Blood of the Underworld(120)

“Him?” Alyssa frowned. “What do you mean?”

He looked feverish, yet when she touched his face, he was bathed in a cold sweat.

“Every time I dream, I see him laughing,” he said. “Veldaren’s burning, and he laughs.”

Alyssa kissed his forehead, then gently pushed him onto his back. Tucking him in, she tried to hide any of her own fears. He’d had night terrors before, particularly after he’d lost his arm, and it’d taken over a year for them to go away. Yet this seemed different. He’d never really been aware of what frightened him back then, why he’d awaken screaming...

“How long have you had these dreams?” she asked, trying to sound more tired than worried.

“Ever since grandmother showed me the chrysarium.”

Alyssa forced herself not to frown. Chrysarium? What in Karak’s name was a chrysarium? It sounded like something a wizard might conjure up. That her mother had exposed him to it without checking with her first immediately made her angry.

“Honey, what did grandmother show you?”

He shrank into the bed, scratched harder at the stump of his arm.

“She made me promise not to tell.”

“You can tell me. You know that. You can always tell me everything.”

She reached down and grabbed his hand to stop the picking.

“Tell me,” she said, letting a little of her earnestness come through.

“I saw visions,” he said. “Grandmother said they were from the gods, and it meant I was special. But I don’t want them, they’re horrible, and they won’t let me sleep!”

Alyssa swallowed, and a hundred things she might scream at Melody ran through her mind.

“Listen to me, Nathan,” she said. “They’re just visions. They can’t hurt you, and they don’t mean anything. I want you to lie here, and try to relax. You don’t have to sleep if you don’t want to. I’m going to talk to Melody and find out what happened. If she did something, maybe she can fix this.”

“But she’ll be asleep.”

A dry smile stretched across Alyssa’s lips.

“Then I’ll wake her.”

She kissed his cheek, then stood. When she reached his door, she stopped, for she heard shuffling on the other side. For some reason her heart froze, and she remained perfectly still as the sound slowly faded away. Peering through a crack, she saw a young woman with dark brown hair heading down the hall. Alyssa frowned. She didn’t look like a servant, nor dress like one, yet Alyssa could not place her despite their time in the mansion.

“Nathan,” she whispered, turning back to her son. “When I step out, I want you to lock the door, all right? No questions, and don’t open it for anyone but me, you understand?”

With that she entered the hall, and then waited until she heard the rattle of his lock. Satisfied, she hurried the opposite direction as the unknown woman, and came upon Stephen’s room, the door slightly ajar. Was the woman a prostitute, perhaps? Not that she cared to judge Stephen’s actions, but it seemed odd the guards would not escort her...

And then it hit her, the obvious fear that had gnawed at the back of her mind. The guards. There should have been guards stationed all around the home, at her door, Nathaniel’s, and especially Stephen’s. But there were none. A chill spread through her veins. Why were there no guards?

Her instincts were to run to her son, but his door was locked, and she’d checked it the first night he’d stayed in there alone. It’d take a solid beating by grown men to break the bolt. Swallowing the instinct down, she instead slipped into Stephen’s room. Always before it was locked, and guarded. She’d assumed it well-founded paranoia of assassins. Now, though...

Inside she found a room similar to her own, well furnished and with an enormous bed in the center, its lavender bed curtains pulled back. Moonlight streamed in through three windows, faintly illuminating the room in a soft blue. The bed itself was empty. In the far corner she saw a door, also open. Yellow light shone from within, flickering off an unseen candle. Curious, she walked toward the door, glad her feet were bare. On the thick carpet, she made hardly a sound with her passing. Stopping just before the entrance, she drew a deep breath, and prayed it was all nothing, all a strange misunderstanding. There’d be nothing within but clothes, finery, maybe some old armor...

Alyssa stepped inside.

Three candles in a golden candelabra rest atop a small stool. On either side of her, covering the walls of what appeared to be an extraordinarily large closet, were portraits of Leon Connington, drawn in various styles and skills. She recognized them well, for they’d once decorated the walls upon her last visits, before Leon had been killed by the Watcher. She remembered Zusa remarking upon their absence, and the implied dislike the son might have carried for the father. But there in that room, she knew it was the reverse, a clandestine revering of the man whose eyes glowered down from all corners.