8. Unnerving
I hate this.
I hate this.
Dammit...
Zesha crushed the fruit that he'd been eating in the courtyard with his hand, as he thought about his position of watching over Callista. It was starting to get unnerving to him-as in, even more unnerving than usual. It was eating away at his mind, nagging him constantly throughout the day, and annihilating his own sleep. He had enough of this-completely enough of these nagging thoughts.
Yet...the more he tried to ignore them, the stronger they got. And that necessarily wasn't good when one was right-hand man to Lord Zangurak and needed to focus on military tactics...
He let out a sigh, looking around the empty courtyard as he kept thinking about the past week. Callista had been alright-silent, yes, but then again he'd ignored her existence a lot during the first few days so that made perfect sense. Then, when he got sick, that was when she'd paid more attention to him. He assumed this was to try to gain brownie points with him, to get on his good side, but she was human and that obviously meant that she was probably trying to use him in some way. So, he had basically tried to shoot down her attempts.
Then, when he'd asked about why the filthy humans had to be so stubborn...well...when she made her point about the stubbornness issue, that really had him thinking. It had him thinking about the humans, his own race-even himself. Was he really that stubborn about his views? Perhaps-no, definitely.
Then when he had literally collapsed onto her, after being humiliated at the ball, she didn't stand there and let him almost die on the spot. She had saved his life-he admitted that to himself-and he didn't understand why she would do something like that.
She was his enemies. Enemies were not supposed to aid enemies. It made absolutely no sense to him at all.
Why did she help him? Why? It was getting so complicated with him...
Leaving the courtyard, he started to head back to his room, intent on checking on his captive.
Callista looked up as Zesha entered the room.
"Y-you're back." She managed to say quietly. Zesha looked down at her, remembering that she was still outside of the cage. She was still wearing that red dress (which Zesha wanted her to change out of soon-then again, he admitted that it did look nice on her...) and she had a small piece of bread in her hand, apparently in the middle of eating it when he arrived. Yin probably gave it to her earlier, out of pity. The tailor was too nice for her own good...
"You haven't made a fuss while I was gone?" He asked quietly, leaning against the door after closing it. Callista shook her head in response. "Good..." He paused, glancing at Callista for a moment before looking away. The two were silent again, unsure of what to say.
Zesha occasionally glanced at Callista as he took out a few daggers from his belt, glancing at them as well. The blades were clean, and well-polished as well. He rarely used the how-many-daggers hidden on him because no one ever really knocked the swords from his grasp in battle, but it was always good to practice in case. Twirling one of the daggers in his hands, he threw it at the wall across from him.
A gasp tore from his hostage's throat when the dagger hit the wall directly, sticking deep into the stone. Callista looked surprised at this, and he knew that the reaction was to be expected. She had never seen him with the knives before, after all. Walking over to the wall, he pulled the dagger out of it quietly as he glanced at her again.
"I-I didn't know you could do that." Callista spoke up quietly, making eye contact with him.
He merely nodded in response. "I've been able to do it for ages." He admitted quietly, sheathing the daggers and sitting on the floor only a few paces from her, watching her quietly. The two were silent again, before the Countess-to-be spoke again.
"Have you gotten any better?"
He blinked, unsure of what she just said. "Pardon?"
"Are you any better?" She asked again. "From...being sick and all..."
Zesha hesitated, before speaking again, averting his eyes from hers. "Better, I suppose." He finally managed. "I do not plan on dying anytime soon."
She smiled faintly at that. "I'm glad you're alright..."
He just didn't respond, looking away from her completely.
Why was she being so kind to him? They were enemies. Enemies were not supposed to be nice to enemies...right?
Author note: Yay! New chapter! Though it is a bit short... *sweatdrop* Thanks to all of you guys for reading this fic so far, and reviewing it as well-I really appreciate it. XD