Chapter 16

“You should have waited until the morning to come here. It’s late and you’re tired—I can hear it in your voice.” Rouen took the basket from Daelia’s hands.
“I know, but I haven’t been able to bring food for several days and the cook’s back was turned as I left the kitchen tonight,” she took hold of his free hand and, in it, placed a clumsy sack, “Here’s also a little wood, though hardly more than sticks.”
“Stealing food from Master to feed a blind renegade…” he let his voice trail off teasingly, but the gratitude was evident.
“I suppose I’m becoming quite the renegade myself then.” Wearily, Daelia sank onto a hard bench.
Rouen’s face turned suddenly sober at her words, the light mood of the moment before disappearing. His look remaining troubled as he sat down on the low bed that sat against the wall, near the fireplace. The tiny fire that burned inside was pitiful and barely cast a flicker of light across the dark chapel and added little in terms of warmth.
After throwing onto the small blaze one of the pieces of wood that Daelia had just brought he sat quietly for several moments, picking moodily at the knotted cloth that held the food.
“What is it? What did I say?”
Silence.
“Well?”
Rouen sighed, long and slowly, “He’ll appear one day, you know, to find my body.”
Daelia blinked once. Twice. Did I miss something? I know I’m tired, but surely I didn’t just hear…
“What are you speaking of?”
“When he finds me very much alive…he’ll discover what you have done for me, and then we will both find our lives coming to a very swift and painful end.”
”Who wishes you dead?”
“Eliam.”
Again she paused, still not understanding, “Why would Lord Vitalis come looking for your dead body?”
“Because he’s trying to kill me.” He said it as a statement of fact.
“I don’t understand, Rouen. What reason could there possibly be for him to kill you?”
He continued as though he hadn’t heard the question, “I suspected it as soon Serina ceased bringing the food, but now I am certain of it.”
Without apparent reason, a violent growl tore from his throat, startling Daelia with its ferocity as he suddenly pushed away from the bed and began to pace back and forth across one side of the chapel.
“I cannot stay here any longer Daelia, do you understand?” He pulled at his hair in frustration as he stalked to the far end of the room. “I must leave this place! He will never have the courage to kill me himself, to plunge the knife with his own hand, but he will see me dead rather than risk losing everything!” The door shuddered as it met with a remarkably well-aimed boot.
“And now I have endangered your life as well. This was my own curse, my own hell, my punishment, not yours! I should never have allowed to you involve yourself!” He picked up one of the wooden pews and hurled it blindly through the air where it met the stone wall and sent fragments of wood skittering across the floor.
The unexpected violence displayed by the usually calm and collected blind man not only shocked Daelia but scared her as well, making her a angry that she still did not understand Rouen’s fear or his sudden loss of temper.
In the few late night conversations they’d had, she had learned a good deal about his personality and his favorite subjects: the history of Parsaena and the political ideals of its founding fathers. He’d spoken of these topics with such passion that Daelia found his excitement affecting. Into the early hours of the morning they had discussed history and politics, philosophy and religion, but nothing of their families or their past—everything and nothing. Suspecting that whatever kept him from revealing too much about his past was the same as hers, she had tread carefully. Some pain was still too near, some stories too long, and some disappointments too overwhelming.
The situation being what it was, however, at that moment sensitivity was not a primary concern. “Rouen, quiet yourself!” As he ranted loudly and angrily at no one, Daelia’s command cut through the din, and the flood of words broke of mid-curse.
“Now, you will explain to me what has sent you into such a passion right now, and no more of your nonsense! By the heavens! One would think I was looking at an ill-behaved child instead of a grown man,” she admonished.
One of the fallen tapestries, long-forgotten on the stone floor, received a brutal kick which sent up a cloud of dust, but he seemed to have gotten control of himself, “Eliam wants me dead because if my presence would become known, he would lose his position as Lord of Caerlock; and believe you me, murder is not beneath him.”
“What kind of threat could you possibly pose to Eliam Vitalis’ position? Who are you to him?”

She hadn’t meant it disparagingly, but the honest question seemed to provoke something in the young blind man.
As Rouen turned in the dim firelight to face her, he drew himself up to his full height and squared his shoulders.
“I am Ayrasen Rouen Vitalis. Eliam’s older brother, rightful Lord of Caerlock.”