“That would be my good friend, Sven. He travelled from Oreylia with me. Not as enjoyable a dimension to dwell in as this one, let me assure you.”
Silence stretched between us as he studied my face. I couldn’t get over the change in him. He still looked the same, well, except for the horns and the scar, but his entire demeanour had shifted. His voice, the glow in his blue eyes. He might as well have been a completely different person.
“When did this all start?” I questioned. “When did you begin pretending to be Nic?”
“I believe New Years Eve was the first time you met me as Nic, though I had been in Tribane for a number of weeks before that night.”
“And how come when I saw you, I saw my friend, even though you look nothing like him?”
“It’s a special glamour. It influences the viewer to see who or what I want them to see without the need to change my appearance, though I did find it necessary to hide my horns and my scar. Those aren’t commonplace features in this dimension,” he replied.
“And your friend, Sven,” I said, my throat dry. “Did he give himself up to protect you? Why?” I tried to keep my voice even because, on the inside, I was freaking out.
“Sven would die for me, and I for him. We have survived many horrors together. He’s my brother in all but blood.” He paused, a slight grin curving his mouth. “Besides, I assured him I’d break him free from whatever prison he was placed in when the time came.”
My head shook slowly from side to side. “I don’t understand any of this.”
He exhaled a short breath. “Let me explain, then, shall I? My name is Vasilios Acacius Girard, and I was born a little over a century ago in the dimension you call Oreylia.”
I gaped at him. Vasilios Acacius Girard?
17.
“You’re related to Peter?” I said, still not fully comprehending.
“Distantly,” Vasilios replied. “My father was the sorcerer, Theodore.”
Okay, now it was starting to make more sense. “So, Theodore had a son during his time in Oreylia?”
“That would be me,” he confirmed.
“But … wait, how were you born a century ago? It’s barely been twenty years since Theodore was sent to Oreylia.”
Vasilios moved away, no longer trapping me against the counter. He didn’t seem worried about me attacking him or trying to flee again. He knew if I tried to escape, he could easily stop me with his magic. I was pretty sure he had no idea Angela was the one I’d been on the phone with. He thought I’d used magic to break his glamour, not that I’d had his ruse explained to me by my friend. He also didn’t know that my parents were likely on their way here as we spoke. Speaking of which, what was taking them so long? My mother should’ve been here by now.
“Time passes differently in other dimensions,” he replied, and I remembered something Peter had said to me. He’d theorised that time might pass slower in Oreylia, or faster, as appeared to be the case. “When one calendar year elapses on this plane, six have elapsed in Oreylia.”
“Have you come for revenge?” I asked pointedly.
“I’ve come to take the city my father died trying to win. And yes, a little bit of revenge, too, I guess.”
“Revenge against whom?”
A darkness entered his gaze. “Your parents for a start, and everyone else who had a hand in my father’s death.”
“Is that why you befriended me, to get to my parents?”
He shook his head, and bizarrely, his eyes softened. “No, you were merely a pleasant complication.”
A pleasant complication?
He must’ve seen the question in my eyes because he continued, “Where I come from, you would be treated like a slave, Darya, made to labour in reylite mines until your body gave way to death.”
I shivered at his description. Reylite mines? “Why?”
“Because you’re neither one thing nor the other. In Oreylia, anyone of mixed heritage is considered lower than dirt. We’re beaten and abused, used up until our bodies have no more labour left to give.” What he said sparked a memory. Granddad Martin had relayed similar information when he told Mum and me about his time in that hellish dimension. “We’re spat on, called every disgusting name imaginable,” he went on, a haunted look in his eyes. I thought of that night at Flynn’s pub and how the vampire had stared at me, how he talked to me like I was so far below him because I was a dhampir, half human, half vampire. How would I have turned out if I’d endured a century of such treatment?
No, quit trying to emote to him. That’s what he wants.
I brought my attention back to Vasilios. “What’s reylite?”
He tapped a finger to his chin. “It’s a highly dense energy source. The closest thing you have in this dimension would be coal, though reylite is vastly more valuable.” I remembered him staring at the jar of bitumen in Mrs Kanumba’s class like it made him sick to his stomach. He’d shuddered at the sight of it, and it didn’t make sense to me at the time, but it did now. Bitumen was black as coal. It had reminded him of the mines back in Oreylia. The traumatic memory must’ve been what caused his glamour to slip briefly, allowing Angela to see through it.