Chapter 12
He would be there.
Dravon would be there.
Diane let the words marinate on her lips. Her stomach suddenly churned with something. It would be a foolish thing to call it butterflies, because who on earth gets them for a man whom she had never seen?
The good thing is that it wasn't butterflies. What Diane felt was anxiety.
She, Athea, had been at the Ravenforth manor for four whole months without ever meeting her supposed husband. Athea might have acted unbothered, but Diane couldn't help but doubt that she was totally unbothered. How lonely it must have felt.
Tomorrow, she would get to see him. Just the thought of it made her wimpy. It would be far better to avoid him completely for the length of her duration at Rose Hall.
Mira came out of the bathing chambers, summoning her out of her thoughts and into a warm bath.
She stood up and walked past the wide-eyed Mira, who stared at her inquisitively.
"Why do you want to see him?" She asked, staring at Diane as she removed her underpants and slid into the tub, relishing the warmth.
"For someone who couldn't be bothered about you, you show a little too much interest these days, Athea." "Or do I have to explain in detail why he is dangerous for you?"
Diane lets herself immerse in the warmth of the scented water, with the rose petals floating evenly around her. She sank deeper into the tub, her body fully covered now, as if to hide from Mira's gaze.
Is Diane interested in Dravon? Yes. She cannot pretend not to be. The interest, however, is more of curiosity than anything. She had so many unanswered questions. Was he really a devil incarnate, just as the novel had painted him?
Did he really have anything to do with Athena's incident that night? How dangerous is he really?
Does he really have dark powers, maybe like the strange man she met at the seaside? What did Dravon look like, a beast with horns? She scoffed at this thought.
Diane guessed that for someone portrayed as a devil, he would have to look the part.
She raised her upper body, now sitting in the tub instead.
"Do you know what he looks like? Are you not curious at the least, Mira?" She asked her as she stood by the door watching her take her bath.
Diane used to be very conscious of her body. She was not one to undress in front of her friends. Not in high school and definitely not while in college. She never changed at the hospital's call room unless she was completely alone. She loathed her body.
Suddenly, being watched and looked at felt so good. She enjoyed the attention Athea paid to her, to her body, because now she knows how perfect it was. How alluring her curves were.
There was no belly fat nor almost absent boobs to hide.
She watched as Mira's countenance changed. From a little bit of indifference to the face she would make whenever she was about to talk forever.
"Once, every other thing are but speculations."
"They say his body is covered with scars of battles that never heal as a result of his curse. It was rumored also that last winter he lost an eye at war. Which apparently made him uglier than normal."
She laughed at this because to Diane it sounded like a tale-by-moonlight kind of story.
Mira narrated the story so wildly that Diane imagined how it must have evolved over time, with different narrators adding their own spice.
It was rumored that at the last battle of the Caribbeans, Dravon, as the general, had led his men to war and killed over a hundred thousand men single-handedly. But at the end a child had struck at his eyes. The motion had been unexpected, and so he was unable to avoid it.
According to storytellers, when Dravon pulled the metal that had stuck to his eye socket, he gave no grimace nor did he groan in pain. Blood gushed out of the hollow hole. His men ran back all the way from the battlefield to tell the tale of the warrior who defeated a thousand men but was slain by a child.
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Diane opened her eyes and saw men slicing through bodies. Hundreds of bodies, dead or wounded, littered the very ground she stood on. She saw him then, the man she imagines to be Dravon, blood sliding down his sword as heads littered around him instead.
She watched him as he walked up to the boy, who would not be more than twelve. She kept watching him as he stooped to the boy's eye level, whispering something only the boy would have heard. At that moment, she felt something for him: sheer admiration. At the least he is kind to children; to the weak he is probably not a monster nor a blood-hungry man.
Then something moved, so fast that Diane could have argued it did not. Surprise shook her very being as the boy stabbed him directly in the eyes with a movement so swift and clean.
What happened next jolted Diane awake, out of just another nightmare.
She took a frantic look around, trying to make sense of her surroundings.
How powerful the mind can be, how she went from imagining Dravon at war as Mira narrated to finding herself immersed in the same war, but now as a nightmare.
She was alone in the room now. The light flickered from the wind that blew through the beautifully parted curtains at the window by her bedside. It looked like it was about to rain.
She got up and made to close the window panes. The wind suddenly intensified in magnitude. An owl hooted at a place not so far away. Diane could feel a presence, as a shadow cast on the ground. Diane stared long at the shadow, willing it not to move.
Suddenly, as if on cue, a violent roar of thunder shook the air like an angry beast. So loud that it rattled the windows.
Then the shadow moved…