The stairs up to Conya’s chambers seemed like too many. Obi’s legs were heavy. He sat down on the first landing and took his shoes off, telling himself his feet just really hurt.
He wasn’t dawdling. He wasn’t avoiding the upcoming conversation with this new Conya that had confronted him so openly in the parlor. He wasn’t the type to do that. He had faced armies without a pause. He had just stolen a princess out of a castle without notice. He could face one small woman easily.
Heaving a heavy sigh, he collected his shoes in one hand and slowly stood. He made his way up again in his socked feet.
He could handle one small woman who had shown a side of herself that he had never seen, never even suspected.
Conya’s sudden strength evident in her serious threat to kick him out of the house if he threatened the household unnerved him. He prided himself in reading people and seeing past the mask everyone wore to fool their peers to see within.
Had he been so besotted with this idea of a woman that had no one but him to rely on that he had overlooked a steel core? Was he losing his touch?
The hardwood was slick under his stockinged feet. The walls were white with dark molding Every ten steps or so a bright landscape greeted him cheerily at him as he passed. He wondered if Conya had carefully placed them there when she had first moved in with her new husband. Or at least told someone where to put the paintings. He didn’t remember them when he was growing up.
This was home like it hadn’t been when he had left as a teen, excited for adventure. Maybe he was just getting old.
Maybe it was Conya.
He stood at her door, wondering why he took his shoes off. Now he looked like an idiot.
What was he going to tell her exactly? He couldn’t tell her the truth… Could he?
Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he knocked on the door as he told himself he was ridiculous over and over again.
“Come in.”
Was her voice different? Surely that was just him, projecting the change he had seen in her in the parlor.
He took a deep breath through his nose, letting his chest rise as his lungs filled completely with air. He held that position for a heartbeat and then another before exhaling slowly through his mouth. He opened the door, arranging his expression to exude tranquility. “You wanted to talk,” he murmured smoothly as he glanced back, closing the door with a soft click.
“Are we going to pretend that the invasion of my privacy was an accident on the guardsmen’s behalf or are you going to tell me why they were here?”
The derision in her tone made him stiffen. He turned to face the room and frowned in confusion for a moment when it seemed empty.
“I think the entire ordeal is a little too large to forgo mentioning at all.”
She was behind a screen cutting off a corner of the room from the rest. It was made of paper and the candles she had on threw blurry shadows against the painting of a pond.
He thought of veils and then Qui’in. His frown deepened. He didn’t like associating Conya with the prostitute.
Conya was too innocent, and Qui’in too dangerous.
“What are you doing?” his voice came as a snap that surprised him. “I thought we were going to talk.”
She looked out from behind the screen. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy mass with wisps of her hair falling in her face. Her eyes were wide. “Fine. I’ll come out. Turn on the light.”
He stiffly looked around for the switch, his exhaustion making it so that his temper was slippery. He knew that his irritation showed in the firm slash of his lips, and he didn’t feel as he used to around Conya. He was starting to think that he didn’t need to be so careful around her.
Flipping the electric lights on, he faced her again, arms folded across his chest. He let his eyes closed as she took her time behind the screen. If he didn’t think he knew Conya, he would have thought she was making a power play.
“Making me wait,” he growled.
She blew out the candle and stepped out. She had a light blue robe pulled tightly around her, covering everything that might be interesting. Her arms were also folded over her chest.
They stared at each other across the room, anger vibrating across a string that was connecting them. There was a tinge of some other feeling that dulled the bite just a little. Something that made him want to cross the space between him and her.
It was unsettling to say the least.
She took a deep breath, and he could watch as she pulled together her courage. He hadn’t completely misjudged her then. She was timid.
“I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t want to. It sounds like Rufolu is involved, and he’ll use whoever he needs to against his enemies. I can only assume that I could be one of the people he would use. Maybe he already used Lekan.” Her eyes had been flickering all over the room, to the plush cream carpet, to the portrait of an infant Lekan. Her hand was tightly fisted at her navel. Now she looked at him dead on. “And I don’t want to be the one to get you in trouble because I think you’re over your head.”
He expected to see tears now, but she just stood stiffly, watching him watching her, clear eyed and earnest.
Obi looked around the room because he couldn’t hold her gaze. It hit him suddenly, unexpectedly, and flew out of his mouth before he could think about it, “Did you love my brother?”
There were not pictures of him in this room. Lekan was in several places at different ages, but there wasn’t one portrait of his brother. A part of him was affronted. His brother deserved to be grieved, but Obi also felt a bubbling elation. He forgot his irritation at her silly games and his exhaustion. A ghost’s affections were hard to outmatch.
Becoming aware of her horrified expression and dark blush, he realized he had overstepped a boundary. “Ah…” He was a teenage boy now, groping for what to say. “I won’t tell you what’s going on. I’ve worked it out though, and you shouldn’t worry.” He was scrambling toward the door. He dropped a shoe and bent down to get it, all elbows and knees. “Rufolu won’t come to you.” He straightened, looking a little sheepish. “I won’t let him.”
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125,007 Literary Works • 672,817 Reviews
Hey Megsug!
I have some older works to review but I was missing this novel ;.; So I am here!
Look what this does to meI'm sorry if I repeat! No time to read or scan the previous reviews. So here goes!
