Chapter 3 EMBRACING AUTHORITY

Awakening the next morning, I found Brandon and Pricina on the other side of the glass partition that Pricina had conjured. Their faces were frozen masks, observing me.

I concealed my ankle with the scrunchie beneath me and decided not to budge until I had reattached the metal ring through my ankle bone. I couldn't let them perceive the progress I'd achieved... unless they already knew.

"Have you managed to locate Christian yet?" I inquired with a hint of sarcasm.

Their response was silence, their stares unrelenting. Did they possess awareness of my actions?

"Are you even making an effort to find him?" I pressed again.

Brandon cleared his throat and began, "I believe we might have made an error by not elucidating the broader perspective to you."

Impatiently, I nodded. "Could we possibly skip talking today? Is that at all feasible? Can the two of you simply depart and preferably never return? I'm fairly certain I'd choose to perish today rather than engage with you again, Brandon." This was not my usual demeanor with them. Never before had I alluded to death or my desire for it.

This visibly unsettled Brandon, his eye twitching involuntarily.

Conversely, Pricina's reaction was different. For the first time, she smiled. The emotion underlying her expression remained elusive. Was it joy? Or something else?

Brandon stumbled, his eyes reflecting a sense of horror. "After surviving a bullet to the head? How do you envision your death now? Are you imagining that you'll expire if we cease returning, and you run out of provisions?"

"The food you've been giving me is awful. I haven't complained because I assumed it was part of your elaborate scheme. Provide me with subpar sustenance, generate desperation, and manipulate me into compliance. I want you gone. I'll consume the food or not, but with access to the Red Forest, I'm quite certain I needn't eat anymore. It's merely a luxury, and with luxuries like powdered milk and quick oats available, why should I value your generosity?"

He clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "I see. We've been excessively harsh on you. We should have demonstrated more convincingly that we're your allies."

I let out a scornful snort upon hearing the word 'allies'. Nothing they'd done since my arrival bore the slightest resemblance to friendship. They had subjected me to a form of humane torture, while also forcibly separating me from Christian, which incensed me.

"It's just that this location is remote, and procuring supplies here is quite challenging," Brandon explained, persisting with his discussion about food.

"I have no interest in your explanations or your feeble offer of camaraderie. We are not friends. I don't need to eat, and you don't need to intrude here. I detest listening to your discourse," I declared, the tinge of malice in my tone minimized, as I'd already discovered that throwing tantrums yielded minimal results.

"Would you converse with her?" he queried, indicating Pricina.

"If she's going to echo your drivel, I'd prefer not to," I retorted bluntly.

"I won't," Pricina responded crisply.

With a decisive gesture, she employed her matter manipulation to dissolve the floor beneath Brandon, causing him to plummet through the gaps along with his chair. He let out a scream, but Pricina sealed the aperture and quashed the sound.

"He won't be harmed," she affirmed, motioning for a chair from another room to glide into my chamber and seat her. The chair's movement was peculiar, almost as if it was guided by invisible tracks. Its motions were mechanical and jerky. Pricina assumed a graceful posture upon settling down and directed her gaze toward me.

I returned her gaze, curious despite myself.

She broke eye contact and peered out the window, where the snow-clad mountain slopes were illuminated solely by my window's light. "Did he inform you that he's my spouse?"

"Brandon?" I asked, relieved since there were no other men present.

She nodded, displaying an expression of exasperation by biting her lower lip. "He's considerably younger than me. He's merely three hundred years old, whereas I am somewhere between fifteen hundred and seventeen hundred. He believed he could communicate more effectively with you, given the history he shares with you and Christian. However, it's evident he failed, leaving me to try." Her neck emitted a series of cracks as she turned her head to the side.

The glass sheet partition between us reshaped itself into a transparent bishop piece, positioned beside her. The piece was enlarged, rising slightly above her head, resembling a chess piece, yet much larger.

"That's quite an interesting talent," I commented, for once, my tone lacking the usual disgust that accompanied my speech when addressing them.

She commenced her explanation slowly. "I suspect your hesitation to enter Christian's heart stems from your upbringing, which likely instilled in you a belief in certain inviolable boundaries within our world. You probably hold the notion of property, do you not? A piece of land belongs to an individual, and thus it's theirs. In your situation, you're hesitant to delve into Christian's heart because his secrets are not yours. It's akin to being back in his estate in Scotland, where all the books are locked away. Had those books not been behind glass, would you have read them?"

I recalled my frustration, my desire to know everything about him, to read every book he'd read, and to experience a fragment of his emotions. Yet, everything was inaccessible to me, concealed behind locked doors.

"It's akin to that," she continued in a composed, measured voice. "He didn't grant you access to the shelves of his library. In fact, he placed the library within you. That's what his heart is. It embodies every facet of him that you've ever yearned to comprehend. But he didn't offer you his heart merely as a pumping mechanism for your blood, although it's performed that function for you." She paused. "If you're having trouble grasping the concept, consider Christian's heart like a locked library. It's his repository of knowledge, and the key to unlocking it is through understanding."

And I listened as she spoke, desperately struggling not to feel moved by her words.