A few days later, Trevain was scarfing down an omelet that Mr. Fiskel had prepared while he skimmed through the newspaper. Elandria smiled at him as she sipped on her orange juice and nibbled her toast. His health and spirits had improved exponentially since the night she had sung to him. She could see that he was almost himself again.
Trevain suddenly closed the newspaper and folded it up. “Maybe I’m out of line, Elandria—but what would you think of me asking for your sister’s hand in marriage?”
Elandria dropped her fork. It had been tragically halfway to her mouth with a piece of buttered toast on it. She stared at Trevain in bewilderment.
“I know there’s a gigantic difference in our ages… a gulf really. But do you think it’s too large? Aazuria doesn’t seem to notice or care.”
It was a moment before Elandria had the presence of mind to retrieve her fallen toast. She stared at it intently, as if it would reveal the answers to her.
“I know it seems really sudden. I just thought I’d ask for your opinion… and your permission, before I go ahead and do anything stupid.”
Elandria thought about the fact that if Aazuria chose to marry Trevain and live on land, Adlivun would become her responsibility. Elandria shuddered at this thought; she did not wish to be placed into such a frightening position of power. Then she thought about the fact that her sister seemed very happy with Trevain. Happier than she had been in as long as Elandria could remember.
He waited for a moment, but there was no response. He smiled nervously. “I thought so. It is a stupid idea, isn’t it?”
She still remained quiet, and he sighed. “Elan, I understand the basic hand signals for ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Do you think I’m an idiot for considering this? Just tell me what you think.”
The hand holding the fork—which had been pierced through a carefully cut square of toast—began to shake. Elandria tried to breathe steadily, thinking about how little Trevain knew of her family. Happiness could never last when there were so many skeletons in the cupboard. How should she respond? This was not an easy question to answer. An idea began to form in the back of her mind. She considered telling Trevain something personal, just to test his love for her sister.
“Should I be worried that she hasn’t returned yet?” Trevain asked. “Is that what this is about?”
Elandria stood up and headed for a certain cabinet she had seen the men go into. She grabbed the knobs and flung the doors open. Choosing a bottle, she held it up and looked at Trevain questioningly.
“Uh, help yourself,” he said, scratching his head. “But it’s pretty early in the day for scotch and I’m not sure you’re even of legal…”
He stopped because Elandria had already opened the bottle and was guzzling it down as though it were water. He watched in surprise as she finished a quarter of the bottle before he rose to his feet to wrestle it from her surprisingly strong grip.
“That’s pretty potent stuff, Elan,” he said with a frown. “It’ll hit you really hard.”
“That liquid is vile!” she said, wheezing and screwing up her face. She placed a hand against her nose to ease the burning in her sinuses. Her eyes were beginning to water.
“Yeah, it is,” he agreed, looking at the bottle. “It was my brother’s favorite. Hey! You talked again.”
“May I have another sip?” she asked politely. Against his better judgment, but unable to resist the sweet request in the third sentence he had ever heard her speak, he handed the bottle back to her. He watched warily as her sip became several generous gulps.
“Elan…” he began in confusion.
“Trevain, there are a few things you need to know,” Elandria said, coughing as she put the bottle aside. She retrieved a napkin to daintily wipe the moisture from her lips.
“I’m all ears,” he said.
She hesitated. “Aazuria, and Corallyn and I… we each have different mothers.”
“Different mothers? That’s unusual. I suppose some people remarry…”
“He did not ‘remarry,’ as you say,” Elandria hissed. “Our father… he had many wives simultaneously. At least at first. Eventually, he stopped marrying them all together. He just chose whomever he wanted, and he took her…”
“Are you saying your father was a rapist?”
“No. Perhaps not in the legal sense of the term. But also, yes. Very much so. Women simply did not refuse him. He was a man of power, and everyone was afraid to say ‘no’ to him.” She picked up the bottle again and proceeded to swallow several mouthfuls of liquor before looking Trevain squarely in the face. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve and spoke again. Her voice faltered. “Even his own daughters were afraid.”
Trevain tried to respond, but found himself failing to find the right words. “I’m so sorry, Elan.” He swallowed. “I had no idea...”
“The type of father a girl has creates a profound effect on the woman she becomes,” Elandria said softly. “My father is the reason that I prefer never to speak.”
As he watched the emotions dance across her face, Trevain felt hot tears sting the back of his eyes. He raised a hand to his temple, and took a deep breath. “God, I wish I could undo what happened to you. Why… why are you choosing to tell me this?”
“I trust you. If you wish to become my brother it is important that you understand what little you can of our lives and past.”
Trevain reached for the same bottle in which she had put a remarkable dent, and took a few gulps himself. He understood how the bitter taste made it easier to converse about such topics. “So you’re trying to tell me that Aazuria is not in the least bit ready for marriage because of what her father did to her.”
Elandria smiled a neurotic little smile. “He did not touch her. She was his firstborn, his pure gold baby. He would have locked her up and kept her in a metal cage forever if he could have done so. He did try to do so a couple times, but the cage was made of ice—and ice always melts. No, he only came to me, and to Corallyn, and to our other sisters. We had a few other sisters, but they have killed themselves.”
