Chapter 41 The Elf With A Dream— And A Heart
The first time Amir noticed something was wrong was the day he had gone past the boundaries of the village. He knew how every person felt about his inability to stick to the land, but he also knew he had to go.
As the son of the village chief, he knew he could not do what everyone else was doing. Pretend. Eat. Sleep. Act like it wasn’t happening. They knew bright lights and loud noises kept the beasts away but there were a few times some crossed the threshold.
“The children are no longer growing,” Aegor, the chief of their land and his father, looked strange. Even though he was almost a millennium, he was not supposed to have aged as much as he did. Amir blamed the curse. “But fortunately, they wonder little about it,”
“We must leave Satyr,”
“And go where?” Aegor had asked. “The lands surrounding us are filled completely with orcs who would gladly eat us due to the scarcity of food, and where else could we go? To the humans? Those despicable creatures? They are the reason we are here in the first place,”
Amir understood all of these. He had common sense. He knew they were stuck… but he could not stomach the idea that all of the elf kind, with how little they already were, would be extinct off the face of the Earth.
He had to find a way.
At first, he did his lessons, his training sessions . He learned everything he could possibly learn, training on his own with anyone who would be willing to be his test subject.
Then he moved further. Testing the grounds, the trees. Wondering if they would speak to him, if they could somehow speak about the pain they were feeling or knew anything about the curse.
He met a mana beast on his fifth adventure.
In their culture, they did not kill if they could avoid it, so he got close enough to study it. Each time, he met some that were grotesque, shaped wrongly— and some reminded him of the animals before they stopped seeing them. They listened when he spoke, never attacking. Some seemed to be in immense pain, and some seemed to move absentmindedly without thinking.
One said its name once, “A… Am… Ir?”
His visits to the outskirts worsened.
Other elves had died in their village. Not from being hunted, of course, but from starvation or sickness from the ground they walked on. They had all believed they had moved into the arms of Vashka, and were resting in peace as they deserved. As they should have been.
Aegor did not want to hear it. “Stop going there. Stop looking for things that are not your concern. The people that you claim you wish to defend are here! Stay here with your family!”
“We are being filled with a… a sickness! This is not living! We are simply… we are simply just not dying! I do not care what it is that I have to do but I must find a way to solve this. If it ends me, then you all will have the notes to keep yourself safe. And you all must leave the grounds. Swear to me.”
To protect Amir, his father put guards around him, forcing him to stay in the village.
But it was already too late.
Though he did not enjoy the so-called festivities that happened, he knew he had no other choice but to attend so he did. It was during one of them that he felt overwhelmed by the sounds they were making. All the lights began to blur, and ever so slowly, he realized that he was losing consciousness.
He hid in his room for as long as he could as he felt his throat start to dry up and burn. It was as if something was wrapping itself tightly around his neck, demanding that he fill himself up with only one thing that could make him feel alive again.
Blood.
He noticed changes. His teeth. His nails. His body. He noticed how things grew out of his head. How his eyes changed. He noticed all these things.
Amir also knew he could not tell anyone.
With this new form, it was easier to move past the borders without getting caught and finding something to feed on. He never killed any of them, he knew he could not even if he tried, and when he felt safest, he would return back to his room and act like everything was fine.
Every person knew it was not, but the people of Satyr were not the type to drag attention to a certain situation, and so they all pretended like none of this was happening till Eldoria and her entourage arrived.
Her words had been simple. “He would become… dangerous to the realms if he is not kept under control and managed properly. Still, I understand his worth to you and I can give you this. Hand him over to me… with a few of your kind so he feels safe, and once you do, I shall fix the problems of your land. The famine. The drought. The sickness. All of it. But you must hand him over willingly,”
Aegor refused. Amir accepted. He had no plans to hurt anyone, and if it would finish what he had started, then he was ready to do whatever it took to make sure that things ended well.
She had not.
After binding him to her, she had avoided him in the palace, completely ignoring him no matter the questions or requests he sent to her. Even the order she had given him to go over to the Montague estate had been told to him by her servant.
Amir felt severely insulted… but elves were known to keep to their side of their bargain, and so he obeyed even if every inch of him wanted to escape with the others.
After they had moved, he realized that this… Isabella was one and the same like the Queen… and not at the same time. He saw her constantly moving around, always moving— and running whenever he saw her. He found out that she was strange, and too silly to be a human, too… different.
He decided that there was little he could risk if the sickness affecting him would end him soon so he stopped her one day and told her. He had learned that she was manipulative and selfish. It was easy to tell that all she did was take and take from everybody else.
But Amir learned she could give.
As a Prince, he knew fully well the grace that was mostly intended to him due to his Father’s existence, and though he never exploited it, he expected her to do the same with the Queen after that night they had arrived at the ball and she asked him to investigate everyone there.
Isabella Montague did not need to make these contracts, deals or whatever it was she did with the people around her. She could enforce it like the other nobles with the power her family name had… yet, she stayed fair, giving the people around her a chance not to feel indebted while also giving them what they needed.
She did not like to hear it though.
She acted like she didn’t care. Like she couldn’t care.
Like Amir wasn’t aware that one of the main reasons she got the Banister servants was because Lara had an aunty there that she couldn’t always see because of the working hours the servants had.
Like he wasn’t aware that she kept sending sweet recipes to the cooks to make for her— but also for themselves.
Like he wasn’t aware that every time she did something good, it meant that she saw a use in that person— and was going to give them as much as they deserved so they always felt appreciated and cared for.
So why did it seem, that even though he was not in his right frame of mind, he could smell her scent… and most especially her blood that he had spent many weeks trying to ignore?