Chapter 22: The Last Supper

Serana felt that the continuous, monotone buzz of the court members talking with the people directly beside or across them was the best thing she could have asked in order to concentrate. It was too regular and too uninteresting to claim her attention for too long, and now that she had been hearing it for at least half an hour, it didn't claim her attention at all. Her eyes didn't wander over the people sitting at the tables to search for whose voice was getting louder or lower. Not anymore. She had seen enough, and yet she struggled to understand.

Everything in its context, she told herself, and tried to reiterate every piece of information that she had at her disposal. The important thing was that they were inside Volkihar Keep, where certain rules applied. It was also an important occasion, because it was the night following the return of Azrael, who had brought both the Scrolls and had presented it to the Lord. Of course, they had found the Moth Priest blind. Harkon was furious, but had accepted to let Azrael take care of everything once again. Everything went according to our plan, Serana thought. And if that was the case, what was missing?

Time doesn't flow normally in any Daedric realm, and the Soul Cairn didn't seem to be an exception. Azrael had told her that the time he had sensed to have gone by inside the Cairn was of five to six hours, and yet they had emerged long before sunrise. Only an hour or two had gone by in the world above. Which makes the time my mother had waited even longer, Serana had thought. At least she had slept through all those centuries, but Valerica hadn't. Regardless, aside from the hushed comments made by the court members, their absence hadn't been a subject of major suspicion. Nobody understood how it was possible that their dear princess and her rescuer could get along after the latter's attempted betrayal, but nobody had yet dared bring those doubts over to either of them.

Their return was when the fun had began, in a manner of speaking. After a concise but decisive discussion, Serana and Azrael had agreed that it would have been safer for the two of them to stay separated for a while. He would have gone out of the Castle, pretending to search for the other Scroll. Only the gods know what he's really been up to. He was without Shadowmere, so his reach was fairly limited, but he had quite a few days ahead of him. It was plenty to go to Solitude and back comfortably. The thought wasn't the most welcome. Despite the tension between them having subsided significantly and despite the fact that, in the end, she had quite liked Elisif, the memories of that evening were printed with fire in her mind. Jealousy. Great, she had reproached herself the first time the thought had come up. Sadly, it had not been the last, either.

And while jealousy was the subject, her decision to stay in the Keep seemed to have been very smart on her part. They had thought it would have been best for her to remain among the Court, with the double goal of not raising suspicion and of assessing the situation first-hand.

Serana had been quite ecstatic of how much Azrael had allowed her to have a say in their coordination. 'I haven't really got in touch with anyone here, beside from your father, so it would be best if you were to one to remain here. Besides, I am most effective out there than in here.' It wasn't as if he didn't treat her as a means to and end anymore, but it was evident that he did the same with himself. He calculated where the two of them could be placed to yield the maximum results, and stuck with that decision. 'You can always say no,' he had said, 'we are in a position to freely choose.'

There was one thing that she could have rather avoided, and that was splitting up with him in the first place. However, that was the one thing on which he had been inflexible. She understood why that was the case, and accepted it. She agreed to pretty much everything else he proposed. His proposition was that she would do for two weeks what she would have normally done without him, but with the promise that upon his return something would change. That was better than anything she could have hoped.

Nevertheless, staying away from him was strangely unsettling. She had taken up old habits again and had returned to her status of the affable, charming young lady that was well-liked by almost everyone. However, there would always be the one who ended the conversation on a cryptic note and would leave. At those times, she had to consciously stop herself turning around and saying Azrael's name aloud to ask him for clarification. At other times she would see a room that was familiar but that had something removed or added to it, but without being able to pinpoint what it was. And yet at others, she would emerge from her thoughts and find herself in the middle of the great hall, unaware of what was going on around her and wishing to know it.

There were times when she deliberately stopped, leaned against something and looked around in an attempt to see the world the way he did. She wasn't clueless about it. She had been with him for weeks, by then. Most people seemed to flounder around the world, seeing nothing more than what their distorted minds allowed them to see. When she was with Azrael, she saw the great web, the weave of patterns, threads and meanings intertwining and allowing the one who witnessed it to see more than anyone could have ever hoped to. She looked and observed, and then she retreated in her room, thinking without ever stopping. Sometimes, she even managed to feel something, deep within, a hint of enjoyment; it was what he probably felt too, although surely melded with something darker and more malevolent.