Trevain felt physically sick upon hearing this. Bile rose in his throat as rage blossomed in his gut. “I didn’t know—I didn’t know. God. What you must think of me, crying like a child over my brother when you have lost siblings too! I can’t believe… why didn’t she tell me any of this?”
Elandria reached out and placed her hand on his arm as he struggled to cope with the information. It was more challenging for her to speak at all than for her to actually face these facts. It was all in the past, and she knew how to be detached. Trevain was more emotional than she was. In her lengthy existence she had seen and experienced much suffering. She was excellent at being numb when she most needed to be.
“It doesn’t matter,” he suddenly said resolutely. “That’s all in the past. I want to make her life and all of your lives better. I’ll help you heal, the way you have helped me heal. Tell me truthfully, Elan. Do you think I shouldn’t ask Aazuria to marry me? Is it too soon; should I give her some space?”
So he was not yet dissuaded. Her brow creased in a combination of pleasure and frustration. Elandria looked down at her hands for a moment in silence, as if deciding whether or not she should answer.
“Elandria?” he urged, a bit frantically.
She looked up at him for several seconds, with a decisive and intense expression rapidly consuming her normally timid features. He could feel that her next words were going to be pivotal, but he could not have prepared himself.
“Aazuria killed our father.”
“What?” Trevain took a step backward as though he had been struck. “She did wha… are you… you’ve got to be... a joke…” He seemed incapable of finishing his sentences, and temporarily powerless to begin any new ones. He slammed his hand down on the breakfast table as though trying to jumpstart his stalling brain. “Dear Lord! You’re serious. Aazuria killed her father? Aazuria killed her father.”
Elandria nodded gravely as she observed his reaction with as much mild amusement as she could allow herself to feel.
Trevain took several deep breaths, placing both hands on the table to calm himself and process the information. “Aazuria killed… killed as in murdered. She’s a murderer. God. Is that—that seedy looking fellow, Naclana, is he her defense attorney? Is she on trial? If so, she needs a real lawyer! Someone who gets haircuts. We can get her off…”
A smile touched Elandria’s face. She had already gotten her answer; she knew with whom Trevain’s loyalties were aligned. “She is not on trial. Everyone knows that she did it. Everyone begged her to do it.”
Trevain had to take a moment to let this sink in as well. “How did she kill him?”
“Why does that matter?” Elandria asked, studying his face carefully.
“I guess it doesn’t,” he answered. “I’m just curious—and very confused.”
“She drowned him,” Elandria answered, “with his own blood.”
Trevain’s brow wrinkled in consternation as he tried to imagine Aazuria doing this. “How?”
“I believe the precise term is ‘hemothorax.’ She stabbed him between the ribs in a particular spot, severing an artery and causing his lungs to fill with blood in less than a minute.”
She saw that Trevain was staring at her rather aghast upon hearing the details of this description. Elandria reflected upon her father for a moment. There were several sacred tenets that every sovereign sea nation abided by—not laws in the sense of the ones enforced on land, but principles of living. Her father had broken the first tenet:
Ye who dwell beneath the sea or above it, know that your breath is a gift. If ye desecrate the sanctity of the liberty and wellbeing of any innocent human without just cause, your breath shall be stripped from you straightaway. Henceforth, you shall become one of the cursed legions of the drowning mermaids and mermen.
The major concept among sea-dweller faiths was that breath was holy. It was what gave life, and it was what took life away. Adlivun’s myth of the afterlife depicted that if one lived in a dishonorable way, they would spend eternity struggling for oxygen; struggling to extract it from any medium possible.
Hell was eternal asphyxiation.
“Why do you call it drowning?” Trevain asked. “Wouldn’t ‘stabbing’ be a more appropriate description?”
Elandria considered this. She wished she could articulate the relevant spiritual significance behind the act, but Trevain would not understand without context. She could only explain it anatomically. “I suppose that death actually comes from the loss of blood more than suffocation with blood. This is just the way that our people refer to this… traditional method of execution.”
“Traditional,” he repeated. He shook his head, almost refusing to believe that it was true.
“You may consider my sister a murderess, but our people consider her a heroine. Aazuria is my champion. I needed you to know; she may seem sweet and gentle, but she is also incredibly strong. She is very important to many people. She is not the kind of person that anyone can ever get away with hurting.”
“I would never hurt her,” Trevain said hoarsely.
“Yes, but in the unlikely case that you did, there would be dire consequences.” Elandria gave him a forbidding smile. “I can assure you of that.”
“I need some time to process this,” Trevain said slowly. “Thank you for telling me.”
He nodded at Elandria before exiting the room. He went directly to the library, where he began to briskly pace back and forth across the length of the room. He continued to pace for hours, hardly noticing the passage of time. He was overwhelmed with trying to accept and understand this new information. He knew that Elandria would not lie to him.
He paced the library until his leg was terribly sore. He had not been on his feet for a few days, and his bad leg protested against the sudden vigorous exercise. His limp became very pronounced as he continued to pace, but he did not notice this. He did not know how to accept that the woman for whom he had developed a deep attachment, the woman whose family he already loved and considered his own—the woman whom he wished to take as his wife was a murderess. Regardless of how awful her father had been, death was not the solution. He did not know if he could ever forgive her for having done such a savage thing.
Part of him knew that he already had.