EVERYONE FELT AS THOUGH THE TEMPERATURE HAD dropped by several degrees.
“The fact that I’m here today should be the only answer you need,” replied Orthon.
For the first time since this tense conversation had started, the Felon appeared seriously upset. So upset, in fact, that Oksa almost felt sorry for the man who’d caused her family and friends so much pain and heartache. His jaw was set, his temples were throbbing with suppressed anger and his breath was coming in fast, ragged gasps. No one in the room said a word. Lukas, tight-lipped, shook his head slowly from left to right, looking disgusted by Ocious’s attitude. Farther away, Agafon covered the lower part of his face with his hands, his expression more despairing than saddened.
“You’re my grandfather and you’re a great man,” broke in Gregor, his fists balled. “But you have no right to talk to my father like that!”
“I can talk to your father any way I like,” snapped Ocious scornfully. “I’d put all my hope in my descendants. My child should have been truly superior with the combined bloodlines of our ancestor Temistocles and Gracious Malorane. Fate saw fit to give me twins, so I was doubly blessed. But what did they do with the huge opportunity I offered them? My daughter sacrificed everything for a cheap love affair, and my son…”
His eyes drifted towards Orthon, before coming back to Gregor:
“… my dear son Orthon preferred music, poetry, daydreaming and wasting time. I struggled to make him see that his choices weren’t worthy of the man he should be. Orthon had enormous potential and he’s spent his whole life frittering it away.”
“My father is a powerful man!” interrupted Gregor.
“Powerful? A powerful man wouldn’t have diluted our family’s lineage by having children with an Outsider!”
Gregor gave a cry of rage. He was about to launch himself at his heartless grandfather when Orthon grabbed his arm to stop him. His expressionless mask dropped for a second, revealing a gleam of sheer hatred in his eyes. Then the icy mask reappeared.
“Orthon isn’t up to the task,” declared Ocious. “He’s never measured up and never will.”
His cutting tone was sharp enough to pierce the hardest rocks. Or the hardest hearts.
“I’ve never measured up to whom, Father?” asked Orthon finally, his tone admirably controlled. “Up to a man whose whole life has been a failure? You didn’t even manage to leave Edefia while I, your pathetic son, did, and will do so again. But perhaps your contempt is actually a way of hiding your intense jealousy and wounded pride. Am I right, Father?”
He glared at him challengingly.
“And let me remind you that without the help of our beloved Oksa Pollock, Edefia would have died, and so would the Outside. And who caused all that damage? You did, I’d say. You did, all by yourself.”
His dispassionate voice made him more frightening than ever. All hell tended to break loose after these periods of deceptive calm. Oksa had learnt that to her cost on several occasions. Still waters always run deep and dangerous.
Ocious was just as cool and collected. Instead of replying, he stiffened and studied his son for a long time, his face blank of any feeling or emotion. Only his mouth twisted into a nasty grimace.
“It took a little girl,” hissed Orthon ominously, “to correct your mistakes. Fancy that! And you’d have me believe that I’m the one who doesn’t measure up?”
He gave a mirthless laugh full of deep bitterness.
“You failed, Father. From the start, you’ve done nothing but fail.”
“My biggest failure was you,” declared Ocious.
These words resounded like a gunshot aimed to kill and, although they didn’t strike Orthon down, they shattered the final taboo, eradicating the last vestiges of Orthon’s humanity.
The unstoppable lightning bolt flashed from Orthon’s hand and hit the elderly ruler in the middle of the chest.
No one reacted.
The impact sent him flying to the other side of the room like a cannon ball. He smashed into the mosaic wall, crushing the little blue and silver squares that had been firmly attached for centuries. A large charred circle appeared in his tunic, revealing the mangled flesh, while a trickle of blood from his head looked even redder in comparison to his chalky-white face. Eyes wide with incomprehension, he stared at his despised son, who was keeping him suspended in mid-air from a distance. Orthon’s black pupils expanded until his eyes were almost entirely covered with a dark liquid rage. Stretching out his arm, stiff and gnarled as a tree trunk, he was venting years of pent-up bitterness, and it seemed that destruction was the only possible outlet for this extraordinary surge of energy.