Even ignoring the minor results that she managed to find by consistently sticking to that little habit, she made great progresses. She had never given too much weight on the banal fact that the court members told her things. She was the daughter of the Lord, so she was by definition out of any power struggle, and she was captivating, which made most people lower their barriers even further. By uniting all the fragments she gathered one person at a time, she could get a very clear image of what way the wind blew inside the Keep. And I believe myself too innocent to have ever tried to use that information. In truth, she had no way of using it until then. Now she had a way. She had to understand what would happen when Azrael came back.

The hardest element of all the court was, for reasons that were obvious to her now more than ever, her father. On top of the already mixed feelings she had towards him, there was now crushing sense of guilt that pervaded her when she was around him. I'm betraying him. I know where my mother is and I'm not telling him. I know that Azrael is probably planning against him and I'm not telling him. The series of thoughts always ended with the heavier. I am plotting against him. He had watched out against an attack against himself for all his life, for all those eons, and now the strike would come from where he would expect it less: his own daughter. His own flesh and blood.

The thing that contrasted the strongest with that feeling of culpability was the irritation caused by how much he seemed to be jealous of her. She had hardly talked to him in the timespan between returning with the Moth Priest and beginning their journey to the Soul Cairn, and she hadn't had the time to realize what feelings he truly harbored. He frequently made references to how much time she had spent with Azrael and how close they seemed. When she grew annoyed and asked him what was wrong with it, he sometimes shrugged and at others reminded her that he had been the enemy in a past not long gone. When the latter occurred, she merely needed to remind that he had been the one choosing to keep him alive, and the conversation ended there.

She knew it was hardly over, though. The number of times he had brought it up alone was suspicious, and from what she knew of her father she could guess that, in spite of appearances, that thing was eating away at him. Serana kept that card close to her chest, because it meant that Harkon now had some reservations towards Azrael. That had to be addressed, but she didn't feel like she could make any difference. However, those talks reminded her of how incredibly erratic her relationship with Azrael had been. Not even two months ago, I wished him dead. And here I am, spying for him inside my own home while longing for him to come back to me. In a way, she was searching that hard for information in order to please him. Her affection was changing and consuming her.

Her father had probably noticed it, and that was why he was so resentful. Serana had noticed that he always kept an eye on her ever since she had come back from the Soul Cairn. There were moments when delirious fantasies of him knowing what she'd been up to crept into her mind. However, it was impossible. He was just unsettled by Azrael and nothing more. It's interesting that for him to take full notice of me, I had to do something to arouse his suspicion. The disproportionate attention he gave to the things he feared was proof enough of his madness to her. She had always rejected the idea of being in the company of a madman, but sometimes that thought was stronger than she would have liked. He still behaved like a sane person, but what went on inside him had nothing human left.

Moreover, he was letting himself go. It doesn't show on a vampire the same way as it does on a common mortal, but the signs of irregular feeding were showing. He was probably sleeping very little, and for the first time his cheeks weren't perfectly shaven. In spite of his efforts to hide it, his deliriums were dragging him away from the world. He's an obsessed, fanatic madman and he is becoming impossible to be around, Serana thought, but there was also something else. However, the deeper he sinks into his waking nightmare, the more he suffers. He was going down a spiral, and he refused anyone's help in getting out of it. Both Azrael and her mother treated him as if he had reached the point of no return, and perhaps they were right.

The problem with her father's condition was that, without his control, the court would descend into utter chaos. The power struggles were kept in check only because of the absolute and arbitrary power her father held, and the delicate balance between the parties would be turned upside down if one piece of that mosaic would become missing. However, either the court was more blind than she wanted to believe or they were very proficient at hiding their perceptions of this instability. None of them seemed overly concerned with the Lord's conditions, and they treated everything as if it was normal. They kept vying for his favor, and they didn't question the decreasing reactiveness of her father.

The only one who had noticed something and was showing something for it was, incredibly, Garan Marethi. 'Lady Serana,' he had once asked her, 'have you too been noticing something strange going on with the Lord, your father?' It was true that he was a devout follower of Lord Harkon and he made no secret of it, so he was relatively free to express his disconcert without compromising his position, but it had seemed strange to her nonetheless.

A great deal of things had changed once Azrael had come back, a few hours before.

