Chapter 98: Hope fulfilled

I never lost hope.

I fought every day to keep it alive, despite the endless adversities and obstacles in our path, because I knew that the moment I let it go, everything around me would crumble.

Nothing can be done without hope.

This simple truth helped me in my most desperate moments, but I couldn’t deny that after all this time without any reason to keep this hope alive, my determination and confidence had started to be shaken by the reality of our situation.

However, I persevered despite all this and was finally rewarded.

The time to explain everything to her would come, and the time for tears would certainly follow afterward, but that moment had not yet arrived.

“Dad!”

The shock of my dreadful appearance, mostly digested, finally allowed Alianelle to notice that her father was also wounded and lying on his back a few meters away from her. She tried to get up, but her legs immediately gave way beneath her. I prevented another attempt with a hand firmly pressed on her shoulder while doing my best to reassure her.

In my current condition, I probably would have failed to physically restrain her in the end.

However, another grunt of pain from Ilan interrupted her and was the only warning we needed to all turn our attention toward him.

“Sillath! You have to do it, now!” exclaimed Seth with urgency.

Contrary to her brother, Himara stayed silent, but the hurried steps back she took to get away from Ilan and stand behind Paul and her brother were all I needed to realize that she wanted the same thing as her brother.

“Who is he?” asked Alianelle with her head tilted and a frown on her face.

However, none had the heart to answer her in this situation. Not even her own father, strangely silent, as he wasn't joining Seth in his supplication for murder.

“Sillath!”

I stood up from beside Alianelle. A difficult endeavor that at least had the merit to make Seth go quiet.

Even in my current condition, nothing would be easier than killing Ilan.

I could do it quickly and painlessly.

This was a chance none of us had dared to hope for when I confronted Ilan. With him gone, Walmir will never be strong enough to oppose me and Jazor. We could take his carriage and finish our journey with Himara and Seth freed.

All I had to do was to kill this man while he was still unconscious.

I clenched my only valid hand into a fist covered with blood and ice under the attentive gaze of everyone around waiting for me to put a definitive end to this fight.

It didn’t take any of them long to realize that my choice was already made.

With a wave of my hand, I summoned a gust of wind that forced Seth a few steps back and prevented him from getting any closer to Ilan with his deadly hair prepared to pierce his throat.

“Why do you protect him, Sillath?” he asked with unrestrained fury when he realized that he was unable to take a single step forward.

Righteous anger born of unfair treatment and a desperate future for him and his sister. Nothing I could say would be enough to quench or appease it. Only the death of this man I couldn’t bring myself to kill would accomplish that.

“We spilled too much blood already,” I simply answered in an even voice almost devoid of emotion.

Seth protested and cursed, but I turned a deaf ear to his supplication.

Such was the fate of the weak.

Unable to make their voice heard or impose their will on others.

Himara and Alianelle stayed completely silent, one probably too afraid to speak up and the other too confused to understand the situation.

When Ilan’s eyelids finally twitched, Seth finally put an end to his incessant pleas and attempts to approach, to rejoin everyone else in their mutual silence.

Immediately after, Ilan’s eyelids still covered with frost shot open and his whole body was propelled by a violent gust of wind that put him back on his feet faster than any of us could have predicted. Like me, he was wounded, but he appeared almost ready to resume our fight, something that my current appearance made impossible to hope for.

However, I stood my ground in front of him and stayed motionless with my lonely eye fixed on him.

I saw the confusion in Ilan’s eyes being quickly replaced by understanding. His whole body was still shivering, but it didn’t take long for him to put it under control and open his mouth to speak in a voice even rougher than usual.

“How am I still alive?”

Everything happened quickly, but I didn’t doubt that Ilan understood what had happened to him. What he wanted to know wasn’t how I extracted him from his prison of ice, but simply why I would go to such lengths to spare his life.

“Because I wanted to prove you wrong. To the both of you,” I simply answered while turning my gaze toward Paul and taking a step to the side to reveal who was hidden behind.

For the first time since I’ve known him, Ilan was truly speechless, his eyes round with shock and incomprehension.

The girl who should have never woken up and that he tried to kill just a few moments ago, had her eyes stubbornly fixed on him as if she could tell what this man had almost done to her.

