Neliem by Clare Di Liscia

Author:Clare Di Liscia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy, epic fantasy, war, hero
Publisher: Month9Books
Published: 2019-05-21T07:00:00+00:00

Enduring the meal is like crawling through an unending pit in hell on my stomach as razorblades slash my gut. Part of you, the part not bleeding to death, knows that this pain will eventually subside. The other part has stopped caring.

I glance longingly at the steak knife at my side, the only means of escape. I count which veins will bleed out fastest and most painlessly and which ones that will cause me more suffering, prolonging the agony.

I opt for slow and torturous.

The food seems tasteless, but I force every mouthful and every swallow, counting each bite as a tally. Another survival mechanism; eating means surviving and having the strength to run another day. Ezra, at my side, is especially quiet, his gaze never far from me.

When he sees me stabbing my potato into small pieces, he whispers, “We can leave now.”

He glances toward the door, giving me an out. A way to escape and cower down to these people that would like nothing more than to see me run with my tail between my legs.

From across the massive table, Cassia smirks.

I straighten my back. “It’s fine. I wasn’t feeling well before.”

Henric eyes me coolly, murmuring to an uncle beside him, and something in me snaps.

“I think perhaps I need some special tea.” Without skipping a beat, I continue, “Dear cousin Henric promised to take me to a teashop he especially loves to frequent.”

The right side of the table grows deadly silent. His grandmother, Aunt Leraias, is the first to break the suffocating silence with a raise of her teacup. “Since when do you like tea, Henric?”

Henric wipes his mouth, for the second time in his life, at a loss for words. “It’s nothing, grandmama. Right now, I assure you that I have absolutely no taste for tea.”

Her smile tightens, her gaze dissecting me as if I were a flea. “A passing fancy then.”

Under the table, Ezra tugs at my sleeve and hisses, “I told you to drop it.”

I swallow a dry crumb of biscuit and choke. “I’m sorry.”

But I don’t mean it, and he’s smart enough to know it.

“We’ll discuss it later.” He gives me that look again, somewhere between a storm and a rainbow.

The bell in the kitchen finally clangs, signaling the end of the meal and the commencement of yet another tedious activity. The ladies are obsessed with card games. Wasting the better part of the day engaged in such stupidity will never cease to amaze me.

My spirits don’t lift when a plump maid announces that dessert will be served in the parlor salon. I can’t get up fast enough, the urge to race down the marble foyer toward freedom bursting out of my lungs.

Instead, with Ezra glued to my side, we retire to the salon for hot drinks and tiny colorful cookies for dessert. I find myself seated in a small wicker chair at the center of the great room. Everyone surrounds me from all sides, the exits blocked. And the only accessible window is closed shut with a heavy latch that would take me the better part of an hour to pry.

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