Chapter 13: A Plea in the Night
“Boras, wait,” I said as he shoved me into the royal chambers. “Please. Stop for a second. Can you do that much?”
“You shouldn’t be here and I want no more part in this travesty than I have to have.” He was already pulling the door shut behind him, leaving me to my fate.
“That’s why you need to hear me out,” I said, grabbing the door and preventing it from closing. He could have easily torn it loose, but he didn’t. I took that as a halfway decent sign. “I know I shouldn’t be here. But I swear I’m not here to make things worse. I just don’t know what to do to make them better.”
“Give him whatever he wants.” Like a lot of things Boras said to me, it came out gruff and dismissive, like I was an idiot for not falling in line sooner.
“And if I can’t?”
“Don’t you mean won’t?”
“You know what? Forget about it. Where’s Arthos? I want to talk to him.” Invoking the name of Keel’s personal advisor wasn’t winning me any points, but this conversation was going nowhere. Boras hated me too much, hated this situation too much and, as a result, all our attempts at non-antagonistic communication were circuitous and infuriating.
“I can’t help you.”
“Don’t you mean won’t?” It was super childish to throw his own line back at him but I didn’t care. I may have had to put up with Keel’s shit, but I didn’t have to put up with his, at least not until His Majesty added “respecting Boras” to his ever-growing list of demands.
“Can’t. Our king has him corralled with the rest of the traitors.”
“What?!” The news threw me so off-balance I reached out and grabbed the sleeve of Boras’ Nosferatu-issue military fatigues without thinking. There was no way he was going to divulge that and then leave with no further explanation. He shook off my hand and then brushed the fabric of his shirt with his own as if I’d left filth on it.
“Your arrival didn’t make the right impression, and he holds him accountable.”
“But that wasn’t Arthos’ fault.” While I hadn’t exactly been on Team Arthos the last few days, finding out he was yet another person forced to bear the brunt of Keel’s anger at me punched like a fist to the gut. This time, I reached out to the wall for extra support.
“Good luck convincing His Majesty of that. Arthos had one job to do in regards to your retrieval and intake, and he failed.”
“No, I failed,” I argued. Keel was punishing Arthos because I didn’t follow his instructions? Didn’t he see doing that was ridiculous? How could he fail to understand losing Arthos meant losing the most valuable asset he had? These questions roiled in my brain as turbulent as an ocean in a hurricane, along with one that bashed around harder than the rest: How do I fix this?
“Can you try to talk to him?” I pleaded. “Try to make him see reason?” Of course, I had an ulterior motive too; without Arthos, I was all out of allies in the compound.
Boras gave me a disgusted look. “I don’t take orders from you, or any sorcerer.”
“It wasn’t an order, and it isn’t even about me. If you care about Keel’s reign, you need to do this. For him.”
Boras huffed. “Have you ever considered that perhaps things are running smoother without Arthos and his progressive ideas?” The way his mouth curled around “progressive,” it sounded as if the word had a sour, putrid taste.
“But the world is changing, and fast,” I said, switching tactics, making this less about Keel and me and more about the Nosferatu enclave. If I couldn’t appeal to his missing sense of decency, how about his survival instinct? “That means at some point your precious Nosferatu society will have to change too. Or would you prefer to become relics, living so apart from humanity and-” I thought about Keel’s secret surveillance room “-21st-century technologies that sooner or later some of you will go topside and the blending in just won’t work anymore. If you continue on as you are, as you have been, pretending it’s still the industrial age and not the digital one, humans are going to find out about you. That’s why you guys need Arthos, he realizes this, and he can help you avoid bringing Extinction Day right to your front door.”
“Extinction Day” was a heady phrase to throw into the mix, but if anything were to get through to Boras it was that. All supernaturals’ biggest fear. However, he just laughed, though it didn’t boast his usual unwavering confidence. Something I’d said had made him think, and I was willing to bet he’d keep thinking about whatever it was after he left here too. And maybe it would inspire him to do something, maybe he’d even confront Keel.
It was out of my hands as soon as he closed the door on me. All I could do now was hope. So I tried to forget just how low on hope I was running.