“I thought… How? She was supposed to be already dead…”

These uncontrolled mumblings and the look on his face when he realized his previous mistake were the reason I hadn’t killed him. I had fought by his side and saw behind the mask of ruthlessness and violence he was forced to wear.

He was far from innocent or irreproachable, but for all his faults and despite his profession, I was sure Ilan was a good man.

Or at the very least, after everything we’ve been through together, after saving each other's lives more times than I could remember, he was someone I didn’t want to kill if I had any other choice.

I had no way to know what Paul, Seth, and Himara thought would happen after Ilan woke up, but their faces easily betrayed that they certainly didn’t think that he would be filled with remorse.

However, remorses alone weren't enough to guarantee that he would put his grudge against Paul behind. Praying that he wouldn’t force me to unleash my magic once again, I continued to watch him with bated breath.

I was so focused on his reaction and the choice he would make that I barely noticed when Paul stood up, and quietly rejoined his daughter. A much-deserved embrace between father and daughter finally reunited.

Nothing more natural.

Something neither I nor Ilan would have taken any note of, especially in our precarious situation if not for Alianelle’s scream of surprise. Paul’s large hand on her mouth wasn’t fast enough to cover it and his back wasn’t wide enough either to prevent any of us from seeing what he had noticed first and was desperately trying to hide.

Something had pierced her clothes on each side of her waist. Something solid enough to easily go through each layer of clothing, but also rather flexible as they were clearly influenced by the wind. This strangeness made it harder for me to immediately understand what these things were that had forced a scream out of Alianelle’s mouth.

However, a few more seconds was all it took for all of us to realize that they were in fact wings.

Budding transparent wings on each side of her waist, clearly not made of conventional feathers. They appeared made of something similar to crystal but strangely didn’t reflect the rays of the sun in any way. On the contrary, it almost felt like these wings were absorbing the sun’s rays to enhance their natural radiance.

Certainly a beautiful and mysterious sight, but less impressive than the much more discreet gathering of mana around them. Despite my closeness and my natural sensibility to mana, I almost missed this particularity because, unlike before, this mana wasn’t unrestrained, but much more subdued. It was pulsating almost like a beating heart and circulating in a strange, but mesmerizing way, between these wings and her body in a peaceful and harmonious cycle.

Once the shock of the sudden appearance of magical wings on Alianelle passed, Paul’s previous words came back to me.

He told me that her true nature would be revealed when she woke up, and that was precisely what was happening. He was so desperate to prevent us, especially Ilan and Walmir, from finding this out that he poisoned his own daughter and betrayed us all, even if it meant sentencing us to death. On second thought, it had been years since he started poisoning her, so the person he was probably most afraid and ashamed would find out the truth was Alianelle herself.

However, now that his fears came true all at once, he hadn’t the leisure to care for Alianelle’s questions. His previous anger and courage were gone, replaced by resignation clear on his face as he did his best to hide his daughter from Ilan’s inquisitive gaze behind his back.

“Kill me if you want, but you don’t have to kill her. Please… She’s not a threat to you anymore, she doesn’t release mana as she used to so please look away.”

Paul's pleading continued as Alianelle appeared lost and frightened. She kept touching the tip of her left-wing with her fingertip and bending it easily, proving that these strange wings were indeed much more flexible than their outer appearance suggested.

Ilan's eyes, which I thought couldn't be rounder after discovering that Alianelle had woken up, proved me wrong when he started looking at us, in turn, to try to understand.

“So that’s why you betrayed us!” he finally exclaimed after a few seconds of this silent intense staring. “You didn’t want us to find out about her true nature? About your true nature?” he asked aggressively while taking a step forward.

Paul simply nodded with apprehension written all over his face, but without moving away from his daughter. He also stubbornly continued to look directly into Ilan’s eyes without backing down.

Alone, he was powerless to resist him, we all knew that.

His plan failed, he barely escaped with his life and he had to assist powerlessly as his lies were revealed one after the other. For a reason that only Paul and Ilan seemed to understand, the appearance of these wings was more than a little alarming and was definitely the last thing Paul was desperate to keep hidden. With even this revealed for all to see, Paul no longer tried to lie. He simply stubbornly stood before Alianelle while daring Ilan, with his eyes alone, to condemn him.