A death rattle escaped from Ocious’s bluish lips: Orthon had just tightened his grip around his father’s neck. Everyone looked in horror at the Felon’s fingers, which had clenched into eagle-like talons, and it was easy, and horrifying, to imagine their effect on the elderly ruler.
Realizing what was happening, Andreas threw himself at his half-brother with a cry of rage. But nothing and no one could stop Orthon—his insatiable hunger for revenge made him invincible. With his free arm he hurled a Knock-Bong at the brother he hated. Andreas was catapulted against the column behind which Oksa was hiding. She clapped her hand over her mouth and moaned, tears stinging her eyes.
“He’s going to kill everyone,” she murmured, trembling.
“Not the totality of personages, my Gracious,” corrected the Lunatrix, on the verge of fainting. “Strictly the execrable fatherhood.”
Oksa was breathing faster and her heart was beating so hard and so loudly that it hurt her chest. Her whole body was reacting to the violence she was witnessing unseen. Andreas was semi-conscious on the ground in front of her. His hair, which was usually so tidy, lay across part of his white face. With his eyes half closed he looked dazed, although he had to be in severe pain from his left arm, which was twisted at an odd angle.
No one dared to move. Gregor and Mortimer stared at their father, the former with real respect, the latter terrified. The oldest Felons there—the twins, Lukas, Agafon and the hard-faced woman—were watching Ocious. Coldly. Without pity. Immobilized against the wall, the suffocating Docent looked pleadingly at them. His bloodshot eyes were gradually clouding over and death was fast approaching.
None of them moved except Orthon, who stepped forward. The others backed away.
“You do know that you brought this on yourself, don’t you, Father?” he asked, his head tilted back to gaze deep into Ocious’s eyes.
He spread the fingers of his hand, relaxing the hold that was suffocating the old man. Still conscious, although bruised and battered, Ocious collapsed onto the shards of broken mosaics.
“Look at me,” murmured Orthon, kneeling down to get as near as he could to his dying father’s face.
Oksa was closer than anyone. She heard every single word of the conversation, unlike the others who remained silent spectators.
“Why… did you come back?” groaned Ocious, between two rattling breaths. “You could have… become… the ruler of… the Outside.”
Orthon’s eyes widened and he looked visibly shaken by these words.
“Is that why you’re annoyed with me?” he breathed. Too weak to reply, Ocious closed his eyes, then opened them again, looking even more exhausted.
“Your return… was my worst failure,” he managed to murmur with huge effort.
Orthon no longer tried to hide his feelings of hurt or rage during this painful conversation.
“I just wanted to show you that you could be proud of me! I wanted you to know that I wasn’t the weak, timid boy you thought! But you always find fault with what I do and the decisions I make, and you always will—always.”
His face tensed and his hands began to shake.
“Why did you always run me down?” he continued, almost inaudibly. “Why don’t you love me?”
“It was better… if I didn’t love you,” replied Ocious.
“Why?”
This time Orthon’s voice had been loud enough to break the heavy silence, making everyone jump.
“You should be… grateful to me…”
“Grateful?” hissed Orthon through clenched teeth. “You want me to be grateful to you for despising me, belittling me and humiliating me, ever since I was a child?”
“You were… so sensitive… if I’d shown you… that I loved you… you’d never have been…”
He closed his eyes. Blood trickled from them.
“I’d never have been what?” roared Orthon, shaking him by the shoulders.
Ocious didn’t resist. He reopened his eyes and stared at Orthon, before whispering in resignation:
“The mightiest of us all…”
His head slumped to one side. His body had given up the fight. The aged ruler was dead.