In Cardonea Tower, at the very moment Maanta burst into the skies above, Illala hovered in the waters of her room. She stared out her window at the fresh molten streams illuminating the darkness beneath the tower walls. The waters tasted bitter on her palate. Where is Evanshade? The thought rushed over her as a slim, white fish swam before her. Has he gone to attack my people? He’s been away all day. Not that she really wanted to see him after witnessing him beat the deformed man in the cell below her. But knowing he’d been away so long had her worried about what he was up to.
I don’t know how to feel for him. When he’s with me I grow toward loving him. I long to spend more time together. He’s sweet and loving and kind. But when I start to give in to love I think of how he helped his people kill my family and led them to slaughter my people. How could I ever love such a dark-souled man?
When he gave her the option to leave, she realized, she should have left. How could this ever work? He seemed to regret what his people had done, and yet was too much of a coward to fight against his people and work to restore the Meridians to their realm.
A haunting moan reverberated through the floor below. Odyssey’s moan, Illala realized. The night’s darkness was consuming her and the scarred face of the imprisoned man hovered, an illusion in her thoughts. I can’t stay here with a man who lets things like the torturing of Odyssey happen around him. She dove swiftly toward the floor, toward the shale brick that the man had removed before speaking with her. I have to speak with Odyssey before I can leave, try to discover a way of rescuing him. Her nails grabbed at the shale brick’s grooves, prying it loose once more from the flooring.
A sharp grinding noise shrieked in the silence as her fingertips clenched the raised stone in their grasp, almost lifting it completely from its hole. It was heavy but she could lift it. Odyssey’s moans seemed closer now. “Help me with the brick!” she attempted to call to him below as the man’s moaning ceased. But nothing happened. There was no attempt to push it upward from below. Was he so restrained now that he could not reach the port of their communication?
With her muscles flexed and body strained, Illala slid the shale brick up from its setting, only to watch it float back down quickly into place as she involuntarily flinched. A nausea and pain suddenly swarmed in her stomach. The brick’s sides roughly rubbed against her fingertips while slipping away. She curled in the fetal position while massaging her sides in an attempt to relieve the discomfort. What’s making me feel like this? She wondered. Has someone poisoned my food?
As the pain subsided another possibility played in her thoughts. “Could it be?” she gasped softly. “There’s one way of knowing for sure.” Her whisper seemed to hover in the silence and an anxious dread buried within her.
Her fingertips found an intricate stone case in a corner of the room and fumbled to open the shell within its hold. As the shell cracked and split, yellow ooze within seemed to stick to the darkness about it, giving the shell a mystic essence.
While closing her eyes she clasped the shell in her right hand, gliding it along her lower region. As Illala’s eyes opened, orange ooze replaced where yellow once was.
Happiness and horror embraced in that moment, as tears of joy and sadness streamed forth from her eyes.
There would be no leaving Evanshade.
I am pregnant with his child, Illala’s thoughts trailed into silent night.