Chapter 26
"No." Lina pulled away from Jedah, shaking her head at him. "There's too much unasked, unanswered. I can't just waltz back there with you in tow until I know a few things, Jedah. I just can't do it."
I should have expected something like this, Jedah realized. He should have known that Lina wouldn't just take it in stride, wouldn't let it be and move on. She wanted to know, needed to know. Almost as much as he found that he needed to answer her. "Very well, ask me what you want. If I can give an answer, I will."
Lina narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, and then she frowned and nodded. "You took the Heart from me." She watched his eyes flicker to the side and her frown deepened. "I know that you took it, Jedah… the only way that it could have left my pocket was if you reached in and took it when you pulled me to you in the Tower." She lifted her hand and stopped his words. "No, I don't care how you did it. I want to know why."
He took a breath and looked above her head to the trees behind her, and then he looked back at her crimson gaze, studying the woman reflected in her eyes. "Part of that lies in the past, back in the days when I was what we call a Wildling. I was little better than Zelgadis was, playing to my every whim, drunken in my own power without conscience or compassion." He watched her reaction, her soft snort at his words, but all he did was nod.
"Mazoku have compassion, Lina. It may not be similar to what you consider it, but it is compassion." He'd had this discussion with Amelia, and he wasn't sure what good it had done with her, but he could see the light in Lina's eyes as she contemplated it. "Not all of us are evil… just the ones who lack the proper heart."
"Heart…" Lina echoed, tilting her head. "But you had one… why did you need Zelgadis' as well?" She shook her head as she spoke. "He'd given it up, possibly even freely, but all I could feel from it was pain. It hurt to feel it, hurt to touch it. It tried to attack me when I tried to cast…" She remembered Amelia's reaction and she looked back up to Jedah. "How did you escape the trap?"
His lips quirked into a dry little smile and he lifted his hand to his own chest, placing his open palm against his shirt. "I didn't escape it, Lina. But give me the chance to get to that part." When she nodded, he continued. "My father came to me one day, with tales of my brothers and their affliction by the fragments of Shabranigdo." To his relief, Lina didn't ask, and he continued.
"When he'd admitted his failure as both Human and Mazoku, he commanded that I take his heart." He considered her reaction for a moment before he opened his mouth and said it. "So I reached into his chest and tore it free from his body while it still beat." His fingers clutched slightly at his chest, a protective move, for the more recent memory was still fresh in his mind.
Lina, to her credit, only blinked. She'd known that the way of a Mazoku was strange to her, possibly even amoral to her frame of reference, but that just seemed so beyond the scope that she couldn't decide how to react. "That killed him, I'd imagine." She felt so detached speaking of his father in this fashion.
Jedah nodded. "Yes, it killed him on the spot. But his heart… dissolved into a strange glitter of light and wound its way up my arm. It burned into me like a candle's flame, a brilliant path etching its way across the fabric of my making. When it reached my chest, it began to beat, a golden pulse of fire that left me breathless and weak." He remembered the pain, the stabbing breath-stealing pain that came with each pulse of his new heart. It almost brought him to his knees again.
Lina stepped forwards, seeing Jedah turn pale. "You took his heart and somehow made him take it back, didn't you? You knew that the only way to do that was to give into it, to give it to him the way your father gave you his." She caught his arm, looking up into his eyes. "But how did you survive, Jedah?"
"I don't know," Jedah said. "Zelgadis' heart sat close to my own, almost too close, for he nearly got them both. I felt his fingers on my heart and the Worlds almost faded around me. But he pulled only his free, leaving me as weak as a newborn kitten. Something… someone grabbed me and pulled me away. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought…" His voice trailed off, and he looked away suddenly, thoughts of Xellos flashing to his mind.
"Oh, Jedah. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…" Lina said quietly, her hand tightening on Jedah's arm. "You loved him. As strange as it sounds, as strange as it seems to me, you honestly loved him. And I watched you…" Do what she was afraid that she'd have to do to Zelgadis. "We should go back to the inn. Amelia's probably woken the town to prepare against those bandits."
Jedah looked to Lina for a moment, tilting his head, and then he nodded, pushing the thoughts of Xellos away from his mind, putting aside the thought that he'd never hear the Trickster Priest's voice again, that he'd never see precisely that shade of violet in anyone's eyes, that… he cleared his throat. "We ought to let everyone know that there isn't any need to worry anymore. The bandits are gone, the danger from that is past. The only thing left now is Zelgadis."
Lina nodded as she started to walk back towards the town. She wasn't sure why she hadn't told Jedah that Zelgadis was in the care of her friends, wasn't sure why she wanted him to discover that for himself. Then again, the fact that he didn't seem to know helped comfort her a bit. It meant that Jedah wasn't setting her up.