Chapter 25
The air was dense and not exactly due to them being meters underground. The space between the Prince and Loreto, who sat a few centimeters to his right, seemed like an invisible truce loaded with anticipation. From the corner of her eyes, she saw him eating calmly and focusing on the delicious stew and steamed vegetables, seeds, nuts and cereals the elf Arasne had cooked. Loreto tried to focus on her plate. Her stomach was on pins and needles, a visceral dizziness there where her ribcage began. The aura Nuada emanated reached her like a communication beyond language. His intention floated in the air so evidently, surrounding her and enwrapping her completely in his halo. There was nowhere to escape, nor did she wish to. The memory of his kisses abruptly hit her and left a reddish tint on her cheeks and chest. She exhaled discreetly and drank a sip of her grape juice. They had barely exchanged words since their return from the heights of the Troll market. Regardless, the connecting thread of their thoughts had found a way to keep them in sync without verbal communication. Loreto was unsure whether she liked the idea the Prince could so easily read her mind. Normally she'd need years of intimacy with a man to feel comfortable with that level of exposure, but being in his company it seemed only natural to strip completely and let him in. She heard him breathing in control. He had hardly thrown a glance at her during the dinner. However, at all moments, in every second, Nuada hadn't left her. He was there in her head like a dream she couldn't place and in her heart, like the naïve illusion of a new beginning.
After dinner they sat before the fireplace. Arasne poured each of them a thick liquor of caramel color and retired from the chamber. Loreto smelled its content and immediately savoured the sweet fragrance the drink emanated. Nuada clashed his glass with hers and poured it down in one sip. He inhaled loudly through the teeth and went for the bottle. Loreto kissed the glass enough to drink a tiny sip. The explosion of flavor opened its way through her mouth burning with sweet spices every corner wrapping up her throat and palate. She exhaled surprised and immediately her body shook a heat wave as soon as the small sip of liquor made it to her stomach. She drank a bit more and shook her head to bare the alcoholic quake that blazed her. As she asked what it was, the Prince explained it was a special preparation for the royal family of Bethmoora. He took the bottle in his hands and presented it before their eyes. The container was on its own, a jewel. It was shaped like a water drop and its crystal was worked with hundreds of symmetrical carvings and engravings in circular forms which looked like ivy arms from the bottom to its neck.
"I don't know the recipe well," Nuada said casually looking at the bottle in his hands, "but I do know it includes dozens of flowers and herbs essences aged for centuries. This bottle is half a millennium old. As with everything else in Bethmoora, it has been kept in a corner gathering dust waiting for the day to return to glory."
His voice darkened. He poured more liquor in his glass and left the bottle on the table separating both seats before the fireplace. He fixed his gaze on the flames crackling and clenched his lips. Loreto wished to possess his telepathic power and find out what was going on through his mind in that moment. He had withdrawn to a dark corner of his psyche, or at least that's what his hardened demeanor allowed to infer. He was a unique being, Loreto thought and concluded that being there in his company and so close to this millenary secret world was luck and privilege only one-in-a-million could experience. She drank another sip of the delicious alcoholic elixir and closed her eyes to feel its slow progress down her larynx and esophagus.
"As long as Bethmoora remains underground and this," he gestured his surroundings with apathy, "is all the realms of our kingdom, I shall not ascend the throne," Nuada said in a low yet imperative tone. "Nuala expects me to take an oath on my life for Bethmoora upon an incomplete crown. If that's the case, the royal council shall have to accept an heir to the throne of mixed blood. Traditions count no more, the kingdom crumbles and I don't know whether I shall be able to bring it back to its former honor and glory."
Loreto took a few seconds to decipher the meaning of his speech. She looked at him frowning and tilted her head.
"Now my father is no longer here, my sister and I may start our own families. I'm the crown prince, so I have priority. Once I assume the crown of Bethmoora, my first duty shall be to provide an heir of pure blood to succeed me. Only then may Nuala start hers. Her descendants will be second in line to the throne after mine." The Prince exhaled, annoyed, rubbed his face and massaged his chin, lost in thought. "None of this has any importance now that the crown is forever incomplete," he said in a sigh loaded with frustration. "As if Bethmoora didn't have enough wounds already..."
Loreto blinked a few times and adjusted herself on the armchair to face the Prince at her left.
"You've lived an exceptionally long life. Are you telling me you've never married nor had children?," she said and was incapable of controlling the skeptical tone that creeped through her voice.
Nuada fixed her with his gaze. He denied with his head and drank a sip of liquor from his glass.
"You've never fallen in love?"
"That's different," he said dryly and lowered his gaze.
