31: Opening old wounds

Opening old wounds

He pointed an incriminating finger at them. 

"Both of you! What is your relationship with the daughters of that family?" 

Egon's big eyes widened menacingly, "Uncle, neither your question nor your tone is appreciated!"

Adela winced when he threw a disgusted look her way. 

"The axe might have forgotten, but the tree must always remember! The de Lanarks are your mortal enemies!"

Egon's uncle spewed the words out and then stormed off, followed by Bastian who wore an uncomfortable look on his face before going after him.

"Excuse me, My Lady," Andreas said before climbing up the stairs pursuing the two.

Alone with Egon again, she felt rather than saw his eyes on her, hers lingered on the men's retreating figures.

"I have to go," he declared.

"Wait!"

She ran until she was one step ahead of him then turned and placed her hand on his torso, a jolt ran through her fingers and up the arm that was in contact with him.

Egon's eyes lingered where her hand touched him.

"...What is your uncle talking about? What is this animosity?" She asked softly.

"His problem is not with you, it is hard to explain…Impossible even,"

"It sure sounded like he had a problem with me, I mean who treats somebody they have just met like that without extraordinary reasons?"

"Maybe there are as you have said, extraordinary reasons for why my uncle is behaving like that around you,"

"What are they?" Her face contorted as she pleaded, "Why do you close yourself off and not let anyone inside, why will you not allow me to understand you?... You mentioned the truth earlier, did you change your mind about showing me?"

His rock-like face hardened further.

"The truth?" His eyes drifted down her ring then went up to meet her eyes again when she removed the hand touching him.

"Aren't the lies that everybody around creates for you much better than some beastly truth?"

She glared at him, surfeited with all the riddles, "I demand to know everything right now. What are you doing here?... Who are you?!"

He looked away, "Go home,"

"Not before you answer me!"

She gasped when he bent down, picked her up, and then carried her across his shoulders out of the blue.

Egon turned Adela's world upside-down. 

"What are you doing!" She exclaimed. 

"Taking you home, only your father can answer your questions,"

"I can go there by myself!"

"It is not safe, someone might have followed Andreas here,"

The way he repeatedly stole her self-control away from her grasp was so abhorrent, his words meant nothing to her, "You must put a stop to this type of behavior, put me down at once!"

Next thing Adela knew, she was on the back of Xavier, Egon's horse. 

"I do not want to worry about you," he murmured softly once he mounted behind her.

They shouldn't have, but his words sank so deep, all the way to the very depth of her soul.

Hearing no more complaints, Egon squeezed his stallion with his legs starting into a slow walk, Adela did not know how to safeguard the little space between her back and his chest, the distance between them was painful yet crucial, not to be jeopardized at all costs.

She tried to think about anything to distract her from it.

"Mentioning my father again... I will have you know that I am not worried about talking to the Archduke because I believe that this is all a misunderstanding... My father cannot be in the wrong,"

She felt every muscle in him tensing when they pushed forward into a sudden gallop, the fastest she had ever gone through before. Much like that time in the forest, his arm was a steel cage around her again. She could have objected, a gallop like this would not throw her off the horse when she was not side straddling, but something about the way he held on to her felt desperate, and she did not find it in her heart to tell him to let go of her this time.

It was her turn to stiffen when they reached the pathway leading to her father's manor yet took the opposite way.

"At least tell me where you're taking me! These sudden feverish acts of yours really bother me!"

"Xavier, faster!"

He shouted instead of answering her, the madness in his voice sounding her alarms, her mind told her to make demands stopping him right this instant, but every cell in her body wanted to make him feel better.

The two sensations were so acute that they almost split her even. Egon's grip around her might just have been the only thing keeping her whole.

When she focused on the road once again, she recognized the shortcut he was taking all too well, she did not have to ask him twice about where they were headed again, he was taking her where she spoke to him for the first time, Lanark's Forest.

With the speed his stallion galloped with and her racing mind, they were at the Eastern entrance all too fast.

He dismounted.

"Get down," he ordered.

She did as he said without complaints.

"You see this forest? Look at it and listen well,"

Once again, Adela faced the forest, doing as she was told without complaints.

"This forest swallows people whole… It is dark, infested with monsters, but their evil is incomparable to the worst evil of them all,"

She looked at him with melancholic eyes that both begged him to complete that sentence and begged him not to.

"The evil of you humans…"

She gulped, "… Tell me everything,"

His chest heaved but his head nodded, as if she said just the words he needed to hear.

"Before you were born…My helpless father held my newborn brother with one hand and dragged me here with his other hand, he entered that heartless forest to take away his own life,"

Adela's eyes burnt. The scars on his chest, his brother's lost eye... She swallowed back tears thinking that this pain was one that a child and a newborn had to suffer from.

His father must have been insane…

"I wish I had died with him that day, but I had to rescue my baby brother, that instinct surpassed everything else that went on in my mind back then,"

"…Egon," her trembling hand clutched his shaking arm. "…The reason why your father was so desperate,"

He swallowed with great difficulty, beads of sweat forming on his forehead, "It is everything you worship, this land…The people who own it… Your beloved family... House de Lanark. It was you who drove my father to a state of mind where he had to take his own children's lives if you can fathom that! But you can't...Can you?"

"How…" she let go of his hand.2

He first wiped his forehead then the back of his nose with his gloved hand and then sniffled.

"That is all I have to say to you, the rest of your questions are for the Archduke to answer, not me,"

What he said finally made sense to her, it was her choice to go and confront her father with what Egon told her.

"…Take me to him,"

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