The Dunmer had come back two days before the end of the fortnight which had been set as the time for him to recover the Scrolls. His presence always caused some degree of confusion and preoccupation among the court members, but this once that reaction had been far too evident. He had walked in with one Scroll tied to his back near his longsword and the other to the back of his belt. He had swiftly greeted the one of two people he had talked to during his brief periods of stay, who were, not accidentally, the two Dunmer, and then had gone directly to Lord Harkon.

Many of the people who had seen him enter had gone to Serana for explanation. For once, they could not fathom how he mad managed to find both Scroll in that ludicrously short amount of time. Secondly, they were deeply concerned about their personal status now that someone else was solving all the problems the Lord presented the court, but they wouldn't admit it. They all fired suspicious glances at the door of the Lord's chamber, where Azrael had strode in. Serana gently dismissed everyone, saying that she had no idea herself how he had managed to do that. She was risking her reputation in doing that, but it was a lot better than the alternative.

Besides, she had her own questions. Why has he not greeted me too, for one? She had seen him glancing at her, but he hadn't done anything that could resemble an acknowledgement. He hasn't seen me for ten days, so at least a greeting would have been appreciated. If there was something she had yet to grasp about him, it was that unpredictable side of him. It seemed capricious at times and purposefully inconsistent at others. Of course, the wound had been inflicted on a deeper level than those interpretative thoughts. It had awakened once again all the suspicions she had. For that matter, she said to herself, he told me he would explain what happened with the Dragon back in the Soul Cairn, and he hasn't yet.

She tried to ignore everything as best as she could. His behavior always retained a layer of irregularity; it could only be fully understood if one had seen all the events leading up to the current one, which in this case she hadn't. Still, it seems incredibly strange that someone so self-controlled has these apparent swings. None of those were new thoughts. Actually, they were very old ones. They were the first questions she had had about him, and that still had no answer. Nevertheless, she was resolute on seeing how the events would turn out.

It had been a few hours since he had come back, and the situation still wasn't any clearer. He and her father had been locked in the latter's chamber for a long time. On the bright side, she knew what subjects Azrael would bring up. The Scrolls were the obvious one, and then there was the blind Moth Priest. My father won't be very happy, but he has been able to calm him before. What she didn't know, and that was what unsettled her the most, was what Azrael meant to do once he had given her father those pieces of information. He will have an advantage, but how will he use it?

For the time being, he had used it to rally the whole court and give an official and ceremonial dinner. The court had been both exited and suspicious when it had been announced, and Serana didn't know what to make of it. Azrael had always done the smart thing and communicated with everyone one to one, if he needed. So, when her father had announced that he was summoning the court for supper on Azrael's behest, she had been very surprised. A turn of events, it would seem. But what leverage will he have?

What leverage does he have…? The question kept bouncing around her mind as she noticed her eyelids closing and opening quickly. She became aware of the reddish light of the main hall and of the buzz around her. She shook her head slightly, not wanting anyone to notice that she had been lost in thought. She felt her hand grasping the fork by her side and her gaze directly towards the tables. She fully returned to the present. She quickly managed to reconstruct the whole situation. I hope I haven't missed anything.

It didn't seem so. Her father, beside her, was looking beyond her to the left. All of the court members' eyes gazes were directed in the same place, which was where Azrael was seated. He had stood up silently, and was now waiting for the buzz to diminish. Serana was confused by that, but her father hadn't said anything to prevent it and was instead looking with anticipation. She understood at once. This was planned. This is something they discussed before in his chambers. Her father knew he had to say something and was letting him. She wondered if Harkon knew what was about to be said or not.

Azrael was motionless, his hands folded behind his back, striking a posture that wasn't among the ones he usually had. 'Scions of the Night,' he said, and his deep voice echoed through the room. 'I ask you to hear me out. I have grave news to bring you. But first, I owe everyone here an apology.'

The court members stirred silently. Serana looked hard, but didn't notice anything decisive. The powerbrokers of the court were looking with interest, whereas the traditionalists were firing murderous glares in the Dunmer's way. Each individual had his own reaction, and that was indicative. There wasn't a pattern to adhere to, there was no precedent. She looked at Azrael, thinking that she was probably the most startled out of everyone in the court. However, there were several elements of how Azrael was talking that to her, and only to her, screamed deceit.