"Why wouldn't you have an heir of pure blood then? Isn't there any elf in the kingdom that wishes to be your queen?"
Nuada chuckled, a guttural laugh that left a bitter overtone hanging in the air.
"They saw me murder my own father with a stab in his abdomen. For my people, I'm a monster. Perhaps they won't even allow me to rule, in which case Nuala shall have to succeed me. In any case, we're in a situation where it's impossible to follow traditions."
His countenance broke, yet the Prince clenched his jaw tight and focused his gaze on the flames in the fireplace. Behind his authoritarian and proud mask, something cracked, which Loreto guessed, was critically important for him. His hands were tied. He was a Prince without a kingdom, palace or crown. An entire life of thousands of years waiting for the opportunity to lead his people to crush against a closed door. Loreto observed her surroundings. New York's sewers and gutters were no worthy place for a Prince in his class. Not even the grandest and tallest palace in the world would do justice to his kingdom. For the first time Loreto understood why Nuada had taken justice in his own hands. This place and all the underground cities of Bethmoora in the world were nothing more than prisons for people destined to rule over the Earth. He had spent an eternity swallowing the bitter rage of an undeserved sentence. His torn aura roared the pain and expanded through the entire place like a harrowing scream under water. Loreto felt her throat closing and her eyes bulging with tears. She took a deep breath and drank a long sip of the rich-flavored liquor. She looked at him, powerless about his suffering. She was so small and insignificant before his dilemma.
"Prince?," she called with a shaky thread of voice.
Nuada raised his gaze and faced her abruptly. Loreto swallowed hard.
"If the experiments result between the Elemental's descendants ichor and human carcinogenic tissue are positive, will you accept to negotiate with humans the return of Bethmoora to the surface of the Earth?"
Nuada smirked without humor. His demeanor of complete hopelessness broke her heart for him.
"Do I have any other option?," he replied in a deadpan. He stretched his open hand towards her. Loreto took it. "You are noble, Loreto Helena María Cranwell," he said and drew a weak smile on his face. "You should return to your normal life. I have nothing at all to offer you other than uncertainty and scarcity," he took on the surroundings with a contemptuous gaze. "You're healthy now, you have the rest of your life ahead of you."
Loreto broke just like that. She swallowed the tears in silence and squeezed his hand in her small one. The warmth of his skin, the touch of his rough palm, the embrace of his long fingers. It was too late. Which normal life? To put her health at stake to fulfill an agenda of events to keep on securing the record label their generous piece of commission for her music? She contemplated her own life choices and compared it with the Prince's. She just wished to keep on making music and make it available to her public, yet she felt ashamed to have taken part in the gears of the musical industry for fifteen years. What was left but the brief moments onstage in real contact with the people? However, all else, the interviews, photo sessions, attendances to television shows, smiling like a monkey in a zoo... She hunched and placed a silent kiss on the back of his hand. Nuada trembled and questioned her with his amber gaze.
"I'd take you with me and we'd live in the shadows for the rest of our lives, I wouldn't care," Loreto whispered against his skin, she rose of eyes and found the Prince disarmed by disbelief facing her. "You won't leave your people behind and I wouldn't expect you to do so either. Firstly, you own yourself to them. The choice is mine then, if you want me by your side."
"And I'd make you my queen, Loreto," Nuada said and kissed the back of her hand several times. "But this is no place to start a family, nor is it worthy of you."
He stood up and took a knee to the floor before her while holding her hand. He looked deeply into her eyes.
"If I manage to make Bethmoora to return to the surface with dignity and, against all odds and my biggest skepticism, we achieve an understanding with humans to live in peace, would you do me the honor of becoming my queen and give me an heir?"
If that's the case, the royal council shall have to accept an heir to the throne of mixed blood. Loreto understood then his words of a few minutes ago. He had always wanted it that way. Nuada could not only read her mind but also her heart. Her heart leaped of joy and simultaneously shrunk, filled with apprehension.
"Why would you want a human wife? I only have but a few decades more to give you and then I'll die like all the others of my race," Loreto uttered choking through the knot in her throat. "I won't be able to be there for you your whole life, and one day you'll forget me when I've already turned into ashes."
Nuada kissed her hands over and over again.
"For the same reason I couldn't predict Nuala would destroy her crown piece. Destiny isn't written and not even thousands of years of immortal life can prepare for its quandaries." The Prince dried Loreto's tears rolling down her cheeks and brushed her trembling lips with his thumb. He caressed her with his eyes filled with kindness and devotion. "Gold melts with fire, the sun burns the skin, music enlightens all darkness, love heals the thirst for vengeance and gives a new opportunity, and the heart falls in love with whom it shouldn't."