There was a flicker of surprise in his reaction. He didn’t know everything then. “He said that? Free the dead?”
Elloven answered with cool silence.
“You must tell him to abandon this foolishness.”
She hadn’t expected that. “Don’t you want to be free of this place? To move on? Or are you just reluctant to give up all this power you have here?”
“This isn’t a palace, Aelloven. It’s a tomb. Whoever has told your necromancer to do this doesn’t know what they’re asking. They’re missing vital information.”
“Such as?”
“Yes, I want to move on, very much,” he said. His melancholy smile flickered before the rest of him. “My brother is behind this. Even now, he cannot let it go.”
“Estelar has nothing to do with this.”
“You must disabuse yourself of the foolish notion that your necromancer is here on some heroic mission. He was manipulated. Lied to. Entertaining any other alternative will add mountains to your disappointments.”
“I’m numb to them at this point.” She was too flummoxed to decide whether Jesstin’s optimism or Laxius’s cynicism was more accurate, but she was getting her answer. “Why do you want him to find me, if not for that?”
He smiled wistfully. “So you’re not alone here, darling. Do you really believe he’d let you toil here by yourself?”
Elloven hesitated. She’d hoped to pose it as a question, but stating her intention might get her further. “I’d have Gennady.”
Laxius shook his head at the ground. “He’s not here.”
“At Imperator Hall?”
“In the Infinitum.”
She balked. “But he’s dead.”
“The answer is complicated and not mine to offer.”
“Your sordid library seems to agree.”
Elloven was on the back foot, and her frustration wasn’t helping. Trust wouldn’t gain her ground, but if she could do what Jesstin often did, if she could read the situation while living it, maybe she could get somewhere. “I could speak with Je—with my necromancer if I understood exactly what the dangers are.”
Laxius flicked his attention to his hands with a terse, wry smirk that knocked the breath right out of her. It was a Gennady gesture, down to the way his thumbs and pinkies bent inward, his lips lifting only at one corner. “Have you seen your mother?”
She laughed because his redirection was absurd, but it was perfectly in line with the characterization offered in his biography. He was no different from the others in Rivenholde. Their ambiguity was power, but she’d adapted to it. “You mean Shioven of Curia Duskmaw? Daughter of the pretor?”
“How long have you known?” His eyes knit inward in surprise.
Elloven shrugged and mimicked his smirk, but her thoughts were another matter. If Laxius was asking about Shioven, then she couldn’t be at Imperator Hall. So where was she?
Laxius nodded in understanding. “You don’t trust me, and you shouldn’t.” He leaned in, elbows on his knees. “But no trust is required for you to look within yourself and know when something is not right.”
“Nothing in that world or this one is right.”
“You yourself witnessed the spectacle of deception they cling to in Rivenholde,” he replied.
“Men are the same everywhere,” she said unemotionally, surprised at her behavior, her calm, which had been building into something useful—finally. “Rivenholde isn’t special nor unique.”
“They lured you there, Aelloven.” Laxius’s tenor shifted slowly to desperation. “They used you and had you killed.”
“Why am I here, Laxius?” She gestured around. “Why did you bring me here?”
“If you entered Imperator Hall?—”
