“I am not angry with you. But I can’t be having these kinds of conversations with you! It’s my mistake, the alcohol and us being alone here shifted the boundaries. But please, let me put them back up and let’s go home.”
A sour feeling spread through my belly.
“Shifting boundaries? Wetalked, Theo! Like two normal people, nothing happened!” Thunder clapped outside, and I froze for a second.
“We are not friends, Maelis. This is a work arrangement and if we keep pretending to be friends, hell will break loose! There is so much at stake here, it’s not only about you and me and us having a good fucking time!”
He almost yelled and I took a step back.
“Wow, what a nice way of letting me know what you think about me, thanks for that!” I hissed, balling my hands into fists at my sides.
He stomped forward, only stopping stretches away from me.
“Don’t you get it? You can’t keep flirting with me like that and expect me not to care for you. You kept saying all these nice things to me after the battle with Ignara, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that for weeks now!
What’s even worse is Iwantto hear how you feel about me and Iwantyour flattery and attention. I shouldn’t care, I shouldn’t want anything from you! But here you are, occupying every single last damn part of my mind and I can’t take it, don’t you understand?” He sighed in frustration.
Wow.
His voice turned softer.
“I thought if we spent some time together, we could become friends and things would be more normal between us, but…”
I raised my arms in question.
“But what, Theo? Most people would be happy to hear that someone was impressed with them. How dare I be kind and honest with you?”
I could hear myself talking like an indignant child, but I was hurt by his reaction. I couldn’t stop the words tumbling out of my mouth.
“I am sorry, I don’t know how else to be. I like you and I want to be able to tell you I like you without you getting all angry about it.”
I turned around and walked towards the barn doors.
“I am not most people,” he said, more quietly now. “I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s taking everything in me to keep my boundaries up. I have waited more than 500 years to fulfill this prophecy, and I can’t risk it now by letting my guard down.” He sighed.
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe theOracle didn’t mean any of this stuff? You said it yourself, it was the priests who turned the prophecy into what it is today. They might have been wrong about it and you just accept it. You are the God of Wisdom and yet you blindly follow a prophecy that was written down centuries ago!” I said angrily.
He stared back at me, but didn’t say another word. We looked at each other and all the unspoken things hung between us like the dark clouds outside the barn.
Theo looked away first.
“I am sorry, I didn’t want the day to end like this,” he finally said, grabbing the basket and walking towards me. “Let’s go home and talk about this another day.”
I only nodded, too tired and emotional to say any more. We took the pathways, I was holding on to the basket slung across his shoulder so as not to touch him. When we reached the Lodge, I quickly said goodbye and hurried inside, past Caelan who was coming down the stairs.
He gave me a quizzical look, but didn’t stop me. As I got to the top of the stairs, I heard Caelan sigh. “What did you do now, God of Wisdom?”
* * *
I didn’t see Auretheos the following day and I didn’t try looking for him. He had been right about a lot of the things he had said, but that didn’t change the fact that I was angry at him for being so cold towards me. He always seemed so calm and collected that it was hard for me to believe anything ever fazed him.
Making the conscious decision to not think about Theo anymore, I returned to the task at hand. Lydia had givenme small exercises for my training days in order to build up my tolerance towards the rush of magic. I had been able to successfully stop time when Malek had thrown an apple at Lythandra at breakfast and the fallout of my drunken rush had been minimal. I still had a long way to go, but my skills were improving.
The Abbot kept to himself most days, he was busy with temple business and hadn’t spoken of harnessing my powers again. Lydia and I had taken up to training in the attic of the Lodge as it was getting too chilly to practice outside. I had completed another one of her weights training sessions when we were interrupted by one of the sentinels.
“Forgive my interruption, but the Lord has requested your presence in the dining room in an hour.” I looked over at Lydia, who seemed to be less surprised than I was by the formal invitation. She shrugged and rolled her eyes.
“Fine… It’s my birthday today. I specifically asked Auretheos not to make a big deal out of it, but it seems that boy won’t listen to anyone,” she said with an exasperated sigh.
