Chapter 31 - Eisel the Usurper

The Bramble Slasher trembled in Lillia’s hands, its blade pointed toward Eisel as the white text hung between them like a death sentence.
[Vanquish Eisel the Usurper.]
Lillia turned away from the knights and leveled the Bramble Slasher at Eisel. Behind her, metal scraped against metal. Eisel raised one hand. The knights stopped at once.
“Your Highness,” Eisel said. His gaze lingered on the blade of the Bramble Slasher before he looked pointedly at the text in front of Lillia. “You aren’t going to start listening to that thing now, are you?”
Lillia adjusted her grip on the polearm. It felt heavy all of a sudden, like it was trying to bow down to the man in front of her.
“Lillia. Princess.” Eisel raised his hands and mocked surrender. He had a new cloak on. It matched the one he had given Lillia, down to the cut, clasp, and quiet sense that it belonged around someone else’s throat. “You don’t need to fight me. And if you did, I can guarantee it wouldn’t go well.”
Her back foot slid, ruining the stance Havoc had drilled into her. In another inch, she would not be fighting Eisel so much as falling open in front of him.
“Well…” Her voice was trembling. There had been a lot of horrible things in the dungeon. The dungeon had been gross, slimy, and mean. Occasionally, it had managed all three at once.
Eisel had seemed kind the first time they met. Manipulative, yes, but kind in the way court people could be kind when they wanted something.
Now, looking at him made sweat gather under her collar.
“Well, you’re—you’re in my way and…” Dammit. Every argument she formed collapsed before it reached her mouth. Each second Eisel spent staring at her shoved her protests further and further down her throat until they boiled in her stomach.
Lillia swallowed nothing.
Eisel lowered his hands.
“Good girl, Princess Lillia. You’re not going to fight me. It would just be dumb. There’s nothing you could do.”
The crystal-filtered firelight flickered on the Bramble Slasher’s blade as it shook in Lillia’s trembling hands.
“Luckily for you, your Highness, you have something I want.”
Lillia tried to take a step forward. She flickered her gaze between Eisel and the command.
[Vanquish Eisel the Usurper.]
She couldn’t do it.
The space between them was open stone. No barrier. No spell she could see. Nothing but a few steps of polished floor.
Lillia still could not cross it.
That was worse.
She felt her grip loosen on the Bramble Slasher. It sat in her fingers instead of her palms. Helpless. Useless.
“So are we willing to listen now, Your Highness?” Eisel took a step forward. The cloak flowed behind him, carried by a wind that didn’t exist. The hairs on Lillia’s neck stood on end.
Lillia checked the words again.
“Stop looking at them,” Eisel commanded. His voice boomed through the room, cracking like thunder off the walls.
Lillia obeyed. She shivered, but she obeyed.
“There we go. You don’t need to heed their words,” Eisel said. He took another step forward, Lillia braced but still wasn’t ready for it.
“I need the hearth,” Lillia said.
“Please. A hearth?” Eisel chuckled. The laughter was so much deeper than his usual voice. “Lillia, I can do so much more than a hearth. Just listen to me, pet. You’ll realize the hearth is meaningless.”
Lillia swallowed. No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t meaningless. Havoc needed it. She needed it.
A second voice slipped into Lillia’s thoughts. Or maybe it was her voice, and defiance was the stranger.
He was right, it said. She should listen. This would all be easier if she went along with it.
Lillia sagged.
The Bramble Slasher clattered to the stone floor.
Everything was so heavy.
All of this was so hard. She should just listen to someone in charge.
After all, what could she do about it?
Eisel was close as the sound of metal ringing off stone faded from the room. He leaned in to Lillia. “You’re lucky you were born so privileged. Think of what you have done so far. Even just in here.”
He was behind her now, circling. If Lillia’s will to fight was dying, Eisel circled it like a vulture.
“Getting to the third floor is your greatest triumph, isn’t it? The one thing you’ve done for yourself.” Eisel clicked his tongue. “But if you think about it, Your Highness, you’ve had so much help. So many people putting in the effort. Same as it was up there. You’re just a figurehead.”
