Thoughts of the way our friendship is going tend to put me to sleep so, i decide to focus on something else.
My impending romance with this guy's sister.
I hear some movement and i know he is standing up. He wants to leave and it makes an emotion rush through me. One so very alike the one that had made mum punish me.
"Is this attitude because i am to have something with your sister?"
He stops dead in his tracks at that and i know i have hit a nerve. That is what i had been hoping to do all the while anyways because i need a reaction. I need a reaction from him, just any reaction at this point. I expect him to be angry but he just lets out a breath and shakes his head.
"I knew the arrangement was bound to happen someday, my mother would like none other and your mum seems pleased"
I frown at that because it is true. Given the choice i would not have assented to this but a pretty face has always been one of my many many weaknesses.
"Then why are you acting like this? Why are you acting like i'm a stranger to you?"
The words slip out of my mouth and soon i can see what is happening. I can see clearly what is happening here and i know he sees it too. I am getting worked up and i have to take a few deep breaths because i don't understand why i am getting this worked up over something this trivial. I take a deep breath.
"Why do you avoid me?"
"Why do you suddenly want to know?"
A sort of joy races through me at the fact that for once he isn't keeping quiet when i ask that question. I have been asking him that question for what feels like forever and i'm not going to stop now.
"I would like to know because we were friends Ilya"
"We are still friends"
"Are we?"
I see him stop and he looks at his feet before he looks back up at me.
"I can't go on like that anymore"
"Like how???"
He looks at me, then he looks at the floor and then back at me.
"I'm still your friend Marcel, i just have a number of things to do lately and i can't afford to be slow about it"
"Is this about Matilda?, because i had something with her?"
He looks at me, like really looks at me and then he gives me that look. That singular look that manages to always confuse me and make me doubt if i am seeing correctly or if the light is just playing tricks on me. It's a look that makes me know i am naive and foolish and i have missed the point entirely but how can that be?.
He smiles and i can see the mask fall into place.
He smiles and erects the wall he has kept between us for the past year now and i can feel pain, a dull and heavy one shoot through me.
"I have to go check on the prisoner. I'll be back shortly"
Just like that he walks out of the moving carriage and he lands firmly on his feet. I would have at least wobbled and made a show of smiling like i wasn't able to jump out a carriage in the first place.
A feeling creeps up my spine and i have to tell myself to calm down. It has been six and a half years since i last had an attack but a weird thought pops into my head.
My "attacks" as father and mother and whatever physician had checked up on me when it first happened are more or less like seizures. They aren't seizures to be precise but still they are something very close to that. They are reactions from my body. A very painful and agonizing way for my body to process overwhelming emotions, well at least that is the only plausible explanation for it.
It always begins with a ringing in my ears. The first time it had happened was when i was eight. Dorian had made a bet with me on who could run the fastest and i had smiled and accepted the bet knowing fully well that i am faster than him.
He had given me a very sly look and i had forgotten that even at the age of ten, Dorian was already in the way of kings. I have seen father shoot that same smile to some of his councilmen who had been trying to play both sides in the tussle between him and his brother. Just that smile, just that seemingly warm and harmless smile and you would fall into their trap head first. I beat Dorian in the race alright, but he ended up getting a reward while i got nothing.
I had taken a shortcut around the manor we were lodged in for the summer at the capital. Father's brother had been sending assassins non stop but father was always one step ahead of him. We couldn't stay at our own manor, that would mean death. All the same i mapped out a path and took off running ignoring the mud from the rain that had fallen the night before.
Mother was having guests and Dorian showed up at the agreed stop looking clean and innocent. I looked like i just ran through a whole lot of mud. Mother gave him a treat and a peck on the forehead while i was given "the look". The anger that boiled through me was hot and almost like a force on it's own.
First was the ringing in my ears.
Mother said i looked like a vengeful spirit looking at her like that, and she smiled and wanted to pet me into going off to take a bath. I think she was the one who first noticed that something was wrong. I saw her look at me with concern on her face and almost immediately it grabbed a hold of me.
I screamed my throat raw at the pain that was lashing through me and she had scooped me in her arms, and she practically flew to the infirmary. That was the first time i had ever seen my mother scared and even the fact that i can see is a miracle, or so i learnt.
Dorian said there was blood everywhere, even from my eyes and he was certain i was going to die. I didn't feel like i was going to die though. I didn't feel i was going to die at all.
I felt anger and pain, and more anger, so hot that it tore through me at some point and made me scream. Dorian had looked shocked two nights later when i told him what i was feeling in that moment.
The next morning i found a glass jar of sweets in front of my door. Ever since then overwhelming emotions have been a problem for me because unluckily, anger is not the only emotion that threatens to overwhelm me. The gray haze that is at the side of my eyes tells me if i slip into the thrall of sadness, i'd kill myself.
The carriage is suddenly too small for me and i get up on my feet and jump out.
I haven't really had anything like an attack for the past six and a half years and to the best of my knowledge it is because of one person. One person who won't talk to me even if i am at the point of death and i feel that urge come again. The urge to simply grab him and slam him to the side of the carriage all the while asking why?.
Why the heck am i feeling like this?.
His question from earlier comes back to me now and i also have to wonder, why do i care so much about that fact now?.
A face pops up in my head and i smile at that. That's right. At the castle i had Matilda, and before Matilda there was Aelin, and before her there were a bunch of other relationships. A good bunch of them at that. Father understands that we have tendencies so he gives us sort of a free reign with what we do, as long as none of it is lacking consent and as long as it lacks force or compulsion of any kind. Plus i think we have enough sense to do better than what most of the other males our age from the other royal houses are doing. There is also the clause of not getting anyone pregnant but aside that we can have relationships with the noble born ladies, but is it really because i am not at the castle that this sudden care as to why we aren't on talking terms has spring up?.
Something tells me i know why all this is happening, i know the main reason all this is happening and i shake my head at that. That's impossible.
I search for him and i can see him talking to the Assassin.