Page 37 of The Heart of Nym (The Twisted Roots Duology #1)
He was contemplative, watching her for a reaction before he spoke again. “What keeps you from killing the king?” Aziel finally broke the silent tension between them, his eyes moving over her face as she fell deep into her thoughts.
Nymiria lifted one shoulder, taking another sip of her wine in a desperate attempt to prolong her confession.
But she wanted to. He could tell. She wanted to tell him everything about her past, if only to no longer be the only person who carried the weight of it.
“I have made some very bad decisions. There were a lot of Mystics who once depended on me and I let them down. So, perhaps it is fear. And guilt. ”
“Guilt?”
She nodded before downing the rest of her drink.
Aziel tracked her movements as she placed the glass back onto the table, her fingers lingering on the stem before she withdrew her hand and let it fall to her lap.
"I thought I was doing the right thing when I got hundreds of Mystics captured.
It wasn't the right thing. It ended in tragedy.
And while my heart tells me that Dorid deserves to be put to death, my head is always at war with it.
The two don't agree with one another very often.” She shook her head at herself, at those shameful words coming from her own mouth.
She hated Dorid, but there was always something that stopped her from finishing the kill.
Feeling nothing would be better. If there was no fear of what her actions might do to her heart, she could have already usurped him and freed every last Mystic on the continent.
She could have reclaimed her throne. But, just as it had gone with Oran, the moment Dorid looked at her like she was something to admire, all of her plans went flying out the window.
"Before I was taken from the Beyond, I was someone very important." She whispered, eyes glazing as images of her wearing her mother's crown flickered through her mind. She winced.
"The Princess of Nym." Aziel sighed. When Nymiria's eyes shot up to meet his, he offered a small smile and hoped it was enough to offer her some semblance of comfort.
"My mother was born in the kingdom, as well.
When it was called Inasha. Just as tradition would have it, you and your mother were named after the era of the kingdom you were born into.
If you became queen and had a daughter, it would continue.
She would take the new name of the kingdom. "
Nymiria didn't know if she should be impressed that he had said nothing all this time or if she should be enraged. Either way, one thing was for certain, she wanted someone to understand. "I have spent my whole life hurting people, Aziel. Even the things I did before going to Yaar…"
When her words came to a halt, she swallowed.
Her stomach soured just thinking of all that had happened.
Of everything she'd failed to do to keep her people safe. “After each kill, after each death, I sit back and I wonder if my people would accept me if they knew what I’d done. How can I face them—after all of the pain I caused, after all…” her voice trailed off, following her thoughts down that path that she hated taking.
She ran her finger over the rim of her glass, frowning down at its contents.
“I just wanted to be remembered for something great. I figured that dismantling the kingdom from the inside out would right my wrongs, but I’m beginning to wonder if the cost is worth all of this pain.
I wish I could have no remorse, no second thoughts.
It is torturous to live inside of a mind that is constantly at war between two ways of thinking.
” She continued. “One moment, I can go from feeling pride in what I’ve achieved and the next, I feel as if I am the worst being on this planet and that I deserve nothing.
Killing someone weighs heavy on the soul, especially when you wonder if the person truly deserved it. ”
Aziel released a solemn sigh, arms folding over his chest. “I believe that you and I aren’t very much different in that respect.” He reached across the table, finally caving in to the bottle that had been taunting him this entire time. “May I offer you some insight?”
She nodded.
He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank before he spoke.
“For the last few months, the people that you have killed have been ones that I have sent to be placed on Dorid’s desk for dispatch.
” His eyes gleamed. “Seeing that I, myself, am conspiring against the kingdom, do you really believe that I would put sympathizers on that list? You have not been killing good men, love.” Nymiria only stared at him with a look of shock on her face, lips parting and her eyes growing wider the more the realization set in.
“They were all of Dorid’s most trusted—people that he had close connections with and that owned various plots of land in the Beyond. ”
Nymiria recounted each death, each man of nobility and aristo that she’d been ordered to kill.