'I,' he continued, 'want to say that I regret what I did when I first came here. It's true, for anyone who still didn't believe it. I did have the intention to kill you.' His voice touched some deeper notes. 'I didn't have any understanding. The world of the sheep, of the ones who call themselves living, was all that I knew. I lacked perspective. However, you have given it to me. Now I see, and my eyes are open. I wanted to say that, somehow, someway, I have everyone here to thank for my shift in perspective.'

Liar, she thought, but for once she thought of the term as neutral. He wasn't lying to her nor to himself. She scanned the hall once again, unable to predict what reactions would be present. She looked at the faces, some tense and some relaxed but all with clear signs of one thing: confusion.

'As is done in many places in the mortal world,' Azrael said, 'I wish to atone for what I've done. I am ready to share something with you, a secret that I might have shared with your Lord alone but that he insisted I shared with everyone here.' He nodded respectfully towards Lord Harkon, who didn't react in any way. 'The knowledge I'm about to give you is very delicate, and I ask of you that, in the face of it, you keep calm.'

Serana didn't bother to look at the court members, because her own restlessness was taking possession of her eyes and keeping them fixed on Azrael. What do you mean? All that prelude was thought of in advance, he never talked that diplomatically with anyone about anything.

'There is someone, here in this very chamber, who is contemplating the assassination of our Lord and the destruction of this castle.'

She still didn't look, but the noise reached her. Several voices, some of them almost raised and some only whispers. Azrael raised a hand in the air, responding readily to that reaction. He had foreseen it clearly, and despite warning them to keep calm he knew they wouldn't have been able to in the face of that.

'Keep calm. There is no blame yet, only hope. As I was saying, someone is considering the uproot of everything you hold dear in this place. My days outside this castle have given me ample time to think and reflect on this inevitable event. Of course,' he said, and Serana registered the slight change in his tone from a graver to a softer one, 'all this wouldn't have been doable without the keen eyes and ears of the Lord's dear daughter, princess Serana.'

She felt all the court members eyes shifting on her before she could even see it. She didn't understand and didn't try to. Her mind was frozen, all the energy she might have required to think was somewhere else. She felt her face tickling, but there was no blood in her arteries that might have caused her to blush. The frost gripped her deep down, and the chilling sensation crept upwards.

'She has done the greatest service to this cause, and helped me to understand what was really going on. Now,' he said slowly, pausing briefly to wait for all the pairs of eyes to come back to him. 'I have given you this knowledge, and you will understand that this has put both me and her in great danger. This is why I now ask Lord Harkon to give us permission to complete the last part of his plan, and bring the Scrolls to the spot the Moth Priest has told us.'

Lord Harkon nodded. 'You have your leave. You have served he faithfully, Azrael, and you deserve to live.'

The Dunmer turned one last time towards the hall, the rims of the hood waving on both sides. 'Everyone among you should keep their eyes peeled. Remember that before my return, someone will have betrayed our Lord.' He unfolded his hands from behind his back and hinted at sitting back in his chair again. 'That is all. I thank you for your attention.'

There was noise coming from the hall. Voices, and again they were both raised and quiet. Vingalmo's accent was hearable, and Fura Blood-Mouth's soprano trilled above the other noises. Serana's eyes were directed straight towards the two tables, but she wasn't really looking. The world shimmered in front of her, confused and neglected in favor of the storm that was raging in her mind. Her head had slowly shifted back towards the hall without her even noticing. A second before she was looking at Azrael, but she now found herself looking elsewhere. I have waited for hours, she thought, with the silent promise that everything would be clear. But now it's all even more confused…

Her sight was barely focused enough to spot the darting glances that were thrown her way. One thing that had managed to stay afloat in spite of her efforts to concentrate was her social sense, because by then it required almost no conscious effort to reap its results. She felt those gazes touching her briefly, one after the other. They were the gazes she had seen thrown around the court since she was a child. Glares filled with distrust, but that had never been directed at her. She didn't remember one occasion when she had been the person those gazes were stolen towards. The coil of feelings bound to that perception cleared its way through her bewilderment, because it was all too clear.

