Heart desired

//Chapter 16//

I sat across my father, Daniel and my brother sitting behind me. Not too far, just enough to give me and him dome private space. I stared at my father, waiting for him to speak first. It was customary foe the elders to speak first, plus he was the king.

He did not say anything for a while. He was looking at me, as if to determine what I had become for the past few years. He was also looking at my brother in the same manner. I lrt him see through me as much as he want.

Two guards were stationed outside, which was a lot less than I expected, given what I said befor the palace grounds. My father had waved away the rest of the guards who followed us and surprisingly, Nave had let them. Which was why I used the brief they searched me for weapons to plant the illusion of just a simple chat inside their head. I did not know which one, but one of them was defenitely one of Nave'd spies, and I wanted to avoid the risk.

"You have grown up a lot." Finally my father spoke. I figured he was talking to my brother, because I was pretty sure that I still looked the same. But his eyes were on me. "I look exactly the same." I told him.

He smiled. "Yes, you do. But I was not talking about the looks."

I knew he was talking about my little demonstration before. I gave him a knowing smile. He could be proud of me all he want, but I was not here to talk about me. "Why didn't you tell me anything about this?' I asked. "There is a secret war going on, and I don't even konw how you keep it a secret from all the elves. Why didn't you tell me anything about having a brother? Why did you chose that way to break your blood oath with Daniel? Why-"

"Slow down. I know, you must be so angry with me right now. Let me explain from the start." He rubbed between hid eyebrows. "You too also come here. I don't want to repeat this awful story again." He gestured to the others. Even though they were moving, the guards didn't even lift a muscle. Good. My illusion was still on the place.

Father looked at the brother. "I haven't seen you for a long time, Resh."

"OF course ypu didn't." He seethed. "You abandoned me across the borders and left me to die."

"I know. And I'm sorry. Please let me explain from the start."

"You know, no matter the excuse, the fact that you abandoned me won't change." my brother's words were harsh. I guessed it was inevitable. After all, I was not abandoned somewhere by my own father, so it was not my place to judge. And he was not completely wrong. No matter the excuse, I also couldn't forgive my father for siding with his ministers and killing my friends.

My father gave him a sad smile. "I know."

"Okay, just tell us what happened." I said. This would never end if they didn't stop going back and forth.

"For over thirty hundred years ago, our planet Delatas was not seperated in to kingdoms. Elves and mortals lived together. I can't say they were in peace and harmony. True, elves had magic, beauty and superior strength, but mortals were intelligent than us. At first, there was no hostality among the two species. but one day, a mortal had saved an elf from some kind of trap. History doesn't specify what kind of trap. Some books says he was saved from a predator, some says he was saved from a literal trap set by beever hunters, some says it was from a deadly poison. Which ever was the case, the elf was so greatful, he had made a blood oath right there, promising to serve him from then. He had forgotten to clearly set on a deadline. So, when the man died, the blood oath didn't disappear. Instead he had to serve his son.

However, the son was neither respectful or polite. He made the elf a slave. He did not stop from there. He boasted about his slave for eternity, who could use magic and had strength even though he was starved. He and his friends experimented on him, to see how much he could handle before he died. He was starved, beaten, cut and tortured, again and again. One day, the son asked him how to capture elves. He was bound, so he had no choice but to tell him how to use sugar cane candy and berries to set a trap. Thus began the dark age of elf slavery, lasting more than eight hundred years."

Just listening to this story made my skin prickle. I already knew there was a dark age for elves, but there was no written record of it. After all, it had happened along time ago.

"The Elves had forgotten what even was freedom, when one day, Angels descended to Delatas. They were some kind of species from another dome located directly above Delatas. Some stories say they took pity on elves and chose to help them. Others say that Angels never cared about Elves, but fell in love with a beautiful Elf women, so they decided to help us. Some how, an elf army was created, and after a bloody war, Elves won with the help of Angels. And that creaated the first barrier between the elves and mortals, leading to two powerful kingdoms on the same planet."

"Angels always loved elves beauty, so it was not a surprise when half Angel and half Elf children started to born.We called them Elkelyn. At first, we all took them as a reminder of our alliance and treated them pretty well. Soon, the Angels left for their dome, abandoning thier wives and children. Elkelyn was not as powerful as Elves or Angels, which made them easy targets to bullying and assaults. Angels never ate or drink anything from Delatas, which made the Elkelyn children weak to fruits and vegetables. They despised honey the most, for some reason. One day, an Elkelyn got into a fight with an Elf kid and bit him. Somehow, he had ended up draining him from drinking all his blood. It had made him almost as powerful as Elves. This led to a conflict between us. Then, after another full scale war, all the Elkelyn were banished from here. They found their own land, right in the middle of the mortals."

I did not say anything as my father stopped talking for a moment and took a sip from his water. Daniel silently brushed his hair out of his eyes. My brother was still as a statue.

"And then the first attacks came from them. I was so little when my father went to deal with them. It had been so long since we heared from them, so we had forgoten how to even encounter their attacks. Somehow, my father won the battle. However, in that battle, he found out something interesting. It gave them more power if people started to talk about them, like some sort of gods humans were worshipping. The more we talked, the more powerful they became. My father's ability was to find out someon's deepest secret, in case you don't know about that, so it was not surprising when he told us about that. So we wiped the Elkelyn from our history, wiped civillian's memory and stationed soldiers who had the ability keep them away from us in the borders. I had to say, it worked pretty well so far."

"Well, that explains a lot of things." I said. "If they can't attack us, why attack them?" I asked.

My father took a deep breath. "Now we have come to the hardest part of the story."