Chapter 797: Samira’s Secret (Part Two)
"Even, even if you aren’t afraid of Lord Owain," Samira said firmly when Ollie seemed to pause in thought. "I still can’t go with you. You can take whatever it is you want from my chambers," she offered. After all, she had been planning to abandon nearly everything when she left anyway and none of it truly belonged to her. If he wanted any of it, he was welcome to it as long as she and Noomi could escape.
"I’ll go hide in the dungeons beneath the villa," she said as she turned to leave. "Just, leave behind some food in the kitchens and I’ll come for it after you’re gone."
"Lady Samira, ye can’a do that!" Otis insisted, shocked that she would even contemplate something so dangerous instead of taking Ollie’s offer to help them escape to the village he’d mentioned. "The demons will kill ye if they find ye! They’ll cook ye in one of their great pots or those giants’ll gobble ye up whole, or..."
"No they won’t!" Samira shouted as a hot surge of anger bubbled up from her chest at the way Otis was repeating the same cruel lies about the Eldritch that she’d once believed herself. "They won’t! They’ll leave me alone, or maybe, maybe, maybe..." Samira said, repeating the last word several times as two thoughts collided in her mind.
How many times had she talked to Noomi about the day Owain had attacked the Heartwood Clan’s village? How many times had Noomi cursed fate that the ’red-haired human’ hadn’t come earlier to convince her villagers to flee... early enough that she wouldn’t have been too heavy with child to flee to the Vale of Mists.
The strange red haired human who told stories about how fierce Owain and his knights were. Who knew the kind of destruction that Owain was capable of and that he wouldn’t give up on hunting for ’demons’ until he’d spilled enough Eldritch blood to wash away the shame of what Lady Ashlynn had done at the Summer Villa.
"It’s you," Samira said as she stared at Ollie in disbelief. "You’re the one who warned Noomi’s village about Lord Owain’s attack. You, you’re the one who convinced the Heartwood Clan to flee to the Vale of Mists. You, you aren’t afraid of the ’demons’ because... because you’ve already joined the Eldritch," she said with increasing certainty.
"That’s why you can get us out safely," she said. "Because the Eldritch people attacking us aren’t your enemies, they’re your allies."
The more she spoke, the more confident she sounded and the more Otis felt like his stomach had fallen through a hole in the floor. But when he looked at the young man he thought he knew very well, hoping to see hot anger and denial on his face, he instead found a strange sort of smile.