You, she thought, looking at Azrael. He was sitting down in the seat next to her, his intertwined fingers resting rigidly in his lap. His head was bent down, and the rims of the cowl hid even the sides of the black void that covered his face. You did this. You destroyed my reputation with a few, well-placed words. Decades, and she had always been the one out of every intrigue, the one everyone would talk to if need be. Now she wasn't anymore. He claimed that she had found a traitor in their ranks. That, to everyone there, meant that she was no longer the person to talk to about matters that were in any way delicate. And you knew this was going to happen. It was never about the person or their sensibility. It's the greater good. Something inside her mind went off track, asking the question that was probably the right one. Why did he endanger my position here? It was reckless.

Still, everything those suspicious eyes told her was secondary. There was something more. She had never informed him of any traitor, and she wasn't aware of any. In addition, there was his tone, his posture, so premeditated and obviously deceitful. But only to me. He had attempted, and so far succeeded, in deceiving the court twice. But the last time, he had me against. And I knew him well enough. There was a sort of dull, lingering sense of pride in what had just happened and what it seemed to have meant. He has me. That's what has given him the upper hand. However, the resentment was rising as well. She had almost forgotten it.

She quickly became aware of a grasping sensation on her right shoulder. Her father was on her side. She wore a light red tunic, and in the absence of the pauldrons the touch was clearly felt through the fabric. It's a light touch. It's gentle. When she turned to the side, she found a warm smile on her father's thin lips as he looked at her. 'I am proud of you, my daughter,' he said. His face, in spite of the smile, still looked weary. 'Now I see. You were protecting me, and I misunderstood your good will for hostility.'

Smiling to her father even if she didn't feel like it was automatic, but she didn't remember a time when it had been so hard. 'I was just doing what had to be done, father,' she said. 'I figured that for the good of the family, I might as well have risked your favor for a while. If everything ends now, it was well worth the effort.'

She had spoken softly and she had monitored her words with the utmost care, but inside she was devoured by terror. What if what I said doesn't match with what he knows? I just… Imagined what the obvious things to say would be if what Azrael had said was true… She kept her eyes briefly on her father, and noticed his features starting to shift. They relaxed into an ever warmer smile. She let go of the tension in her throat, of which she had been barely aware before. It worked. Her time with Azrael had yielded the right speed of the mind to understand what had happened, and her innocent charm had worked its magic once again.

Lord Harkon lied back tiredly into his high seat, bringing both hands to the pommels of the armrests. 'I am proud of you, my daughter.' There was something in his voice, something akin to a crushing melancholy.

That was dealt with. She turned around, towards the hall, bent her head downward towards the floor and closed her eyes shut. Her hands were shaking and felt the urge to nervously beat with her feet on the floor, but she retrained herself. Quiet now. And concentrate. There was something going on. Until it was all over, she was just a somewhat conscious part of the pandemonium Azrael had just created. Until this is all over, I need to play a part. A part that is coherent and consistent. The rest doesn't matter. Something immediately came to her. Azrael said that I understood something was happening. But I could pretend I don't know who is going to be the perpetrator. She opened her eyes wide, suppressing a smile of relief. That was her exit point for the time being.

Next thing, she needed to know what she would do. She cleared her head as much as she could, leaving just the background hum of all her emotions storming through her mind. Something, something. Azrael had a phrase he repeated at times. Most people forget the goal and get lost in the planning. The meaning was clear. More often than not, the things to do were incredibly simple. Think. What is it that I want? It was surprising how long it took to remember that her main objective was to understand what had happened. And the first thing to do? There was some degree of choice, but one option was the bottleneck she should have aimed for. I need to talk to Azrael.

She put her hand down on the armrest and turned around, expecting to find him still sitting in his chair as he had seen him a moment before. However, as soon as she glimpsed at the side she saw that he was no longer there. Where has he gone? Not a lot of time had passed, so he couldn't have gone too far. Her eyes searched frantically for his dark frame, and it didn't take her too long to spot him near the wall of the hall. He was looking at the doorway that led further on into the castle, towards her room, and seemed intentioned to go that way. Slipping away from attention… Her mind was running quickly, so much so that sometimes she found it hard to keep up. And yet, she knew what she had to do.

She rose from her chair and cast a glance at the court members. Some had risen from their seats and were walking around the tables, finding partners to talk to and forming small groups. She felt a pair of eyes fixing on her, and she searched for the source of that sensation, finding it moments after when her gaze met the one of Garan Marethi.

