Page 121 of His Realm

“Yes. And that appears to be Cirillo.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Varic has placed Cirillo in charge of Ophir, and he’s to live here and run it, as Count Cirillo Ormiston of Ophir.”

“It sounds good.”

“It is very good for him and his family. They have always been nobility, but not titled. Now Cirillo is a count, and his son, should he have one, will be one as well.”

“That’s great.”

“Alrek has been given the title of Senior Builder and will remain here for the foreseeable future. As far as I can tell, he wants to be. Looking back, I think he’d always wanted to be close to Varic, and now he is. Both Alrek and Cirillo have taken rooms in the castle, those that Carice has already redone.”

I was surprised. “Carice stayed too?”

“Yes,” she replied, her brows crinkling together in thought. “She…did you know she knew anything about interior design?”

“No, but I’m not surprised. People have to find things to do if they’re going to live for hundreds of thousands of years,” I teased her.

“Well, she’s very good and has a whole group of artisans who work with her or for her, I’m not certain, and her son is here as well, heading a school in the main level of the castle. They ring a bell every morning, and all the children, from iceni to dene, come to learn. He and others he brought with him, and still more who arrive every day, are testing the children and finding out what they need to be taught and what they already know.”

“So Chryos is here teaching, his mother is here turning the castle into a palace, and Cirillo is governing. Do I have it all?”

“You do, except that you and Varic are going to be making lots of trips here, as we both know he wants to make certain everything goes to his plan.”

“That makes sense. Much like the king, he almost lost both of us. I’m sure he’s going to expect so much more from everyone going forward.”

She nodded.

“Did you find out how Decimus kept himself from wasting away?”

“Yes. Apparently, he had his private guard secretly leave Ophir every hundred years and paid handsomely to have members of the nobility open a vein for him and bleed into bottles.”

“Without giving a drop to his sons or the nobility here.”

“That’s correct.”

“And the guards were fine with it and didn’t question anything because none of them were suffering from the wasting disease.”

“Yes,” she said with an exhale.

“He was truly a monster.”

“There is no defense to be made.”

I didn’t want to talk about Decimus anymore. “I saw Nerilla.”

“How did she look?”

Not how did you see Nerilla, or you were dreaming, just immediately to how did she look? You had to love people who believed. “She looked beautiful. She was in a lavender dress I never saw before.”

“She loved lavender. It was her favorite color even before Cassius gave her his seal.”

“Well, she said to tell you she loved you and that she was in the Otherworld with your son. He waved to me, but I didn’t speak to him.”

“No. You would not. Only those you know and love are able to converse with you from the other side.”

“If I’d known that, I could have seen that as a sign that I was still alive.”