Chapter 86: When Tremors Speak
Eirin managed another polite ’thank you’ to the Duchess, the words feeling stiff on her tongue, before she stepped back into the confines of the ducal carriage. The rich velvet lining and polished wood felt oppressive, far too small to contain the whirlwind of thoughts still raging in her mind.
Could she truly believe what she’d just heard? The Duchess’s words, so casually dropped, still echoed with an almost unbelievable clarity.
The rhythmic clatter of the horses’ hooves against the cobbled drive was the only sound breaking the heavy silence inside the carriage. Sitting in front of her, Shade was awfully quiet. He usually had a biting remark, a sarcastic remark, or at least a restless fidget.
Now, he was small, still bundle, his fever-flushed cheek pressed against the window, gazing out at the blur of trees. His unusual stillness made Eirin’s own throat clench, and any urge to speak to him evaporated.
’I don’t want this,’ she thought. ’What if he gets angry if I talk to him? What if this new, unexpected information about him is something he’d rather keep hidden, and my questions just provoke him further?’
Eirin knew all too well how temperamental Shade could be, how easily his sharp tongue could last out. The last thing she needed on this critical, time-sensitive mission was to reignite their constant bickering, especially now, with so much at stake.
The very air around him seemed to ripple with a suppressed energy, a coiled tension that even his fever couldn’t completely dampen.
Seeing how quiet the young man was made Eirin wonder, with a fresh pang of concern, if he was still suffering from the lingering effects of the nymph’s magic and the persistent fever, or if his silence was a direct reaction to the Duchess’s words, though he’d seemed too daze to fully comprehend them at the time.
Eirin didn’t even know if she could entirely trust or believe what the Duchess had so kindly, yet so shockingly, revealed.
The teenage girl chose to live with the tense, unspoken silence, the only constant companion to the rhythmic sway of their journey as their carriage continued its steady progress away from the ducal manor.
Then, without warning, the carriage halted. Not a gentle, gradual stop, but an abrupt, jarring lurch that sent Eirin sprawling, tumbling sideways across the plush seat until she collided with the opposite wall just beside Shade Cromwell. A small yelp escaped her lips, quickly stifled.