She turned around, pretending that she hadn't noticed anything. She hadn't had the time to look clearly at the Mer's face, but the impression that had struck her spoke very clearly. He was anxious, and she didn't want someone who was nervous talking to her in that situation. What might he want from me, anyway? He had been the only one to make a notice of the Lord's state in her stay, but nothing more. Perhaps he just happened to look at me… But it didn't seem that way. She resigned to avoid moving her eyes again. If everything went well, she would have slipped away after Azrael and worst case scenario she would have heard someone call her name.

She moved Azrael's chair out of her way. The feet of the seat grazed the floor and made a sound loud enough to made her deaf to everything else for a moment. She heard the end of a voice. 'Serana! Lady Serana!'

She would have heard her own name through a thousand sounds, but that went for everyone. She immediately recognized the accent and the tone of voice as the one of Garan Marethi. She relaxed her face muscles consciously and then turned around. Upon seeing the robed Mer approaching her, she flashed a smile. 'Yes, Garan?' she said. 'What can I do for you?' A voice was screaming in her mind. He's a schemer, and this once I'm his target. I need to be careful.

'Lady Serana, a moment to talk, please,' he said, getting close enough so that he could talk without raising his tone. Serana saw that she was right in her perception before. His face was indeed marked by a degree of fear. 'What Azrael said, it unsettled me deeply. I couldn't believe my own ears, and now I have questions. Did you really found a conspirator inside these walls?'

I decided what to say before, she reminded herself, mentally rehearsing it. She hid the momentary thinking by faking a likewise momentary indecision. 'Listen, Garan,' she said softly. 'You've always been a loyal subject to my father, so I think I can let you in on a little secret, provided you can keep it to yourself.'

He shook his head and waved his hands impatiently. 'Anything you ask of me, my lady, just tell me the truth.'

'I really have no idea of who the traitor is. Azrael is the one behind the discovery. I had the time to privately report to him some unsettling things that I had heard while I was here. At a certain point, he seemed to stiffen and he told me that there was a traitor among us. He didn't reveal his name to me because he wasn't sure yet.' Her tension was increasing, and she could only hope that it wasn't showing. It had taken some effort to make that up on the spot. 'You can ask my father. Perhaps he knows,' she added, because Garan's suspicious expression hadn't changed.

The Mer's face was tense. 'My lady,' he said, 'you're telling me that our new member has told you of a conspiracy to dethrone our Lord, but didn't tell you who it was?'

A steel clutch gripped her chest. Damn it, she thought, blinking repeatedly. I made a mistake somewhere. But now I can hardly eat back what I've just said, can I? She thought for a moment. 'Yes, I suppose so,' she said, considering all the options. The best one, however, was to wait.

Garan scratched his forehead pensively. He seemed thoughtful, but only for a moment. He suddenly protruded his face forward, his arms shaking. 'What if he's playing one of those little wicked games of his?' he whispered. 'Have you thought about it, my lady? What if that was just a feint? What if it was meant to cover something?' He bit his lip and glanced at the floor, but only for a moment. 'What if,' he said, struggling to keep his voice down, 'he's the conspirator himself, and was just trying to draw attention away?'

I'm in a corner. I need to play it well. She feigned a moment of reflection once more, and shrugged. 'I don't think so, Garan. I think we can trust him.'

'With all due respect,' rejoined the Elf, 'it's not about what anyone thinks, it's about if we can trust him or not. This is about the truth.' He seemed to be barely able to contain his emotions, which was a lot to be said about the otherwise icy Garan Marethi. 'That Dunmer tried to kill us all. He's alive by a miracle. You're the one who should trust him less than everyone else.'

She didn't hear the end of the sentence very clearly. Unbeknownst to him, he had made a mistake himself and had shaken a rule that she could now forcefully reestablish. You slipped up, this once, she thought, putting her hands on her hips and frowning. 'Yes, indeed. I trust him less than everyone, and yet I'm giving him my faith. You should too. Do you dare question my father's judgment? Or mine, for that matter?'

A shade of grim understanding flowed on the Mer's face. He knows he has lost this battle and that he won't gain anything more from me. That was a small victory, but it was brief and gave her only a meager advantage. On the other hand, he knows I have something to hide now. But then again, everyone did now. She, the little girl who strolled around the court, had become a spy for her father and an ally to the newcomer. Her position was compromised to a point where that small risk wouldn't have damaged her greatly. There needs to be a change, because we won't be able to stand the friction. But first… I need to know what's really going on.

