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“I really don’t care about your goals as much as your methods,” Alessio said. “people’s lives matter more than your petty philosophies.”

 

“Ha, you and me both, Old Snake. And since you’re Alessio’s tutor, I’d imagine he’d be so happy to see you again.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice, and he added with a somewhat triumphant voice. “It’s unfortunate really. Truly unfortunate that I don’t trust you. Since you’re an advisor for a royal family, you must have some idea where he went off to.

“I mean, surely you can’t get a high position like that without being involved in some kind of corruption. A kind of corruption that would involve removing Alessio from the center stage, am I right?”

Oh, but that was the tragic part. He’d been hired to do the exact opposite.

Normally, Nathair was so calm, but Arsene had finally touched a nerve. He’d worked so hard to just survive, but it was never enough. And no one believed any good could come from a born liar.

Nathair smiled chillingly, murderously, taking a step closer to Arsene.

“You think you have it all figured out, don’t you?” The nails in his fingers itched like claws. He fiddled with the dice in his pockets, soothingly, still hanging by a thread to his own self-control. He laughed softly. “You…want to know exactly what sort of ‘corruption’ I was in? My job was to keep Alessio alive and well”

It was madness – a slow debilitating madness. His role, his training, all to be a weapon not a person. But that was not where he would let it end, someone had to set those sons of ghouls ablaze. His body was beginning to shift, just a little, face a little unnatural like a doll.

“Ask me why, why I became a corrupt royal advisor to an insane war-devil and a pampered little paramour queen with more lovers than friends,” Nathair said in almost a cracked whisper. “go on, ask me.”

    You think I had a choice who I became…?

Before Arsene had a chance to answer, Nathair grabbed his shoulder and shoved him into a wall. His power hissed to life almost involuntarily pressing into Arsene’s mind sensations of paralyzing, clutching terror from his own childhood memories.

“I wasn’t there for my own gain,” – Arsene’s skin became shifting but his ability froze as Nathair glared at him, blocking even the memory of how to tap into his powers. “Do you know what people do to us? People with powers?”

Nathair leaned so close Arsene’s breath was on his neck as he whispered into his ear.

“Have you ever been experimented on, and told to be grateful to be left alive?” He said “Do you know what they’ll do to Alessio once they find him again – and they will find him, if I don’t reach him first.

“I was not hired to get a bastard-child prince off a throne that would never be his if the kingdom followed its natural order.” He hissed “If he lives to take the throne, he will be the first ability-born to have any royal ties since the Great Wars – he would be a symbol of a new age that is coming whether we like it or not.”

    If this was my plan the whole world would be burning.

Nathair pressed his power even further – blocking the memory of his face and his name from Arsene’s recollection. He’d remember everything Nathair said – he made sure of that – but he’d forget the man himself. He wanted Arsene to understand this much at least.

“Every cult, every guild, every insurrection in Casumbra would kill to get their hands on an ability-born in his position or get him out of the way –“ He said softly “if you want to know where the boy disappeared to, ask him. Think what you like of my motives, but I will keep him safe and get him on that throne.

With your help –“ He dug his nails into Arsene’s arm, forcing a sharp prickling under his skin crawling with pain from experiences he absorbed that he could project at will. “or without it.”

Then the world went black.

And both of them woke up because I don’t want to write a murder. XDD