The air around Eisel was thick as velvet and just as smothering. Each breath Lillia took seemed to stop halfway into her lungs.
He was right. Havoc had gotten hurt. She’d only survived because her dresses were powerful. She only had potions because Rickshaw took pity on her. She…
Wait.
Lillia had killed the Architect. Lillia had bled against the Ambusher. Lillia had solved every dumb puzzle in this room.
Those things had not happened to her.
She had done them.
The princess tried to move her hand. It was still so heavy. Eisel’s presence was suffocating her: a subtle pressure on the chest that she couldn’t take off.
“So let’s talk about what you need to do to keep yourself useful to me.”
Lillia wanted to protest. She felt the words hissing and sizzling on the edge of her tongue. But she couldn’t open her mouth. Her jaw was sewn tight. Looking at Eisel felt like standing too close to the edge of a tower. Her body kept insisting that one more step, one wrong word, would send her plummeting.
Every skill she had learned in court failed her. She could not smile through this. Could not flatter it. Could not argue it into becoming something else.
Luckily, the dungeon had not been teaching her court skills.
Her fingers closed around Vianaffir’s hilt before Eisel finished circling her.
The princess lashed out.
The blade flashed through the air, steel catching the brilliant firelight. The whooshing sound of slicing wind followed the blow until—
—until Eisel caught the sword, edge first, on the back of his white-gloved hand.
“Lillia, you don’t want to do this.”
The princess tried to press through. She needed the hearth. She wanted Havoc back. She didn’t want to listen to how useless she was. She’d heard that same refrain for five years! Lillia had her full weight on the blade and every ounce of strength she could muster. It didn’t even cut the fabric of his glove.
Eisel sighed. Backhanded. The strike landed with shocking neatness, glove against skin, and then the pain arrived a heartbeat later. Light burst across Lillia’s vision, sharp and colorless.
Lillia collapsed to the floor, rolling several times before coming to a stop. Her cheek burned. Her head was spinning. Her shoulder felt numb. Eisel stood above her, readjusting the glove on the hand he’d hit her with.
“You see, the white text? That is the dungeon itself…” Eisel rolled his eyes. “Stay down.”
Lillia was struggling to her feet. It was slow. It was arduous. She was dulling Vianaffir’s tip by using it as a cane. But she climbed all the way up. Her eyes were still watering from the strike as she leveled the blade at him.
“Really, Lillia? I was just going to explain how we can be partners.”
“You mean how you can use me?”
“So negative. Thinking everyone’s out to get you.” Eisel took a step towards Lillia, putting himself a mere inch from the blade. He didn’t even bother looking at it, and instead kept his eyes focused on Lillia. “Have you already forgotten what I’ve done for you?”
The clasp of the Usurper Lord’s Cloak felt heavy around Lillia’s neck. She didn’t let him see the pressure.
“It should be a simple partnership. You’re nothing without me, and my life is easier with you.”
Lillia knew those words. Lillia knew that deal too well.
Lillia lunged.
Eisel snapped his fingers and vanished from the point of her blade.
He was suddenly on the other side of the room. Lillia struck the air where he’d been. Her sword crashed into the flagstone and rattled her arms.
The princess looked up at Eisel as he lowered his hand. The text hovered between them.
[Vanquish Eisel the Usurper.]
She had to get to the hearth.
No.
More than anything, Lillia had to choose another path. She had to get out from under another thumb. She had spent five years hiding in her room, constantly telling herself that escaping her aunt’s control was impossible. She wasn’t going to let the same thing happen when she was stuck in a stupid, gross dungeon.
Without lowering the blade, Lillia shifted her grip, held the weapon in one hand, and crushed the chitterpede chitin in the other. The chitin cracked in her hand, and the battlegown bloomed across her in a riot of emerald shimmer and hard, glittering edges. She was armored in splendor.
[Vanquish Eisel the Usurper.]
The princess charged, blade in hand.
Eisel sneered. “I see I failed to slap some sense into you.”
She crossed the dance floor in emerald glittering emerald armour.
“I suppose I’ll have to beat this lesson into you.”
Lillia screamed and turned it into a battle cry.
“You won’t be the first person to try!”
[Vanquish Eisel the Usurper.]