Chapter 294: Insolence
For several minutes, Ignatious didn’t know what to say in response to Nyrielle’s question. His Mistress didn’t press him either. Instead, she retrieved a bottle of wine from the table nearby and poured a goblet of the crisp, sweet white wine that was favored by High Lord Hamdi favored to wash the taste of blood from his mouth.
The wine tickled her nose with notes of fresh fruit and hints of oak that made her wonder if she should raid Hamdi’s cellars for a few bottles to share with Ashlynn when they reunited. The thought of Ashlynn’s giggling and slightly confused drunkenness, when they met with High Lady Erna, put a smile on the vampire’s lips that would have brightened the room if it weren’t so at odds with the rest of the woman wearing it.
The lingering scent of the late Commander Skool’s blood still clung to her, and her features combined with her wings to turn even the gentlest of smiles at least somewhat predatory.
Ignatious, however, was oblivious to his maker’s musings as he sank into introspective contemplation. He hadn’t thought of himself as human since the days when Hamdi repeatedly reduced him to savagery, and for many years, he’d thought of himself as less than human. Perhaps, lower even than the beasts that roamed the Tangled Wood.
Only after years of piecing himself back together had he rebuilt his nearly shattered faith and with it, a semblance of the man he had once been. It was impossible to miss the pieces of himself that were still missing, lost forever to the inexorable millstone of time, but if he had them back... who would he be? The man he had been was dead and lost forever. The man he’d become shared much in common with the Ignatious of old but he lacked the pride, the arrogance, the blind faith... and the passion that drove him to be one of the most outstanding Inquisitors of his generation.
If Nyrielle reignited those flames, he was certain that he wouldn’t return to the man he once was, but her second question stopped him from immediately accepting her offer. That moment of bitterness and jealousy when he saw her contentment. The pain he felt at her joy. Those feelings lurked within his heart like embers in the hearth. If she came to fan the flames of those embers, could he really retain his rationality and the acceptance he’d found in his existence as one of her progeny?
"Mistress Nyrielle," the fallen Inquisitor said after more than ten minutes of silence. "The gift you offer is a priceless treasure but, even if I was confident in retaining my current disposition, I couldn’t accept it," he said, standing up from his chair before dropping to one knee at her feet.
"Mistress, I have done nothing in all these years to be worthy of the gift you offered. I have not fought your enemies, tended to your subjects, provided you with council, or done any of the other things a person like me should have been capable of doing for you," he said in a voice that had lost it’s dark, smokey timbre and gained instead the rough edge of bitter regret.
"So you reject my offer because you think yourself unworthy?" Nyrielle said, raising an eyebrow at the kneeling vampire and setting her empty goblet down on the table. "It is for me to judge who is worthy and who isn’t. What makes you think that you can reject a gift I’ve deemed you worthy of receiving?"
"Mistress, it is because I have given you nothing that I believe I cannot receive your gift without returning to the ’raving beast’ who once destroyed an entire tower of your ancient fortress," he said. As much as he wanted to raise his head, to see the way she was looking at him, the weight of shame pressed down upon him, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the faded rug beneath their feet.
"In time, it would please me greatly to accept the gift you offer," he said. "But before that, please, let me serve at your side as one of your progeny should. Let me build a foundation of loyal service so that when you rekindle my heart’s ability to burn with passion, it can burn for passion for the woman who has allowed me to be reborn."