That look of defiance that he continued to stubbornly give him was enough to understand that even though the fear and shame that had driven him to do all those terrible things to his daughter and our group were gone, his determination to protect her was still as strong as before.

I didn’t know what the appearance of these wings meant contrary to Ilan, but it didn’t matter.

It didn’t change anything for me.

Just like Paul, I won’t back down.

I straightened my back and shielded Paul and Alianelle behind me again as best I could. My frail, blood-covered body was certainly not imposing enough to hide them completely, but still sufficient to announce my choice.

For what seemed like an eternity, we all waited for Ilan to say something or finally make his move against me. However, the seasoned warrior we all learned to fear and respect along our journey appeared torn by indecision.

His reaction to the appearance of those wings was even more significant than the previous revelation of Alianelle's awakening.

“I told you that I couldn’t accept a traitor as a companion!” he suddenly started with an authoritative voice. “It has not changed and it never will.”

We all tensed after his words, realizing at the same time what he implied.

However, Ilan didn’t attack.

With a weary face still covered with frost, he slowly exhaled as if finally coming to terms with his own decision.

“However, you were never part of our group, I see that now. You lied about your and your daughter's true nature from the very beginning. I certainly understand why you would try to hide the truth from us at all costs. However, you have to understand something, Paul: to me, there is nothing nobler than a group of strangers putting their strengths together and their differences aside to accomplish a common goal. It’s the only way for those who hope to survive in this land. When Sillath and Jazor chose to ally with us, we became part of a group, and to me, there is almost nothing more sacred than that,” he concluded with a heavy voice.

Freed from my ice, Paul nevertheless appeared completely frozen by Ilan’s words, as we both understood what preceded his long speech.

Sure enough, with a much harsher voice and eyes blazed with renewed anger, he spoke again.

“But you, Paul, you poisoned your allies and left them behind to assure your own survival, that’s something I will never accept!”

Unable to contradict this accusation, Paul could only search for his daughter's eyes behind him, but the look of horror and disbelief that Alianelle gave him after hearing these words was enough for a blush to creep across his cheeks yet still affected by the cold of the ice. As if it was the first time she was seeing her father for what he truly was, she took a few steps back away from him with accusatory eyes.

The tears gathering in his eyes along with the look she gave him were enough proof that he probably would have preferred her to curse or even hit him.

“I had no choice,” he tried to awkwardly defend himself with a shaky voice.

“We always have the choice, Paul,” immediately contradicted Ilan with a firm voice leaving no room for any contradiction. “However, despite all your lies and your betrayal, Sillath still protected you. You couldn’t trust him with the truth, but he still risked his life once more for you, so… I will respect his choice. I owe him that much for sparing my life.”

This final declaration from Ilan let me release a huge breath and immediately dispersed the tension in the air between us.

However, Paul didn’t appear to share my relief.

I first thought that it was because of Alianelle’s reaction after the revelation of his previous actions. However, I was wrong. Ilan also appeared to have noticed his strange behavior, but he apparently understood it better than I did.

“You’re worried I will leak the truth about your daughter, aren’t you? Don’t worry, I won’t.”

“How can I trust you with that?”

“Well, it’s the nature of trust, you can’t be sure,” he mocked. “However, I know you’re ‘a fallen’ so everything you did to hide this truth about you and your daughter couldn’t have been for your sake. It was for hers, and that’s something I can respect,” he explained with a much softer voice very much unlike him. “So be at ease, I won’t talk about your daughter’s true nature, not even to Walmir if you find a way to hide these wings.”

With these last words, he started to walk toward the Vrapy with steps much more unsteady than I would have thought.

We all looked in silence as he passed near us, not knowing what to say. Personally, I was too tired to think anymore. Now that the tension of battle was gone, my body was slowly failing me, either overcome by the poison or simply by my numerous wounds.

I was so tired that I nearly missed Paul’s discreet words of thanks said with the tip of his lips and Alianelle’s hands holding my arm to support a part of my weight.

The last thing I remembered before darkness took a hold of me was her worried but healthy face, and that was all I needed to see.