Page 53 of Zel
The physician was doing all he could to clean and bundle the infant Zel when he announced rather gravely, “I’m afraid it’s a boy,” clearly aware of the intended future for the innocent babe.
Gregor and Sophie exchanged frantic looks, before Gregor pulled a dagger. The physician still held Zel, but that did not deter Gregor from pressing the blade to the man’s throat. “It is a girl,” he said in warning, “a future bride to be presented to the sorcerer exactly as planned. Do you understand?”
“You cannot possibly hide—”
“Do you understand?” Gregor asked again.
The physician nodded, and once Gregor had retracted the dagger, he handed over the newborn Zel into his father’s arms.
“Even my first moments alive involved a dagger,” Zel said.
“How much time passed before your parents dispatched the physician?” Ulrich asked.
“Three weeks.”
“Longer than I would have waited.”
Zel snorted, and Ulrich cast him a wry smile.
Next, Ulrich watched Zel will the view of the past to zip forward in time.
“When I began to come into my own mind and understand things, I thought Iwasa girl at first,” Zel explained as more scenes unfolded. “I didn’t know to think otherwise. Eventually, my parents had to explain, pull me aside, make sure I knew not to play peek-a-boo under the skirts with any of my friends. They didn’t explain all the details right away but slowly introduced me to the idea by saying I had a destiny to fulfill that required sacrifice. I was special. I had a great purpose. And that meant pretending to be something I wasn’t.”
The scenes shifted again to Zel in the undercrofts of the Thieves Guild with his parents and other various teachers.
“Then my training began to hone my body, my skills with movement and weapons. Once I neared womanhood—manhood—adulthood I suppose, I was taught how to make the boys want me.”
“To better seduce me eventually?” Ulrich asked.
“Yes, but I did want to titillate the boys,” Zel admitted. “That began long before I was taught to target them. I had always preferred being a girl over wanting to kiss one, so I never had to hide my attractions. But it was still all for you more than for me. My whole life has been about you.”
The final scenes, most recent in Zel’s life, came in rapid succession.
“Training my feminine wiles to seduce you. Training with blades to assassinate you. Even my education was all to better tempt you and win your favor for the sake of the mission. Andthough I found many of my own pleasures in it all, I hated that. I hated you before I knew you. Especially when I started to feel a deeper desire toward the boys, I resented you because I couldn’t choose what I wanted. I hated having to be something I wasn’t, and that every day of my life was dedicated to one future moment in time with one person I hadn’t even met yet. It was only these past two or three winters that I came to accept my fate and resigned myself to not resent something I couldn’t change.
“So, as I admitted during our first night together, I did eventually stop resenting you, stop hating you, and focused on what I had to do to get through this and to maybe have a life of my own on the other side of it.” Zel turned from the scenes that had ended with his mother preparing him in her wedding gown for the trip to the tower.
He took Ulrich’s hands.
“I never could have predicted how that one future moment in my life would end up being worth the difficult road to reach it, one small stretch of time enough to change everything and make me want so deeply that I cannot imagine drawing breath anymore without you there. My past had to be all about you, but I want my future to continue to be because it is what I choose.”
“Zel—”
“My parents live under the thumb of the guild leader, Lothar.” Zel squeezed Ulrich’s hands tighter, refusing to let him pull or look away. “And he lives under the thumb of the evil Queen. We all do. Everyone’s life is beholden to another in some way, whether they know it or not. But my parents have always found joy in life together despite that. I have never met another who made me feel like I could have what they do. Not until you.”
Ulrich didn’t try to pull or look away, but he looked at Zel seriously. “Do you truly know what you ask? Even when what you have said and shown me proves the point of why we should not be together? I molded you to be what I wanted—”
“No. You made sure I had the magic you needed to achieve the goal you thought you wanted. My parents and my experiences molded me. You lit the spark, but life fanned the flames. And where I could, I made my own choices. You want me not for who I could have been or pretended to be, but for who I am. Don’t you?”
“Yes…” But that truth only made Ulrich’s grief stronger, when he had never thought he could know grief again.
“Once I am immortal and you are weakened, instead of succumbing to my blade, could you not replenish your magic over time?”
“I could. But listen to me—”
“If you had no desire for me at all, would you have bedded me?”
“Possibly.” Ulrich’s sorrow cracked with a grin, but Zel stared him down, clearly in no mood for levity. “No,” Ulrich recanted.