She turned towards Garan, knowing that he would now accept her leave. 'I apologize, Garan, but I have to join Azrael. I'll be happy to continue this conversation sometime in the future.' With that, she could guarantee the less amount of suspects as she could.

She didn't wait for a reply and turned around, finally free to let the worry she felt emerge on her face without anyone noticing. She raised her eyes. Azrael had disappeared in the corridor leading to her room. It's clear he wants me to talk to him. The sting of resentment rose again in her throat. Maybe he can explain how this mess came about.

She walked towards the doorway leading to her room. She heard the buzz coming from behind her still, and underneath it the sound of her own footsteps. Something occurred to her. Of course, Azrael managed to slip away because I didn't hear his footsteps. She had only once had a good look at his greaves, and the sole of the boots was made of a very resistant material that, however, was so soft that it hardly made any sound. The only noise she remembered him making as he walked was the cloak waving behind him.

Now, now… she said to herself, coming back from that useless thought. She needed to look at as many possibilities as she could before confronting him. There's so much to unravel though… His whole speech had been a riddle, but there seemed to be a main point. There was a traitor among the court members. But what does that mean? Is there another one that is planning something beside the two of us? That was the strangest part. Why would he ever expose the presence of a traitor among the court when the two of them were planning something that, if found out, could lead to the two of them being lynched? Why plant the seed of doubt? Who was that traitor, even?

There was also another thing. Why did he involve me? There were reasons she could think of, but there was one clear contract that made her think that the mention of her help had been something meant to manipulate the listeners more than anything else: the fact that he hadn't consulted her at all. And here he is again, weaving his web. You could even guess the brightness of his intellect from those sporadic deceptions. The amount of information he could muster, remember and then exploit in a single maneuver was immense.

As she turned around the corner, she made out his figure standing against the wall in a place where the corridor became larger. She looked at him, but nothing significant had changed in his appearance. He was holding one of the two Elder Scrolls in one hand, with the other tip of the roll lying on the ground.

She had to fight for a moment with her own mix of feelings. The subtle pull she felt when looking at him was clouding her mind and muffling her resentment. Both of those, however, would remerge stronger than before. But I can feel the anger. I really can. 'Very well, mastermind,' we said, stopping a few feet away from him and letting her irritation emerge through the bitter sarcasm. 'Now explain what you did.'

'Seriously?' There was a faint surprise in his cold voice. 'I thought it was obvious.'

Her throat almost closed and her face tickled. It couldn't flush, but the analogy was strong. Her hands too seemed to tickle, and the sense of touch crept to her teeth. 'What? Obvious?' Her voice was even angrier than how she felt. 'I'll not even touch of the more sentimental side of it, because you probably won't understand. But understand this: you just destroyed the reputation I have built for myself in over sixty years. Sixty! And why in Oblivion would you warn them about a traitor in their midst when we're…' Her voice trailed off. She lowered it significantly, with a great effort. 'When we're the ones who are acting behind their back.'

'I know,' he said. 'It was a necessary arrangement. We had no more time, and I had to buy us some more.' He looked absent for a moment, as if deep in thinking. 'I think you're missing the fact that your father is the pawn of most interest to me. The court won't do anything until he orders to, and I used the moment of weakness he had to trick him. Now we have more time.'

The fact, or the probability, that he had already calculated and assessed all the things that she thought he had neglected was irritating her even more. 'I know, but he's unstable. And the court suspects us. Garan Marethi just stopped me in my tracks, believing that you're the conspirator yourself. And by the way, who in the Mace of Soul's name is this traitor? I haven't told you anything…'

She stopped, because Azrael had either murmured something of had scoffed mockingly. She hadn't heard it clearly. 'Yes,' he said slowly and coldly, 'of course I'm the conspirator.'

Her whole body seemed to freeze on the spot for a second, but a second long enough that she almost felt like she was losing her balance. She couldn't think. She couldn't think of anything. 'You mean…' she stammered. 'You means there isn't any actual…'

'Obviously not.' There was a strange tone in his voice. She even thought that he seemed quite amused, in an idiosyncratic and eerie sort of way. 'If you're asking me, then yes, I admit I had my share of fun.'