What I really really liked in this chapter was seeing Obi's thought process. It makes me smile knowing that he had managed to face all those things head on without a thought in his mind (well, actually with plenty) but when it comes to one woman he seems to be having a struggle. And that already seems to fit the sayings and seem to be slightly comical. As well as that we do get to see that Conya might be timid in some cases and can be the soft girl we know her as, she is also a tough cookie at heart who refuses to be messed around. I can respect her for that. And the way they were clearly angry at each other but only because they love each other. It made me smile too. Overall, I was doing an awful lot of smiling and don't have too much feedback for you.
My first point is a very small one. I felt like the first two paragraphs in this chapter should've been conjoined at one. I paused after reading the second paragraph and realized that it would've run smoother if they were one together. It just made sense in my mind.
I didn't like the combination of the word threat and threatened together in this one sentence. It's tricky to think of a replacement, but I am sure you could find one. Something along the lines of 'warning' could replace threat, but for that you would have to rephrase the sentence a bit.
Another thing I noticed is that everyone seems to be doing an awful lot of breathing in this chapter. We get Obi breathing on the stairs, before he comes in, and then Conya breathing as she collects her thoughts. It's a great way of showing them thinking, feel stressed and all that... but it might be good to have some other actions displaying it rather than the same one repeatedly. I am sure you didn't notice it as you wrote, though, and it is an easy thing to change
I am still not entirely sure what happened at the end. Obi does ask a fair question about her loving his brother, but there is never anything said and he just seems to know the answer from looking at her face. But I didn't get it! Maybe I am being a bit dim here >.> But I am pretty sure that you want all your readers to understand what is going on, so maybe it needs to be a bit more obvious? Something to think about, but something that could easily be ignored if you think it is clear enough already. (But please, do explain to me
I really don't have much else to say! Sorry this was so short, but I hope it was still useful <3
Deanie x
Hi there! Noelle back again.
There's a lot of 'he' in this paragraph. Actually, each sentence here starts with 'he'. I know that you can come up with something different to start a sentence with. It gets repetitive after the second time, really.
Obi says that he's not dwadling and avoiding talking to Conya, but I think he really is. Not because he doesn't want to talk to her, but rather because he's had a long day. He said it before, it's been a long day. He doesn't want to have to deal with any of this anymore. I feel like he'd rather jump into bed than talk to Conya. He's not going to let her know that though because he's not that kind of guy. It'll be interesting to see this conversation unfold.
There are a lot of short paragraphs in this chapter that could easily be combined to make bigger ones. The short ones stand alone and really make the chapter feel choppy. They can easily be combined and sometimes it just seems like you pressed the enter key a few sentences too soon.
Conversations between Conya and Obi are always fun to read. They compliment each other so much and they know how to push each other's buttons. Obi can intimidate and make himself larger than anyone and Conya knows how to be tough. The only difference is that Conya isn't really tough, she only pretends to get the upper hand. So to watch the two of them go at each other, for lack of a better term, is entertaining. You never know what's going to happen.
Obi's way of caring for someone is very interesting. It's obvious that he cares for Conya, but the only way we really see it here is when he says at the end that he won't let Rufolu get to her. Otherwise it's like they're just living together. I'm still trying to figure out their complicated relationship.
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
Hello.
Haven't read previous parts. Just going off what I see here.
The first thing I noticed was how confusing it was as he went up the stairs. I wasn't exactly sure what was his memory, what was reality, and what had changed. You say he doesn't remember the paintings yet the place hasn't changed and I'm just wondering what makes him say what he is. It's a little thing, but it threw me out of the story. You're also missing a period before "every".
This whole interaction had its moments, but for the most part I found you didn't really push the emotion in here. I felt you told us what your characters were feeling instead of letting the interaction speak for itself, and once you did explain what the feelings where, the interactions did not speak for themselves. You had a good line with the vibrating anger and I felt something there, but I didn't feel much outside of that.
It also felt resolved too quickly. There wasn't really the MC establishing what gave him the upper hand again, why he goes to reassure her when he had been scared. The emotional progression is lacking in that regard, and I didn't really get a sense of how the character motive bled into the dialogue. It felt like the interaction had to happen to smooth over ruffled feathers, instead of actually being a well thought out interaction with long term ramifications.
Basically, the stakes aren't high enough. I'm 25 chapters in and I expected to feel something about this. I think part of that might be how many questions you used; they were effective at the beginning, but come the middle I kept noticing every single one because you'd used them so much. There's also how I can't quite see how this changes anything. You start off with the explosion, a drastic change, and then it turns out your narrator is right and she's timid and nothing's actually changed. She'll stay out of it and the power dynamics are exactly the same. I wasn't expecting that for a chapter 25. I was expecting a loss of something, because so late in the story everything should be falling apart. And it wasn't.
Overall, this was good but not great. I think most of it comes from how the interactions and dialogue really do not speak for themselves and I'm left feeling pretty cold about this.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
~Rosey
Shadowolf here
Another story I have nothing to give back to! The world must be ending or something...or I'm just way too tired to be trying to make reviews.
"He prided himself in reading people and seeing past the mask everyone wore to fool their peers to see within." This was the only thing i could find in this entire interesting chapter to have you fix. that little bit at the end feels a bit confusing to me. It sounds as though it either needs to have a comma after 'peers' or those last three words need to be removed entirely. Unless I', missing something XD.
Other than that, all I can say is that while I haven't read any of your previous chapters, this story is very well written and well thought out. Its one of the few that make me want to go back and read from the beginning to now. Awesome story and a great read overall! Keep on Keeping on