All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [309]
Had she come here to chew him out again for claiming the Infernal land and saving Jezebel? Was she going to play the “older” sister and give him advice and order him around?
Or was it something else?
There was a look on her face: one you might give some mentally ill person walking repeatedly into a corner, or the piteous glance you might give a homeless person huddled in a cardboard box.
Which, in Eliot’s near future, might not be too far from the truth.
She asked, “What do you think you’re doing, Rheinardia ocellata?”74
Eliot ran fingers through his unruly hair. He hadn’t had time to get it cut all year and it was one long mess.
He had more important things, though, to occupy his thoughts than his hair or devising a return shot in for vocabulary insult like fescennine absquatulative physagogue.
“I’m packing,” he told her.
“I can see that.” Fiona set her hands on her hips. “Look, forget whatever you’re doing. We need to talk about what Sobek said: that parting of the ways thing. It has to be a metaphor.”
“No,” Eliot replied. “It means that you and I are going in different directions.”
“I know that,” she said. “Like your music and my combat training.” She shook her head, dismissing any other notion. “You need to get dressed, because we’re scheduled to see the League Council this evening. They’re going to help us figure it out.”
The skin at the base of Eliot’s spine crawled. The thought of him standing in front of all the Elder Immortals, explaining that he was an Infernal, was the last place in the world he wanted to be.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ve already got my part figured out.”
It hurt him to say those words because he knew he couldn’t take them back, that what he was doing now would be irrevocable.
Fiona scrutinized him, and then moved over to his bed, cataloging all the equipment. “You’re going back, aren’t you?” Her voice dripped with contempt. “To Hell—and those Burning Orchards?”
Eliot kept his voice level. “I have to.”
“I bet you do,” Fiona said with a sneer. “You and Jezebel together all summer long? I’m going to get sick just thinking about it.”
“You’ve got it wrong. I’m going, but Jezebel is staying at the Paxington dormitory. She has to make up the classes she missed or she won’t be coming back next year.”
Fiona stared at him, her mouth open, not understanding.
Eliot wasn’t sure he could explain it—but he tried. “She and I talked about it. She wants to learn more . . . and I’m not going to hold her back.”
Eliot tactfully skipped the part of the phone conversation he’d just had with Jezebel twenty minutes ago where she had spelled it out for him: she was basically his slave—bonded to land he now owned, and that Eliot could’ve ordered her to come back with him . . . and be with him.
That had kind of soured the entire heroic fantasy he had had about him and her. After all he’d been through to save her—he didn’t even know if she really liked him . . . for him.
Someone like Jeremy would have been okay with that, but Eliot needed someone by this side (raw animal sexual attraction, notwithstanding) because they wanted to be there—not because they were forced there by some magical bond.
Eliot would figure what to do with his sort-of girlfriend, but later, after he solved a much bigger problem.
“So, why are you going back?” Fiona asked. “Are you going to give that land to Dad?”
“You don’t understand,” Eliot told her, exasperation creeping into his voice. “I can’t give it up.” He forced what he’d been feeling since he’d taken possession of his domain in Hell into words: “That land is bound to me. It’s part of me. If someone takes it, they take me . . . my soul, too.”
Fiona’s blinked, absorbing what he said, and then her hands clenched into fists. “Then we have to do something. There