suffered a massive defeat, but with her last breath, she said a magic spell which sealed the monsters to the boundary of the northern high mountains for all time.
In reality, there had not been an army with her when she travelled to the north. The Alulians had long since been overcome by the monsters and abandoned the land, and only King Eosin, his family and supporters were left in hiding. His eldest daughter had fought bravely even after their people abandoned them and their army was defeated.
She had sacrificed herself, acting as a decoy to lead the monsters to the north where she had used her own blood to create the boundry that imprisoned the ancient ones.
There were few eyewitness accounts of her end- a small tribe of humans which dwelt in the highlands claimed to have buried her with honor, and also, noticed that where her blood had spilled across the ground, tiny red flowers had sprung up. Flowers that had never been seen before that time or after it.
And yet, though no one in hundreds of years had ever even claimed to see one of these flowers growing in the wild, and even though it was not part of the legend, somehow, the tiny red flowers seemd to show up in paitings and carving and weavers looms over and over, decade after decade.
And Julia of Yevin, or at least her painted counterpart, carried them in her hand. The red flowers had a meaning... sacrifice.
Talia stubbornly returned her gaze to Prince Mikhail, and noticed that his long black hair, which she had swept to one side early on, was tangled and matted with dried blood.
She had larger problems at the moment than Grieta and what she wanted. If the woman managed to escape and survive, then, perhaps, Talia would worry about the threat she posed.
In the meantime, Prince Mikhail had barely survived, and there was no way of knowing why he was attacked or what trouble they might be in.
Tenatively, she reached forward and placed her fingers against his cheek, and then lightly traced the line of his jaw. She had rarely seen him sleep, and for a moment, even with all the fear and uncertainty that weighed heavily on her, it struck her that he truly was quite handsome. She rarely thought about it, even during the moments when he'd kissed her passionately or held her in his arms, but even with his scarred and marked skin, and his jaw in need of a good shave, there was something almost ethereal about his sleeping face.
In fact, even as she had wiped the blood from him, she had selfishly enjoyed the feel of his firm, hard back beneath her fingers, and was reminded of the time at the inn when he had held as still as a statue, allowing her to kiss and touch him as she wanted.
Had they been different people, in a different situation, perhaps... perhaps they would have fallen easily in love.
"You aren't allowed to die," she whispered. "I know you cant hear me, but you should know... I will not sit back and allow anyone else to be taken from me, I swear it! I thought that I could allow myself to love you, if had some sort of assurance that you would love me in return. Do you know what I realized the moment I saw them drag you in here... a mostly dead, bloodied mess? I realized that I loved you already. I had no control over it. I didn't even hesitate when it came to using the blood. I love you... but... I'm afraid. You're always warning me that I musn't feel that way. I wonder now... If you hadn't promised Ora that you would protect me, would you see me the same way as you saw Grieta? As a pretty enough woman who will sometimes be your ally and sometimes your bedmate?"
Talia frowned and gently ran her thumb over his warm, soft lips.
"I won't burden you with these feelings of mine anymore. I won't push them on you, or plead with you to love me in return. I've seen the look on your face when I do that... like I'm hurting you. I won't do it anymore. But, in return, you aren't allowed to die, and I won't be sent away!"
Even unconscious, the Prince scowled, as though he wanted to argue with her.
"Sssh" Talia soothed, smoothing the furrows in his brow with her fingers. "Since you're not saying anything, I'll take it as you agree."
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone