Still, I couldn’t get the dead sound of her voice out of my head, the way her eyes had gone black.
I shuddered as everything spun and rocked and jerked as I sat, struggling to keep my body upright while pouring glass after glass.
All the bottles except for this one were empty. Of course, I wasn’t drinking them anymore. Regardless, I continued the pouring motion, anyway, like one of those weighted birds old men kept on their desks.
Pour. Name. Pour. Name.
Up and down.
Over and over.
I needed a top hat.
My voice cut through the darkness as I listed off every person I had killed, every person I had wronged. As I sealed my fate with the admission of my sins and grievances.
If only the heavily fermented drink was enough to wash them away.
I was sure the people who had first built this abbey would think so. Either that, or they would hang me, my sins too great for any form of redemption.
“For Dramin.” My tongue slurred around the words, and Thom exhaled in such a way that, if I wasn’t sure from the snoring that he was already asleep, I would have thought he had heard me.
But there was only silence.
Me and the crickets.
I sighed, and this time, I downed the drink, the liquid pouring down my chin as it burned my throat, the taste more like acid than liquor. I didn’t care. It didn’t really matter, anyway. I was already far too inebriated for my own good, the bad combination of emotional turmoil and sleep deprivation only heightening the effects.
It was an interesting sensation—losing control.
I had seen the youth of society do it enough as I dragged Talon from concert to concert. I guessed it was my turn.
I faux-poured again, the glasses slamming against each other as my hand shook. Even though nothing came out of the bottle, I still followed the action. I still stared at the now empty glass, my mind feeling blank and hollow as I tried to think of the next name, the next person I had sold bits of my soul to betray. However, nothing was there anymore. The massive list had disappeared with the mention of that one name.
It was only Dramin now.
Perhaps it was because he was here, in this abbey, that his name and what I had done to him stuck with me. All the other faces had gone, leaving me with nothing other than the withered, weak, old man who had woken up only hours before. His body, while appearing young, was so weak from whatever was destroying him that he looked to have lost some of his immortality.
I hadn’t even known that was possible, but having seen him, I guessed it was.
I focused on the glass, though I didn’t see it, my mind still buzzing with the thought of the man whose life I alone had destroyed, the man who wouldn’t even look at me. The man who Sain had said would know the answer to my question.
I was going to find out, now.
My steps were loud slaps through the silence as I moved to the door, my need to know driving me on. I had never been one to back down from getting the answers I needed. This time was no different. I needed to know about the dreams, about the T?uha, even if I had to face Dramin.
Even if I had to face what I had done to him.
The hallways were far too dark, and with my heightened senses being dulled by the last few hours of drinking, it was difficult for me to see much of anything. This was what mortals must feel like in an old building. Creaks were louder, shadows longer, and everything was dark. I couldn’t be sure, but I swore there was a hunched man following me.
No wonder horror movies were so popular.
I had never seen the pull, but now that I was in one, I didn’t know if I wanted to keep going or press pause and find a way to escape.
The sound of my steps was hollow in my ears as I turned the last corner to face the old, weathered door and the room I had vacated only hours before.
I stared at it, my ears perked for signs of life, for conversation, for anything that would give me cause to turn around and avoid this conversation altogether. I already knew I couldn’t, though. As much I was dreading it, it wasn’t really an option anymore. If the few of us who were in this abbey were all that was left of Ilyan’s people, then Dramin would be the only one who would have the answers I needed.
My hand was a metal weight as I placed it against the door, the wood rough against my palm, my fingers dragging against it as I pulled it into a fist. All I could hear was the fearful beat of my heart as I hesitated, every muscle twisting and winding in anxious nerves.
The sound of the knock was an explosion of sound. It was a shot of a gun, and I stiffened, my confidence snapping into place as I waited. The tension that ruled my body only grew as his voice called back.
“Enter.”
It was one word, but it was all that I needed. My back straightened as I walked into the darkness of his room, my forehead wrinkling in agitation as I let my eyes adjust.