BURN

epilogue

"That's-- that's it?" splutters Nicola. "That can't be it!"

Tedros looks unimpressed.

"I don't do well speaking for long periods of time, and I've given you the basics." he says. He does sound hoarse by now, Nicola has to admit. "Besides," he adds, "What else is there to tell?

Nicola looks at him, aghast.

"What else?" she springs to her feet and begins to pace. "What happened to you? What about Ravan? Weatherford? How did everyone react to your magic? Why does everyone think Agatha is a hostage?"

Tedros snorts.

"Well, I clearly didn't die."

Nicola frowns at him, unimpressed.

"Clearly, but did the ice pierce your lungs?"

"No, just made a mess of my throat and mouth." Tedros swings his legs down from the armrest of his throne and turns to face her properly. "I could barely speak at Agatha's coronation. It didn't matter, mind you, because I--"

"Turned up in a suit of armour made from ice and everyone was too scared to talk to you anyway?" interrupts Nicola.

"Oh, people still remember that?" A rather smug expression crosses Tedros's face. "Another one of those old tales? Hmm. Good."

Good is not the word Nicola would use, but she doesn't comment.

"What about the rumours you're holding Agatha hostage?"

Tedros fixes her with a rather condescending look.

"You tell me, Pipp."

"...made up by Rhian on the back of that story, based on the fact she's here relatively often and he wants people to be scared of you?"

Tedros grunts in assent and goes back to picking his nails.

"I don't understand how it can have been mangled so quickly." Nicola muses, despite Tedros's clear lack of interest in continuing. "It can't have been that long ago. How old are you? Fifty?"

Tedros's head snaps up, and he scowls at the estimate.

"Forty-eight."

Nicola gawks.

"It was only thirty years ago? That doesn't make any sense!"

Tedros replies in markedly worse humour, clearly offended at having been aged two years;

"It was mangled with an older, existing tale as part of a propaganda campaign by Vanessa's allies. Originally it was only a comparison in an article, but in the end, it merged, and people tend to forget the original. Since I remain largely out of the public eye, it was easy for people to make me a myth."

Nicola has a million questions-- why didn't you protest the comparison? being the main one-- but she doesn't pitch them. Instead, she says;

"Why did Ravan save you? What happened to him?"

Tedros rubs his beard, considering.

"He never gave me a straight answer, and fled the country before I was properly recovered. He did try to kill me, after all, and I think he thought he might get the Vanessa treatment. I don't know where he went, but Hort goes on holiday to Thicket Tumble extremely often, so I have my suspicions. But if I were to guess, I would say our shared history made him feel guilty about having tried to kill me the first time, and in the end he decided Vanessa was a bigger threat to the kingdom than I was."