She had renounced her clarity, and now it felt like it was a mixture of confusion and resentment speaking in her place. She was seeing through her eyes, but she didn't feel like she had much control of what she was saying. 'So you did that, you sacrificed my reputation and risked our safety to entertain yourself.'

'And buy more time,' he promptly answered. There was a faint trace of curiosity in his voice.

'Do you have any idea of the position we're in right now? We will never be able to come back safely to this castle! They will realize that something's amiss, and soon enough their suspicions will fall back on us. You could have just as well doomed us.'

The air around her seemed to cool down all of a sudden. She moved her eyes around. 'Serana.' She immediately brought her gaze back to Azrael's hidden face, felling her arms shaking. 'Get a hold of yourself and think.' The Dunmer's voice was hard and it was vibrating. 'Am I even talking with the Serana I know? Or with her fearful, deplorable little twin?'

No… she thought, and she thought it clearly. No, you're talking to me. That change in the air around her was clearly a result of her imagination, but it had snapped her wide awake. The raging core of indignation was still burning, but it wasn't talking through her mouth any longer. She felt her chest tight, and she imagined that if she had been breathing her breaths would have been incredibly short.

'It's me…' she whispered. 'I'm sorry.' She raised her head, looking him straight in his invisible eyes. 'But really, Azrael, I don't understand. Be clear with me, please. It's all I ask.'

He seemed to unexplainably hesitate for a moment before speaking. He remained silent in a way that she was unfamiliar with. 'Fine,' he said, and despite the strange pause the tone didn't shift; however, she still had the impression that he had left something unsaid. 'If everything goes according to my plans, which I'm confident it will, we will have to return just once to this castle, and we won't need anyone's approval in that specific occasion. I'll not go into any details now, because we don't have the time. Given that circumstance, I thought to play all the cards we had left, but all the time we could and throw the court in as much disarray as we could. Is it clear thus far?'

'Yes.'

'Good. With that borrowed time, we decipher the two Scrolls that are left. The Moth Priest knew a way, and he let me know. I have told your father that I will return with the Scrolls deciphered and that I will have the solution to the riddle that fuels his ambition. What happens after we decipher the Scrolls, I can only guess, but it won't alter my plans by a much.' He shook the hand holding the tip of the Scroll that he kept on the floor. 'Now, you take this and we set off. Grab your things and we will be gone from here.'

It's so much to digest… What he had done was now a bit clearer, but most of her ideas had turned into mental vapor. She hadn't imagined that his actions were on that scale, and that resulted in her not having seen the bigger picture. Yes again, he has managed to surprise me. She suppressed the storming sea of her thoughts as much as she could, knowing that a lengthy cavalcade awaited them. She went towards him and reached for the Scroll with her hand.

She closed the grip on the roll and picked it up. However, as she stepped towards her room, something else arose. 'Azrael,' she said. 'Last time we talked to each other we let me in in the decision that regarded us both. Why didn't you give me a choice, this once?'

As the silence fell, she realized how close they were. Her hands were almost touching on the tip of the Scroll and her chest was so very close to his shoulder. And yet, after a fraction of a second, Azrael moved away. His hand slid off the Scroll's tip and he stepped backwards. His hands moved slowly upwards, reaching his collarbones and grabbing the rims of the hood. His fingers closed on the fabric and pushed it back on his ears, and then vanished in the locks of dark hair that fell out of the cowl.

She stared motionlessly at his visage. The pale skin shone weakly in the dim corridor and the lips, in between the thick mustaches and the black beard, were barely parted. His eyes flared with an igneous, baleful light, but there seemed to also be a warm glow in those vermillion irises, streaked with bright yellow.

'You did have a choice, Serana,' he said, and the cold melted in tone that seemed languid. 'You could have stood up and told the court I was the traitor. You could have made sure that this once I didn't survive. You could still do it, but you won't. Instead, you have chosen to make this your last supper in this castle.' His gaze moved away from hers, to his right. His irises flared. 'You have chosen. And for reasons that I cannot fathom, you have chosen me.'

He brought one hand behind his head and grabbed his long, black hair in his grasp. The other hand grabbed the rim of the hood and pulled it back on his forehead. The black, impenetrable void hid his face once again, concealing it from her eyes.

'Grab your things and join me outside, I…' His tone was coated once again with ice, but his voice had broken. 'I need to think,' he said, grimly.

As he walked away, Serana felt something gnawing her very flesh as if devouring her from the inside.