She’d sat in on their meetings with Dorid, she’d heard all of them discussing their plans to bring ruin to the Beyond, once and for all.
The plan was to burn it and build something bigger, better, and profitable on those lands.
Mining jewels and precious metals that would aid them in achieving the ultimate goal—more trade and more riches.
Majority of Gaellagh’s most revered leaders were in attendance at those meetings and the majority of them agreed with Dorid’s plans.
Nymiria had already killed twelve of the twenty men that sat on that council.
The only one that didn’t make sense was Brandt, The Duke of Fairnam. Aziel must have heard the thought as it popped into her head because his gaze appeared to have darkened on cue.
“Brandt Corvick was a sick man who raped and abused Mystic women of various races for his own pleasure. He ran a ring in Fairnam where the men traded Mystics with one another.” Aziel nearly hissed, his jaw clenching around each word.
“I would usually see Mimicry as an act that goes against our nature, but Brandt deserved that death. The deaths that Mimic’s deliver to their victims are not quick, nor are they painless.
And I am glad that I was the one who could destroy what remained of his useless, greasy little body. ”
Knowing that Brandt’s attempts at flattery with her were to potentially have her as another conquest made her stomach hurt.
It made her thankful that he was dead and that the body the Mimic used to deliver her a very similar fate, was destroyed.
Brandt would never walk this earth again. It was one less man to fear.
“How did you know that they would be drawn up for dispatch?” Nymiria asked.
Aziel smirked as a partial response. “Philter made sure that all of my lists were placed directly to the top of Dorid’s weekly correspondences—strategically on top of letters from those very same regions in order to insight the feeling of betrayal.”
“Philter, that dirty dog.” Nymiria sighed, some tension easing from her shoulders. It wasn’t that she never would have suspected it. After seeing how remorseful he had been when inadvertently admitting to having attempted to kill Aziel, it was not much of a surprise. “He tried to kill you.”
He nodded. “Once. When I was ten.”
“Ten?” She exclaimed. “Why would someone do something like that to a ten year old boy—and to his own son?”
The question came out as a whisper, but Aziel still heard.
He looked away from her, the question burning through him just as fiercely as it had all those years ago.
There were many questions that lingered in the depths of his mind, only to resurface again on his darkest days.
Dorid never accepted him as his son. He saw Aziel as a weapon—something you could discard if it did not suit its purpose any longer.
Every elder had told him that the gods would repay him for the pain he’d faced in his youth, but he hadn’t received an ounce of those debts yet.
“I once held on to the idea that my greatest revenge was to grow up and become a father that loved his children so fiercely that nothing in the world could keep him from protecting them. I believed that having the courage to love anything would be enough to drown out everything he’d taught me and kill it off once and for all.
” His confession wasn’t intentional. But Nymiria was looking at him in a way that made him feel like he was something good, like he was someone worth listening to.
When her eyes met his again, he could feel the heaviness of her gaze—weighted by the thousands of unsaid things that were flickering through her mind.
He wanted to hear all of them. Good or bad, he wanted to know all of her secrets.
Everything that made her who she was, the thoughts that filled her mind when she couldn’t sleep.
He wanted to know what the taste of his lips reminded her of, and why she looked like she was going to cry right now.
He wanted to hate her, but Aziel was not good at that.
“Why do you look so sad?” He asked.
Nymiria’s mouth parted, a half-smile forming at her mouth just briefly before it fell flat again. She shook her head. “Do you still want all of those things? Love and children?”
Aziel’s heart gave a harsh, stomach-twisting tug as he looked at her. He did want those things. He would never stop wanting those things. “I can’t have children.” He confessed, immediately sensing the swell of her rage.
It was not something he wished to further discuss—the wound was still raw and one that would likely never fully heal. Nymiria seemed to have noticed this, perhaps by the way he took another long drink from their shared bottle. Or, partially, in the way he went rigid when he realized what he’d said.